When you’re a contractor, many things keep you awake at night — but the biggest worries often center on budget and labor-hours overruns. Your ability to stick to your projected labor cost can make or break your job. The last thing you want is workers standing around a job site, waiting for materials.
The Macomb Group knows that. And in pursuit of our mission to make sure customers get all the materials they need, when and where they need them, we’re continuously expanding our presence in key marketplaces.
By adding Macomb branches in more locations, we can save you lead time by providing shorter and even same-day availability from our huge inventory. Saving time saves you money and helps you control those labor costs.
Expansions help customers
Most recently, Macomb has added new locations through two Ohio acquisitions — HD Baker Sales in Cleveland, and Gateway Supplies in Sidney — plus a brand-new counter facility in Middletown, Ohio.
HD Baker is a well-established pipe, valves, and fittings (PVF) supplier that’s particularly strong in the fire protection industry. The acquisition will greatly expand the inventory of HD Baker — to be known going forward as Macomb Cleveland — enabling Macomb to serve all industries from a prime location.
“From a supplier standpoint, they’ve got the best geographic location you could get inside the city of Cleveland,” says Dennis Roberts, General Manager NorthEast Operations for The Macomb Group. “It’s extremely accessible for the customer base. Of any supplier in the Cleveland area, they’re the easiest to get to. That was important to us,” he says.
Dennis explains how the new location will facilitate faster deliveries to Macomb customers in the area. “Right now, we’ve got a strong customer base in Cleveland — we’ve been doing business with them for a long time. But logistically it has been something of a challenge when they need something immediately. This acquisition will give us the ability to get them their material quickly.”
Macomb Cleveland
The acquisition is a good fit for The Macomb Group, too, as it complements the Macomb culture of knowledgeable, customer-dedicated service.
“We are extremely impressed with the quality, workmanship, and knowledge of their existing staff,” Dennis says, “and we’re excited to be able to add to it. We will have a huge range of SKUs available to service our customer base, so they should always have anything they need in a hurry or in a service or emergency situation.”
HD Baker also adds an exceptional fabrication facility, which offers the versatility of a job shop but can also scale up to the level of a production facility. The facility’s capabilities include both cut and roll grooving through 24-inch pipe and threading up to 12 inches.
To take full advantage of its new Cleveland location, Macomb needs to boost logistics so it can quickly fulfill customer orders from the branch. That’s why Macomb will be adding trucks to the Cleveland fleet.
“We recognize that delivery and getting product immediately is a huge deal to these customers, and that their biggest risk is labor hours,” says Dennis. “This should help us help them improve their projected man-hours.”
Furthermore, with expansion and additional capabilities, Macomb expects to add employees and contribute to the growth of HD Baker — and the community.
Dayton area growth
Meanwhile, expansion in the Dayton, Ohio, area has seen Macomb’s bustling business split into two separate units to the north and south of the city, which serve the entire industrial corridor of this busy metro region.
To the north, the acquisition of PVF supplier Gateway Supplies not only strengthens customer accessibility but also improves Macomb’s ability to bid for government projects through the General Services Administration (GSA).
“A lot of what Gateway has historically gone after are government contracts, government outlets for PVF business,” explains Scott Henegar of The Macomb Group’s Midland Division. “This is something that Macomb is capable of doing and has always been desirous of doing. We have our GSA number which provides us with an avenue to pursue work through government entities, but we have yet to fully capitalize on it.”
Gateway has specialists who have experience in dealing with government agencies — quoting, ordering, shipping, labeling, documentation, and the like, all of which require special processes and formats. “They’ve cracked the puzzle of dealing with the government. Pairing that knowledge with Macomb’s breadth of product, services, and infrastructure provides an opportunity,” Scott says.
In turn, Macomb will add the power of large inventory to the equation, strengthening Gateway’s ability to more readily service and expand its customer base.
At the same time, Macomb wanted to improve its service to customers in the heart of the industrial corridor south of Dayton. The solution is a new facility in Middletown with inventory specifically tailored to local needs, serving same-day and will-call orders.
“We’re providing the convenience of local inventory to a consolidated base of large industrial customers in and around Middletown, OH,” says Scott. “We did something like this in Carrollton, Kentucky, where we have a similar location that opened last year. We put in our initial inventory offering based on the best of our knowledge of what we thought the market might want. But we left a lot of room there for the market to guide us.”
Letting the market and our customers guide us is key to all of The Macomb Group’s expansion activity and speedy service.
What do you need today? With Macomb, you know you’ll get it! Contact us by email at[email protected] or by phone at 888-756-4110.
