ORS Nasco News
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Company News
ORS Nasco in hiring surge
When you pull up to ORS Nasco, the only indication that you are in the right place is a small sign at the street with the company name in three-inch letters.
There is no large signage. In fact, it's not immediately clear which door to enter. But when you walk inside, you begin to comprehend the scope of the business based at 9910 E. 42nd St., Suite 200.
ORS Nasco Inc.'s headquarters takes up 18,000 SF, the entire second floor, of the Pawnee building in the TechRidge Office Park at 41st Street and Mingo Road.
The firm is North America's largest "pure" wholesaler of industrial supplies, including welding, safety, electrical, oilfield and construction products, said Larry Davis, president.
The company operates 16 distribution centers located across the U.S., and offers 160,000 premium-branded products from 600 manufacturers, to distributors throughout North America and internationally.
Employing 450 system wide, with about 80 of those jobs in the Tulsa headquarters, and another 40 at its Muskogee distribution site, ORS Nasco is in a significant hiring phase, Davis said. The company is expanding its workforce across all levels of the organization by 13 percent - with most positions based in Tulsa.
With 30 opportunities available, ORS Nasco is seeking to fill customer care, finance, inside sales, IT, marketing / merchandising, operations/inventory and field sales positions.
A Google search turns up page after page of job opportunities for the firm.
Additional expansion is also planned with 28 more positions slated throughout the year, totaling 62 new opportunities for the year.
"We are a national player," said Davis. "Today we have 16 distribution centers, which has doubled since 2008. We will have 24 by mid year next year."
Davis attributes the growth to a strategic plan born out of the recent down cycle starting in 2009.
"It was a very tough year for us as it was," he said. "If you think about what happened with manufacturing, literally all of those markets just had a terrible year. But we all came together and said, 'Look, we are done letting the economy go up and down and decide our fate. We are going to build a plan, and we are going to focus on executing that plan, and we are going to build a culture that makes a high probability of success.'"
A key component of the culture the company has fostered is reflected in its mission statement: Enabling our partners to succeed.
"We will celebrate success, we will share in the success, but at the end of the day, we are running a race with no finish line," Davis said. "There is no number that is good enough. We are going to keep striving to be better on behalf of all of those constituents we are talking about."
"We have a great strategic plan. We feel confident in our capabilities to execute that plan, and it's delivered a lot of growth in the marketplace because of that."
In fact, annual sales for 2010 were up nearly 23 percent to $282 million from 2009.
Drawing on more than 50 years of wholesale experience, ORS Nasco was established in 2003 with the merger of Nasco - founded in 1959 - and Muskogee-based Oklahoma Rig & Supply - founded in 1968. Acquired by Fortune 500 company United Stationers in 2007, ORS Nasco maintains a leading share position throughout its core product categories within the $300+ billion industrial supplies market, the company said.
Operating as a "pure" wholesale organization, ORS Nasco sells exclusively to independent distributors and not end users. The company's product portfolio allows it to serve a wide range of distributors, diversified across geographies, products and end markets.
ORS Nasco's business model, while allowing the firm to build its name in the market, has meant that the company is not well known to the public, Davis said.
"I will be candid with you, we have been a quiet, sleepy company forever," he said. "We don't deal with the consumer, we deal with businesses, we enable businesses. That's what we do, so we have intentionally been quiet."
As a result, the firm is also not well known to potential employees.
"That is our biggest challenge. How do we continue to attract talent," he said. "We do a tremendous amount of promoting from within, but we also need fresh new talent that challenges our way of thinking."
The firm has decided it is time to get more involved in the community, Davis said.
"What we have decided, really in the last six months, is that its time for us to lead in the community. It's part of who we are," he said, noting the firm has been involved in troop support and the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, among other things. "So we joined the chamber of commerce, and we are going to be a more active participant in the community. It's time for us to step up and help lead the community through our values and who we are, not through words, but through action and demonstrating how we behave."