ABC Supply is the largest distributor of roofing materials in North America. More than a thousand locations. The company says it does $20.2 billion a year.
It started with three stores.
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And here is the detail that explains everything that came after. Ken and Diane Hendricks did not open those three stores. They bought them. In 1982, from a company called Bird & Sons.
Most businesses build first and get acquisitive later, usually once they run out of ideas. ABC Supply ran that order backwards. The very first thing it ever did was buy somebody else’s branches.
Forty-three years later it is still doing the same thing. Roughly a thousand locations later.