Recent Industry Performance
In some ways, the competitive landscape of the electrical distribution market has remained largely the same for decades. During this time, the industry has been led by national full-line distribution chains who are in competition with many other sellers, including hybrid distributors; service/product niche distributors that have a strong emphasis on design, installation and repair; big box stores such as Lowe’s Companies, Inc. and The Home Depot, Inc.; hardware stores including Ace Hardware and True Value; and online retailers such as Amazon.
At the same time, analysis done by Electrical Wholesaling (“EW”) points to a significant shift in the electrical distribution market. Each year since at least 1980, EW has published a ranking of the largest electrical distributors in North America. Notably, over time, the total number of firms on the annual ranking has declined. At one point, EW’s annual listing of the top distributors included 250 companies. However, by 2023, the number of firms included fell to 150 distributors. EW reports that, in light of the fact that the electrical distribution industry is in “one of the more acquisitive cycles the industry has ever seen,” the ranking has been downsized once again in 2024, this time to 100 companies.
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