Fastenal Case

A. Fastenal

“The Fastenal story began in 1967 when Bob Kierlin pooled together $30,000 with four friends and opened the first Fastenal location, a 1,000 square foot shop in his hometown of Winona, MN” (Our History 2018). Following the company’s incorporation in 1968, Kierlin implemented the “Growth Through Customer Service” initiative that enabled Fastenal employees to provide customers with exceptional service that eventually became the company’s trademark approach. The opening of Fastenal Manufacturing, in 1981, allowed the company to increase its in-house custom manufacturing. After going public in 1987, Fastenal’s sales quadrupled and branch stores increased to 800. The 1990s brought Fastenal economic prosperity and growth with the

2018). As of 2017, Fastenal has approximately 3,000 in-market branch and on-site locations that can be found in twenty-four countries including United States, Germany, Poland, Chile, China, and Singapore. Fastenal also has fourteen distribution centers located throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Currently with 20,565 employees and growing, the supply distributor provides its customers with a variety of products that meet their industrial, construction, and safety needs. By utilizing industrial vending, Fastenal is able to provide its customers with a wide-range of benefits that are not limited to reductions in administrative costs, product handling and purchase orders as well as increased product availability. The industrial vending initiative enables Fastenal secure market advantage over its competitors. Nine years after the introduction of industrial vending machines, Fastenal has 86,000 machines deployed with 83% of the vending machines generating revenues. Between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, Fastenal expects to have an additional 100,000 vending machines will be added to branches worldwide (Fastenal Company 10K Annual Filing 2018) (What is Fastenal?