BlackHawk acquires Kendeco Tool Crib
BlackHawk Industrial Distribution announced the acquisition of Kendeco Tool Crib, a St. Cloud, Minn., industrial distributor serving the MRO marketplace.
Kendeco is the sixth acquisition of BlackHawk Industrial and expands BlackHawk's geographical footprint into the Central region of the U.S. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 1969, Kendeco is a distributor of cutting tools, abrasives, fluids and engineered product along with a wide variety of MRO supplies serving end user customers primarily in the markets of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
“We are excited to add the talented employees of Kendeco as part of our growing family of operating divisions within BlackHawk Industrial. Kendeco, led by Bob Miller, has a very long history of being a supplier of choice with strong customer and vendor relationships in its local marketplace. We believe that Kendeco will be further enhanced as part of Blackhawk Industrial as a result of additional operating scale, management resources and a broader product offering. We are also excited to share the combined resources of BlackHawk Industrial with the customer and vendor base of Kendeco,” said Bill Scheller, CEO of BlackHawk Industrial.
Scheller added that BlackHawk will continue to look for additional U.S. based industrial distributors to acquire. "Our goal is to add additional branches, new sales staff, and to further expand our customer service resources to deepen our penetration in the local markets,” Scheller said.
Bob Miller, former president and co-owner of Kendeco will remain with the company.
“The entire Kendeco staff is excited to become the newest member of the expanding BlackHawk Industrial family. We spent the past 16 months watching Bill Scheller build BlackHawk into a new dynamic distributor in the industrial marketplace. As I looked at the culture and leadership style that BlackHawk has built, we believe it matches the direction we have found successful at Kendeco," said Miller.
INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY MAGAZINE
The May/June issue of Industrial Supply magazine features an in-depth cover story about GHX Industrial. Plus, we're featuring articles by contributing writers Dr. Bharani Nagarathnam and Frank Hurtte, as well as interviews with numerous product and distribution industry experts.
