BC Industrial Supply, based in Jacksonville, FL, equips the East Coast with industrial and construction supplies through multiple locations in South Carolina, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. Their growth over the last several years has been strategic and thoughtfully data driven, allowing them to expand their footprint and serve more customers who seek out the expertise and service they provide.
NetPlus spoke with Vice President of Sales & Operations Curtis Harrison to learn more about how the BC Industrial team has been committed to working on their business, not just in it.
Q&A with Weston Stringer of B&R Industrial Supply
NETPLUS: How do you know when it’s time to reevaluate the way you’re going about something in your business and when to
prioritize organizational change?
BC INDUSTRIAL: I’m data driven. My team closely monitors ROI not only for our business as a whole, but broken down to the department, project, and individual level. Utilizing a great ERP system with very accessible reports and metrics is a game changer. I attribute a large amount of our employee decision making and organizational direction to the data we can analyze now after switching to NetSuite by Oracle (a NetPlus business service provider). After some initial implementation growing pains, we have good, reliable data we can use to drive growth.
Surveys are another factor in knowing when change is needed. We have trusted, long-term relationships with vendors and customers; this is invaluable to decision-making. Hearing what’s going on in their markets and listening to what they’re forecasting for the short and long term can very much impact how we approach change.
NETPLUS: What are a few areas where you’ve made an effort to work on your business over the last few years? What made you prioritize those areas in particular?
BC INDUSTRIAL: Marketing, e-commerce, and branch growth have been our priorities in recent years.
Marketing has been essential. Five years ago, we had a black and white catalog with no pictures and no part numbers — that was our go-to-market roll out. Now we’ve invested in our own internal marketing department with the ability and hardware to print 100-page full-colored catalogs on demand in-house. We can create line cards, business cards, trifolds, and the best part of it all is: we’re the print shop, so all layout and design can be done same day and customized for even a single customer.
Our Marketing & Sales Initiative, MSI, is a newer concept to our company with an old-school feeling. It’s a new strategy consisting of three levels:
Level 1: Newer hires, placed in a cubicle workstation, are tasked with research, cold calls for our outside team, and marketing blitz campaigns.
Level 2: Those employees, now with a little more experience, are building orders for the outside team while simultaneously developing their own accounts.
Level 3: Eventually, those team members are given an office and solely dedicated to their own customer base, building business off of leads generated by the level 1 team.
E-commerce is critical to our future as outside salespeople become harder to acquire. We’ve dedicated an internal team to data scrubbing and platform setup, with an expected launch of August 2026. We will initially be B2B with a 3-year plan for going direct to the public.
Branch growth is another avenue we focus on. Using data and heat mapping, we’re able to identify exactly where concentrations of customers across the nation are located as well as concentrations where a distribution point could flourish if one was opened. We’ve opened our New Jersey and New Hampshire branches based on this information, with more to follow.
NETPLUS: How do you include your team in identifying areas of potential growth and finding the right solutions?
BC INDUSTRIAL: I consider any business to be better served by building a team. I have created roles for COO, CFO, HR Manager, National Sales Manager, and National Warehousing Manager. These leaders all manage their particular departments (staffing, business, costs) and report to me in a weekly meeting. We also review sales data and customer projections to determine where we need attention and what has the highest potential for success. Our IT Manager attends these meetings, as well, so we can utilize whatever technology we can to create efficiencies in these opportunities.
NETPLUS: How do you get team buy-in when you have an ambitious goal ahead, and how do you support them through the transition to a new strategy or process?
BC INDUSTRIAL: Communication and clear goals are our model for new strategies. Our executive team discusses an opportunity then collaboratively creates a step-by-step plan along with a prospective budget and Gantt chart to measure milestones. A leader is chosen to head up the project, and they are tasked with selecting a team. We measure results based on performance versus the timeline and budget, and team members are rewarded for success. When we roll out a new initiative, it’s not hard to see why people fall in line; they feel included and see rewards at the end.
Being so data focused, we can clearly see impacts on revenue, costs, and labor almost immediately. Of course, we have and will make adjustments to plans based on the ongoing results. Timelines and communication are clearly important, but a strong leader for the project, with a clearly defined goal is most important.
NETPLUS: Are there any NetPlus tools, resources, or connections that empower you to more effectively work on your business?
BC INDUSTRIAL: This year, our priority has been on developing our new staff, especially through NetPlus Academy. We use the on-demand BlueVolt training and any remote or virtual trainings available to educate our MSI level 1 and 2 employees.
Our more seasoned employees benefit from the opportunities to attend the NetPlus Annual Meeting, as well as vendor training offered. Our purchasing team and I regularly review our NetPlus Portal to monitor new vendors and opportunities as well as updates to our NetPlus Perks status level.
About a year ago, I had our internal IT Department create a flag on any vendors in our ERP that are NetPlus, this allows us to quickly identify NetPlus vendors, and also allows our ERP to quickly tabulate spend and missed opportunities with NetPlus suppliers.
NETPLUS: Are there any outside resources or partnerships that support the way you work on your business?
BC INDUSTRIAL: I like to utilize anything that brings value to our organization, but a few come to mind that are outside NetPlus.
Kimberlite Partners is a company that gives us individualized service required to customize NetSuite. They’ve been able to create almost anything we can dream up, bringing efficiency and cost savings.
We also use Mapline, a company that allows us to track sales, territories, and drill down into where customers do business. We use it to analyze data and make confident decisions.
Finally, I’d mention Industrial Info Resources. This company allows us to search by location for the kind of customer we want to sell to. There are huge avenues for data collection here, and they are very customizable.
NETPLUS: What’s the next area you’re looking to improve for BC Industrial?
BC INDUSTRIAL: We are currently focused on our e-commerce platform launch, but we have other lofty goals as well. We’ll be launching our fifth and sixth branches in the near future. We’re currently surveying additional locations in the Northeast to better service our growing energy footprint, as well as the Midwest as our business is reaching customers in states outside our normal same-day or next-day service area.
Acquisition is also an avenue I’m exploring. We may find that our current infrastructure could handle buying some smaller competitors. That could enable us to add product lines as well as experienced help to our brand.
NETPLUS: Do you have any advice for a distributor who feels too busy managing day-to-day operations to focus on long-term transformation?
BC INDUSTRIAL: In my opinion, the key is to build a team and to trust them. It’s hard to let go of parts of your business. When the owner of BC Industrial, Brian Crossley, decided to fully retire 3 years ago, I saw that it was difficult for him to trust the day-to-day operations of a business he grew from the start 30 years before to anyone. I would not have had successes without building a team of experienced and trusted people around me. It all starts with a need — and that inevitably leads to costs for labor and material, with a result of growth in sales.
My advice would be to find a partner or look inside your own organization for someone who shares your vision and adds value without trying to change any of your core beliefs. Task that person with things that you can measure and give them an opportunity to take something off your plate. Accountability is key, you can’t let them run wild, but most people want to show you results. My focus is on the 50,000-foot view and sharing that with my team. I can’t make things happen without people that buy into the vision and create their part of the whole plan. One person can make all the difference.
