Frankfort, NY-based Northern Safety, a business-to-business marketer of industrial tools and safety supplies, has purchased Kingsport, TN-based industrial supplier Safeco. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Safeco, which does not mail a catalog, will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Safety under the name Northern Safeco. The unit now employs nearly 90 people in Houston, Chicago, Tampa, Greenville, SC; Charleston, SC; and Nashville, TN, and supplies safety and industrial products to more than 5,000 customers nationwide.
The company will operate as separate entities until 2007, when Northern Safeco’s seven offices and distribution centers will become additional locations for Northern Safety.
The acquisition not only provides the $125 million Northern Safety with a direct sales force–which the marketer did not have–but gives it additional distribution centers, and a bolstered presence in the South, says CEO Salvatore Longo. “We’ll be opening a new 160,000 sq.-ft. warehouse facility and distribution center in Church Hill, TN, within the next 60 to 90 days,” he says. The new facility will house more than 15,000 products and “will allow us to ship to two thirds of our U.S. business-to-business customers in two days or less.”