Fastenal Co.’s digital sales accounted for 57% of total sales for the third quarter, up from just under 50% a year ago, president and CEO Dan Florness said today. That includes sales via internet-connected vending machines and Fastenal.com.
Dan Florness, president and CEO, Fastenal Co.
He added that the industrial and construction products distributor is eyeing a larger digital share of total sales by the end of this year. Florness said he expects the growth trend to continue over the long term.
“Our challenge … is targeting 60% sometime before we exit this year,” Florness said. “And our long-term expectation is at that 85% we talked about in the past that we believe will be part of our digital footprint.”
Understanding Fastenal digital sales
Fastenal defines its digital footprint as the combined total of sales processed through ecommerce and Fastenal Managed Inventory programs. Those include FastStock, FastBin, and FastVend vending machines, which use digital technology to record transactions and reorder stock.
The company includes under ecommerce sales transactions on Fastenal.com. It also includes those through EDI and other types of technical integrations between Fastenal and its customers. Ecommerce transactions grew 41.3% in the quarter to $452.25 million, or 24.5% of total sales.
Overall, digital sales along with an increase on Fastenal’s onsite inventory-management services at customer locations helped to hit record sales figures.
“Here in the month of September, we broke $30 million in sales per day for the first time in our history,” Florness said on the earnings call.
Fastenal added in its Q3 press release: “We believe our opportunity to grow our business will be enhanced through the continued development and expansion of our digital capabilities.”
Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports. Here’s last quarter’s Fastenal Co. report.
Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
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