Who Owns Grainger?

William Wallace Grainger founded the company in Chicago in 1927 as a wholesaler of electric motors, incorporating it the following year. The early catalog, a printed list of motors and related equipment, evolved into the famous Grainger catalog, a fixture of American maintenance shops for most of the twentieth century and, for many customers, synonymous with industrial supply itself.

Expansion came steadily: a Kansas City branch in 1933, then a coast-to-coast network built over the postwar decades as American industry grew. Grainger went public in 1967. Under second-generation leader David Grainger, the company broadened its product lines from motors into the full MRO spectrum and entered Canada through the 1996 acquisition of Acklands.

The internet era split the business. Grainger moved its catalog online early, and grainger.com grew into one of the largest B2B e-commerce operations in the world. But leadership saw a different opportunity for small buyers: in 2009 it took a stake in Japanese online seller MonotaRO, and in 2011 it launched Zoro in the US as a separate, digital-only brand rather than watering down the flagship. Around the same period it bought Fabory in 2011 and Cromwell Group in the UK in 2015, European moves it later reversed, divesting Fabory in 2023 and exiting the UK market entirely in 2025.

Today roughly 80% of Grainger orders arrive digitally, yet the brand's core value remains unchanged: having the part a customer needs, available next day, backed by people who understand the application.