Nils Olas Nelson 9/11/1844 - 10/5/1922

OUR HISTORY

From Yesterday ....

In 1875, Nils Olas Nelson founded the N.O. Nelson Mfg. Co. in St. Louis, Missouri. The company manufactured and distributed plumbing supplies of all kinds, including faucets, water closets, water heaters, valves and fire hydrants. Nelson was a visionary who cared about his employees. He established a "utopian community" in Southern Illinois that he called LeClaire, where his employees could live affordably in close proximity to the factory. Like its competitors of they day, AmStan and Crane, N.O. Nelson Company came to realize that it could not effectively be both a manufacturer and a distributor. But unlike the others, N.O. Nelson decided to concentrate its efforts on distribution rather than manufacturing.

By December 1954, N.O. Nelson, or NONCO as it was known, had a net worth of about $6,825,046, with 22 branches, 20 regional sales offices, and 450 employees in 15 states. Less than a year later, Mr. Sydney Albert and his Bellanca Aircraft Corporation acquired 97 percent of the NONCO shares of stock for $4,860,000. One year later, because of the questionable financial activities of Mr. Albert's group, N.O. Nelson was forced to file a voluntary Chapter XI Bankruptcy petition. In June of 1957, Glenn Seydel, bought the company's assets for $700,000 from the St. Louis bankruptcy trustee. The company was discharged from bankruptcy six months later.

Opportunity, disguised as tragedy, presented itself on Friday, March 21, 1958, when the Pueblo, Colorado branch of N.O. Nelson suffered a serious fire. Nelson's management decided it would be too much trouble to rebuild, so they discharged the employees and offered to sell the burned inventory for its book value.

Primus Founders

Meanwhile, a company called Primus Inc. had been founded two years earlier by a group of friends and entrepreneurs in Darien, Connecticut, led by Dick Schiewetz, Robert Kuhns and Hastings Baker. Primus found out about the Pueblo fire and stepped in to help.

Kuhns, whose family owned a foundry in Dayton, Ohio that produced malleable iron pipe fittings, flew to Pueblo to offer Primus's help. Three N.O. Nelson employees offered to mortgage their homes and invest all the money they could borrow if Primus would help them reopen the business. By 8 a.m. the following Monday, March 24, 1958, the new N.O. Nelson Co. of Colorado had been formed, a warehouse leased, a profit-sharing plan established, and the employees were calling on customers. And so the present-day Winnelson Companies were born.

Primus kept majority control of the Pueblo company, but the local employees received all the benefits of their partial ownership, a core philosophy still in effect today. This story is told because the pattern, with variations, has been used over and over again with success.

... To Today

WIN Acquires NOLAND CO

In May 2005, WinWholesale acquired Newport News, VA based Noland Co. (see press release. acrobat pdf file.. opens in new window.) .

In 1915, Lloyd U. “Casey” Noland, a young American orphan with a fourth-grade education, started a plumbing contracting business in Newport News, Va., with a partner and a $10,000 investment.

America was busy preparing for the first World War, and with the nearest wholesaler two days away, Casey stockpiled the plumbing supplies he calculated he would need in the weeks ahead.

From the start, other contractors who ran short of material began buying from him, leading Casey to open his first supply house. Newport News Plumbing and Mill Supply Co., as it was named, expanded quickly, opening supply houses in Roanoke, Va., Goldsboro and Winston-Salem, N.C. In 1922, the businesses were consolidated under the Noland Company banner.

Sixteen years later, an electrical department was added to what was up until then a plumbing and industrial supplies business. Refrigeration supplies (later evolving into HVAC equipment and supplies) were added in 1940.

Upon Casey’s death in 1952, his son Lloyd U. Noland, Jr. took the helm, growing the business over the next 35 years from 25 to 101 branches, with annual sales reaching $426.5 million.

In 1987, Noland, Jr. retired as chairman and CEO to become head of Noland Properties, Inc., the Company’s newly created property management subsidiary. He turned the reigns of Noland Company over to the third generation, Lloyd U. Noland, III, who began a years-long process of re-engineering the organization to ensure its ability to meet customers’ needs and prosper in the 21 st century.

With annual sales approaching $600 million, the Company was acquired in 2005 by WinWholesale and now operates as a wholly owned WinWholesale subsidiary.

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