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Hughes Supply buys Chad Supply

March 1, 2003
Hughes Supply, Inc., Orlando, Fla., has had huge success working the construction side of the multi-unit residential market, but the company never found

Hughes Supply, Inc., Orlando, Fla., has had huge success working the construction side of the multi-unit residential market, but the company never found a way to build a presence in supplying the multi-family maintenance and repair market, said David Hughes, chief executive officer. To fill that gap, Hughes last month bought Chad Supply, Inc., Thonotosassa, Fla., a company that has grown to $60 million by specializing in supplying plumbing, electrical and other products to that multi-unit maintenance market.

Terms of the transaction were not reported.

"This is a new area of opportunity for us," said Hughes. "We want to expand on that idea (of multi-unit maintenance business), whether through adding that expertise to our locations or through additional Chad Supply operations." Besides its headquarters in the Tampa area, Chad Supply has branches in other Florida locations, as well as in Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio.

The 24-year-old company sells through a 70-person direct sales force, direct advertising and its Maintenance Catalog, which Hughes plans to keep growing. Jim and David Chadwell will continue to manage and direct Chad Supply's operations.

About the Author

Doug Chandler | Senior Staff Writer

Doug has been reporting and writing on the electrical industry for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing since 1992 and still finds the industry’s evolution and the characters who inhabit its companies endlessly fascinating. That was true even before e-commerce, LED lighting and distributed generation began to disrupt so many of the electrical industry’s traditional practices.

Doug earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas after spending a few years in KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism, then deciding he absolutely did not want to be a journalist. In the company of his wife, two kids, two dogs and two cats, he spends a lot of time in the garden and the kitchen – growing food, cooking, brewing beer – and helping to run the family coffee shop.

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