Company Overview and History

Würth Baer Supply Company is one of the nation's leading specialty wholesale distributors to the woodworking industry, offering an extensive inventory of decorative and functional hardware and fittings, tools, shop supplies, surfacing materials, and board and panel products.

Company Profile

Over 25,000 residential and commercial customers served, including cabinetmakers, countertop fabricators, kitchen and bath stores, and furniture and closet manufacturers.
Over 50 years of business growth, including both product line and geographic expansion.
20 branch locations throughout the Midwest, New England, and North and East Central U.S.
Over 400 employees, including over 100 in the outside sales force.
A member of the Würth Group of Germany, the world's largest fastener distributor, with over 400 companies in 85 countries.
Over 50,000 SKU's in our inventory, including over 19,000 hardware items and over 30,000 surfacing items.
Over 300 vendors represented.

Customer Commitments

We recognize that the achievement of our mission will require our continued commitment to excellence in all aspects of our service to customers – before, during, and after the sale. Therefore, in keeping with this commitment, we pledge to:

Provide the best value to our customers through a combination of product availability, service and price.
Handle all customer inquiries and concerns with courtesy, respect, professionalism and a high sense of urgency.
Maintain strong, effective partnerships with our vendors, and inventory their products in sufficient breadth and depth to meet projected customer demand.
Carefully plan and execute all phases of our procurement, warehousing, order processing and distribution operations to maximize their accuracy, speed and efficiency.
Continuously pursue process improvements, technological innovations and value-added service opportunities.

Würth Baer Supply Company History

Würth Baer Supply Company was founded in 1950 by the late Herbert Baer and his late wife, Helma, who began the business in the living room of their one-bedroom apartment in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Herbert's late brother, Hans, joined them in the business in 1953. During that year, the "warehouse" moved out of the apartment into a 2,000 square foot section in the rear of a customer's shop. In 1958, the Company combined the office and warehouse operations into a larger facility in Skokie, Illinois. Following four subsequent facility moves during the next 24 years, Würth Baer Supply finally settled into its current 123,000 square foot state-of-the-art corporate office and distribution facility in Vernon Hills, Illinois in 1988. A combination of acquisitions and start-ups in the mid-1990's and beyond resulted in significant geographic and product line expansion, combining Würth Baer's national strength in hardware with the regional market strength, and board and panel product expertise, of the acquired companies:

January 1993 – Acquired Clouser Sales, of Montgomery and Cohoes, New York, and added a satellite branch in Connecticut in September; also entered into the surfacing materials product business.
January 1996 – Acquired Custom Distributors, Inc. (CDI) of Troy, Michigan.
September 1997 – Acquired a surfacing, board and panel products distributor in Columbus, Ohio, and added satellite facilities in the Cleveland and Cincinnati areas.
January 1998 – Acquired Anchor Sales/Pyramid Products, with facilities in the St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri markets, and Upstate Plywood of Syracuse, New York.
March 1999 – Added a branch location in metropolitan Buffalo, which became the upstate New York region's hardware inventory hub.
September 1999 – Acquired K. B. Laminate Supply, with facilities in Providence, Rhode Island, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine.
June 2007 – Acquired Chandler's Plywood Products/Cabinet Supplier, Inc. which expanded Würth Baer Supply Company's footprint throughout Kentucky, Southern Ohio, and West Virginia.
March 2010 – Acquired Roland and Roland, Inc. expanding our reach into Eastern Pennsylvania including the Philadelphia metro area and into the state of New Jersey.
2018 – Acquired Akins Machinery (Opens in new window) expanding our large machinery business area. Akins' experience and knowledge in large machinery increases our ability to provide more high quality machinery to more people.
July 2019 – Gannomat granted Würth Baer Supply Company / Akins Machinery the exclusive importer and distributor rights for specific Gannomat machinery in the United States market. Visit Gannomat-Akins.com (Opens in new window) for more information.
August 2021 – Acquired Hermance Machine Company (Opens in new window) with a facility in Williamsport, Pennsylvania expanding our Machinery division.

Würth Group

Würth Baer Supply Company was acquired in January 1997 by the Würth Group (Opens in new window) of Germany, a multi-national distributor of fasteners, fittings and a wide variety of industrial products. Würth is the world's largest fastener distributor, with over 400 member companies in 85 countries on five continents. Although Würth had a presence in the U.S. via their automotive after-market and fastener companies, the acquisition of Baer Supply and another similar company in California marked Würth's entry into the U.S. woodworking industry. Our alignment with a major global company such as Würth gives us all the more opportunity to continue to expand our products, markets, and customer base. It also allows us to pursue more options relative to the acquisition of improved technology and product sourcing, which ultimately enables us to serve our customers better.

As we look to the future, we do so with a strong appreciation for the critical role our customers, vendors and employees have played throughout our history. They are truly the cornerstones of our success, and we remain committed to serving them well in the years ahead.

COMPLIANCE@WÜRTH

Mutual trust, reliability, honesty and straightforwardness, both inside and outside the company, are the fundamental principles deeply ingrained in the Würth Group's corporate culture.

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