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Grainger is the plumbing of the physical economy: it buys gloves, motors, fasteners, safety gear and millions of other maintenance-and-repair (MRO) products from thousands of manufacturers and gets them to factories, hospitals and warehouses fast. Half the company is a high-touch US sales force; the other half is two online-first marketplaces — Zoro in the US and the majority-owned MonotaRO in Japan — that sell a near-endless catalogue with almost no salespeople.

A catalogue, not a factory

Grainger makes almost nothing itself. It buys gloves, motors, fasteners and millions of other MRO items from 5,000+ manufacturers like 3M, Honeywell and Milwaukee, stocks them in a national network, and gets them to a buyer's loading dock — often the next day. Its product is speed, breadth and reliability, not the items themselves.

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