Sep 25, 2015 3 min read

Fairmont Supply, which long had a presence in Washington with a large warehouse and distribution center, is now a corporate resident here as well.

Fairmont, which until December was a subsidiary of Consol Energy Inc., was sold to Tenex Capital Management, a private equity firm.

As a result of the sale, the company vacated its headquarters building in Southpointe, and after a brief search for office space, decided to remodel 4,000 square feet of underused space on the second floor of the Jefferson Avenue warehouse and make its headquarters there. The move was completed a couple of weeks ago.

At the same time, it closed a separate oil and gas product distribution center on Henderson Avenue and incorporated those operations into the Jefferson Avenue site, which has traditionally served the mining industry.

On Friday, during an open house that included a vendor fair and Oktoberfest-style picnic, Rudi Strobl, Fairmont’s executive chairman, explained relocating the headquarters isn’t the only change for the company, which was founded in the early 1920s as a supplier to West Virginia’s coal mines.

The biggest change, according to Strobl and others who work in sales, marketing and operations, is Fairmont is now an across-the-board supplier to all types of industries, a one-stop shop that welcomes local companies and the public to visit its new store and showroom at 437 Jefferson Ave.

“We’re now fully integrated. It’s now a true industrial distribution company,” Strobl said, adding in addition to its traditional line of products for the coal and oil and gas sectors, it has the capability to serve virtually any type of industry.

During a brief tour of the facility, which has a total of 240,000 square feet under roof with a footprint of six acres, Joe Mariuzza, marketing manager, walked a reporter past neat rows of a dizzying array of products from safety equipment to electrical components and lubricants, even cases of bottled water. Another area specializes in making and repairing hydraulic hoses.

Mariuzza, who said Fairmont has operated from the Jefferson Avenue site for 80 years, said the company’s online site, www.fairmontsupply.com, carries 135,000 products.

Strobl said Fairmont is a “good-sized, mid-cap company” that does between $300 million and $400 million in annual sales.

In addition to the 100-plus people now working at the Washington site, Fairmont has a national presence, with 30 distribution centers around the U.S., strategically located near its customer bases. While he declined to provide exact numbers, he said Fairmont’s total employment is several hundred people.

What differentiates Fairmont from other industrial suppliers, Strobl said, is that it uses software to manage supply inventories for many of its large customers’ storerooms, enabling it to quickly replenish items before they become depleted.

The company also provides mobile trailers – storerooms on wheels – that it takes to remote oil and gas wellhead sites, where drillers want to complete work quickly without having to stop for resupply.

While he has spent the past nine months transitioning Fairmont from a subsidiary to a standalone company, creating everything from new human resources and payroll departments, Strobl said the next step is to build up its outside sales network around the country as it seeks more customers from a variety of industries.

“We’re looking for a lot of men and women for the sales force,” he said. “We have opportunities in industries outside of oil and gas and coal.”

“We have a strong sales team on the inside, but the field is where the action is in the future.

“We have a lot of work to do.”