SEARCH

MRO Medics

CEO Matt Seitz (left) and the company's co-founder/president, Shane Araujo, in the latter's office where an eclectic mural fits in with the company's colorful culture.

3BG cures customer pain ... and its causes.

By Kim Phelan

Selling products in the industrial MRO/PT business taught Shane Araujo as much about pain as it did about motors, chain, and sprockets. By 2010, at the age of 23, he’d seen enough customer frustration in a fragmented parts market to make him believe he could do distribution better.

Ambitiously, he teamed up with a partner, secured investors, and created what he calls a tech-enabled distribution company that doesn’t mind being perceived as a little weird and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Fifteen years later, what 3BG Supply (which stands for three bald guys) does take seriously is knowing their customer’s story, finding root causes to their problems, and going as far as it takes to make pain go away.

Araujo isn’t exaggerating when he says that way of thinking not only sets people up for success in their jobs, it often gives them back their life – which might mean freeing up the time of an overwhelmed purchaser or stressed-out maintenance person so they can pick up their kid from school, or it might mean helping the customer meet their benchmarks, make more money, and buy a boat to take their family fishing in the summer. Success looks a little different for everyone, but Araujo says 3BG is in the business of taking a few hats off the head of their customer and helping the person on the other end of the keyboard thrive in meaningful ways.

MAKING MONEY GROW ON TREES

The trouble is, he says, the problem the customer brings you is often not the real problem, which is why every inquiry and purchase at 3BG will receive a human touch with a helping hand.

“It’s like people who may think they need pain medicine because their lower back hurts,” he said. “And so, we initially thought, ‘Alright, let’s go make sure we can find all of the pain meds that are available and figure out how we can prescribe that to them. That’s what we set out to do initially, and now what we’ve learned is that if we have a conversation with these people, the pain meds aren’t what’s going to necessarily help them, even though that’s what they’re asking for. What they actually may need is to learn how to strengthen their back. Even though we sell the pain drugs, those products they need, we’re more focused on helping our customers solve the underlying problem.

“The one thing I can tell you from being on this earth for 38 years is that if you provide value for somebody else, you can practically make money grow on trees because you have built trust with them,” Araujo added. “Even if the profit margin isn’t great on a particular product, we don’t let that become a driving force on whether we sell something or not. You’ve got to get the customer what they need so that they can live and fight another day.”

A REAL DISTRIBUTOR?

Can a company be a distributor if they can’t drive over to see their customer face to face and maybe deliver that emergency widget once in a while? Araujo says anyone who thinks you can’t have a close relationship remotely has probably never heard of Tinder. Even one of their more traditional sales reps came to his own conclusion after a few months with 3BG that driving down the road to see his customer was a rather superfluous activity. Nevertheless, face-to-face has a place: 3BG complements its online and phone outreach with a customer success department that focuses on in-person customer visits – to some customers.

Underpinned with well-designed paid-search infrastructure built from the start to bring high-volume, good-quality traffic, the company is also girded with a robust e-commerce site offering over 350,000 SKUs – and another two times that volume offline. They have 25,000 customers in their data base and harness the inventories of 4,000 supplier warehouses to fit their drop-ship business model. The company is receptive to adding products that have potential to provide value to their customers – which in turn means value to sales employees in their quest to be trusted problem-solvers. But the company is clear on two things: They’re not chasing product for the sake of more product, and they represent brands well, never selling on price.

3BG Supply puts equal value on its technical knowledge and liberally shares education with the customers who come to them, both through online technical blogs as well as team members who know their stuff. The company is staffed with experienced industry experts as well as young account reps who are continuously trained every week – they’re also digitally coached during customer calls. Sophisticated software “listens in” on conversations and serves up relevant information to the rep, turning even a product novice into a valuable resource.

While the founders originally intended to “skate where the puck was going” and build an advanced digital distribution tool to serve customers, 3BG has morphed into a more service-oriented distributor.

In 2023, the company bought Controls and Electric Motor Company (CEMCO) in Joplin, Missouri, and instantly added repair service and more to its extensive repertoire of products and problem-solving abilities.

“It gave us access to a motor repair shop and service team with the capabilities of working on pumps, motors, and air compressors; we also have a panel fabrication shop,” said Matt Seitz, who joined 3BG five years ago as CFO and then became CEO when one of the original three partners left the company. “That’s on top of all our backend engineering, support, sourcing, and product knowledge that are the backbone of 3BG.”

GROWTH STRATEGY

Acquisition is still on the front burner as a 3BG growth strategy. They’ve come to recognize that while virtual has its virtues, physical locations enable the tangible services they want to provide.

“I hated that idea forever, and then I had to get very comfortable with it when we made our last acquisition,” said Araujo. “I’m totally down for it now, because it serves the correct purpose. Brick and mortar is going to have to be a part of our future growth.”

Seitz added, “Luckily, I’m really good at inventory management and operations and ensuring we have the right controls in place.”

And so, the hunt is afoot for their next acquisition. “It’s a matter of finding the right partner,” he said. “That’s not something that usually just falls at your front door. We’ve been through a couple of processes and have not pulled the trigger on them for a variety of reasons, so we’ll continue to dig in and find that right partner that wants to join 3BG.”

Backed by both private equity and individual investors, the roughly $30-million distributor expects to achieve 15% to 20% growth in 2025.

Management already understands the value of analog in a digital world: 3BG is headquartered in a hip urban office space in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana, where all but a handful of employees come to work for the majority of their week. The result is a fun, close-knit team where knowledge-sharing and camaraderie are the norm. “That tight culture doesn’t just make work fun—it’s what allows us to move fast, communicate clearly, and act like a true extension of the customer’s team.”

Seitz says one of the company’s biggest opportunities lies amid the tariff terrain. Having grown 70% in both 2020 and 2021, the company doesn’t fear uncertainty, but rather tends to embrace it. Getting product to the customer fast or helping them redesign it, in some cases, is their competitive edge regardless how the year plays out, according to Seitz “We’re cautiously optimistic,” he said.

The major challenge in front of the company is sizeable but surmountable. 3BG Supply pours heavily into the onboarding and thorough training of every new employee to bring them to the expected performance level. Because they’ve hired about 10 new sales reps over the last eight months, with more yet to come, the company knows it has a big job ahead.

“We have a lot of work to do to ensure that we are setting these folks up for success,” Seitz said. “We’re all very excited for that opportunity, because we’ve been able to get to hiring goals that we’ve been patiently waiting on.”

With a 99% fulfillment rate, 3BG Supply is doing something right. Araujo says if he was one of his competitors, he’d be wondering why customers are buying from 3BG. “If someone’s getting on our website and ordering from us, what the hell happened?” he said. “Why did none of those other huge companies get them what they needed? I’d be curious to know why the heck they ordered from 3BG in the first place.

“I stilI marvel at how many customers are coming to us,” Arajou continued . . . “but I just want to continue serving and helping as many people as we can, as often as we can, and I want to enjoy the time with the team while we do it.”

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of Industrial Supply magazine. Copyright 2025, Direct Business Media.

---

Post comment / Discuss story * Required Fields

Your name:

E-mail *:

Subject:

Comment *: