VP Supply: 50 Years of Putting People First
AD Member, VP Supply Corp, is celebrating its 50th year of operation in 2015. The wholesale supplier of plumbing, HVAC, kitchen, bath and renewable energy products has grown to 15 branches and nine showrooms across upstate New York and northwest Pennsylvania during its five decades in business. The organization credits this growth, even during turbulent market conditions, to continuously empowering local staff within a people-first environment.
“We’re committed to a culture of allowing our employees to make their own decisions, to thrive in their world, and to run their own businesses,” says president Gary Curwin. “We talk a lot about the roots of my dad and his business partner. They really taught us to build this business with customers and not just with orders, to build it one customer at a time.”
Curwin’s father Elliot and partner Marv Miller purchased VP Supply from its original owners and assumed operation on January 6, 1965. The Rochester, NY, company developed an 80,000 square-foot warehouse and office campus in 1987 and completed its first branch acquisitions in 1994. Gary Curwin, along with brother and secretary/treasurer Louis Curwin and vice president Gary Perkins, purchased the company from Mr. Curwin and Mr. Miller in 1997. VP Supply’s most recent acquisitions, Greater Binghamton’s Tri-Bro Kitchen & Bath Supply and Auburn’s United Fasteners, were completed in January of this year.
“Go to our counters on any given day, and watch the relationships between our customers and our staff,” says Louis Curwin, noting how VP Supply’s growth galvanized its people-first orientation and placed a sharper focus on human connections. “Those relationships came from years of nurturing.” Curwin also describes how this philosophy tracks all the way up to the organization’s senior management. “To this day, customers that have been doing business with us for 30 to 40 years will drop by our office to say ‘hi.’ In many ways it’s still a family business.”
VP Supply has taken on the important challenge of integrating disparate locations into a unified family of branches and showrooms during its many years of operation. According to Gary Perkins, “When we add a company to our family of locations, we keep in place the elements that helped get that business to its position of success. We then enhance those things by providing extensive support in ways that are relevant to that location’s unique needs.” Sharing employees’ enthusiasm toward the success of each branch, Perkins states, “Everybody wants to see the other branches grow. We’re all together.”
VP Supply Corp is a Rochester, New York based company that provides wholesale plumbing, HVAC, kitchen, bath and renewable energy products to both contractors and a retail audience. The organization employees 320 people at 15 branches and 9 showrooms across upstate New York and northwest Pennsylvania. Since 1965, VP Supply has consistently offered its customers quality products and excellent customer service. For more information on VP Supply Corp, please call 585-272-0110 or visit www.vpsupply.com.