Graybar Electric Company
 |
|
| Private/Employee-Owned | |
| Industry | Distribution |
| Founded | 1869 |
| Founder | Elisha Gray and Enos M. Barton |
| Headquarters | Clayton, Missouri, U.S. |
|
Number of locations
|
more than 260 |
|
Key people
|
Kathleen Mazzarella, Chairman, President and CEO |
| Products | electrical, communications, and data networking |
| Revenue |
 $6.1 billion USD
|
|
Number of employees
|
8,300 |
| Website | www.graybar.com |
Graybar is an American employee-owned corporation, based in Clayton, Missouri. It conducts a wholesale distribution business for electrical, communications and data networking products, and is a provider of related supply-chain management and logistics services. It is included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations.
Founded in 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio, by Elisha Gray and Enos Barton, it was the origin of the Western Electric Company. On December 11, 1925, it was separately incorporated as Graybar Electric Company, Inc.
During the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, an entrepreneur named Enos Barton (who had served as a telegrapher during the war) worked for Western Union in Rochester, New York. During this period, Barton met George Shawk, the foreman of the company's Cleveland, Ohio shop. When that shop was closed down, Shawk bought some of the equipment and went into business for himself, making various kinds of electrical and other apparatus, including inventor's models. While on a trip to Rochester, he and Barton, who was then 26, agreed to go into partnership.
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Wikipedia