Beyond 'Big and Bulky'

The companies that supply America’s manufacturing sector are as diverse and varied as their customers; within the catch-all phrase “industrial distributor” are businesses focused on every conceivable industry niche and production step along the way — processing, maintenance, sanitation, automation and many, many more. 

For Global Industrial Company, the prevailing perception of its role in the distribution marketplace – even within the company itself – has typically been boiled down to two words: “big” and “bulky.”  The Long Island-based distributor’s most visible products tend to be those you wouldn’t be able to just throw in a shopping cart; its most recent trade show, for example, highlighted shelving, guardrails, floor scrubbers and shrink-wrapping robots, to name a few. 

The distributor’s new chief executive, however, believes that Global Industrial’s approach could stand to make more room for some smaller items, as well. Between taking over the helm of the company in February and her first trade show as CEO in September, Anesa Chaibi spent a great deal of time on the road talking to Global Industrial’s employees, vendors and customers. Those latter conversations, she told ID during an interview at the show in Florida, provided guidance about where the company should go. 

“I’ve asked on customer visits, ‘Why did you buy the shrink-wrap machine, but you didn’t buy the shrink wrap from us?’” Chaibi said. “‘Well, we didn’t know you sell it.’  We have an opportunity to better help educate and communicate what we do.”

Publicly Owned — and Family-Owned

Founded as a material handling firm in Queens in 1949, the company that would become Global Industrial gradually expanded into technology products and international markets in the following decades before, ultimately, reorganizing around its industrial equipment and parts business. Today, the company is a $1.3 billion distributor entrenched among ID’s Big 50 list — but it still flew under Chaibi’s radar.

Chaibi began her career at General Electric before shifting into the distribution sector, leading the facilities management division of HD Supply and serving as CEO of fellow Big 50 distributor Optimas Solutions. After spans leading refrigeration and HVAC provider CoolSys and as an advisor at private equity firm Warburg Pincus, she was serving as operating partner and chief transformation officer at another private equity firm, Coalesce Capital Management, when she was approached by a recruiter about the possibility of succeeding Barry Litwin at Global Industrial. Although she was not personally familiar with the company, her former colleagues at HD Supply most certainly were.

While Global has long been a publicly traded company, the family of original founders Michael and Paul Leeds continues to hold a large stake in the business — including Richard Leeds, the company’s longtime former CEO and its executive chairman, who had returned to serve as interim CEO during the search for a new chief executive.

Global Industrial CEO Anesa Chaibi addresses the company's 2025 Trade Show, Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Sept. 17, 2025.Global Industrial Company“What became very evident very quickly for me is that the company really, really cares about Global Industrial and wants nothing but to see the company go to the next level,” Chaibi said. “And that success, and that element of engagement, was actually quite refreshing.” She added that she was “blown away” by both the diversity and talent already in place in the company’s executive leadership.

“People were very smart, very capable, understood the business, and really were looking for someone to step into the leadership role — to help guide them to the next level.”

Adding to the ‘O’ in MRO

Although the company has numerous potential avenues for expansion, at this point, Chaibi said, that growth will likely stem from pursuing a deeper relationship between Global Industrial and its customers. “I think there’s some basic fundamentals that we can change, whether it’s our go-to-market approach, [or] the products and the assortment that we bring to market,” Chaibi said.

Global Industrial CompanyChaibi said that the company typically occupies the “O,” or operations, space within the MRO acronym, but that it also sells plenty of maintenance and repair supplies that could complement its historical strength — in short, by understanding that companies that buy a shrink-wrapping robot from Global Industrial will also, unavoidably, need shrink wrap.

“It’s learning, and doing a lot of active listening, to understand: what type of problems are they trying to solve?” Chaibi said of Global’s customers. “We’re known for our racking, we’re known for industrial equipment; what I’m trying to do is open the aperture to also expand the total addressable market we could pursue with those customers.”

She suggested that those efforts came up in her initial discussions with the company’s diverse array of customers, as well — none of whom, she noted, account for more than 2% of Global Industrial’s overall sales total. “What I’ve found is that they value what we provide to them,” Chaibi said. “I think they all believe that we could do more with them, and I think it’s just really aligning ourselves to be able to capture that greater share of wallet and further penetrate those accounts.”

In addition to finding the right balance to meet more customer needs, Chaibi said that she hopes to bring the company’s omni-channel approaches closer together – from inbound sales and e-commerce to outside sales through its 2023 acquisition of Indoff – as well as reinforce its strengths through its marketing team.

Reaching the Next Level

Global Industrial CompanyOverall, Chaibi stressed that the company wants to continue to be intentional as it pursues growth. Global Industrial added its newest distribution center – its fifth in the U.S. and seventh in North America – in 2019, and the 2023 deal to add Indoff represented its first announced M&A transaction since 2015. Although those could both be a “growth lever” in the future, she said that a greenfield expansion of its footprint would likely be “a little further down the road,” and that while the company’s leadership would “opportunistically” explore potential acquisitions – highlighting a strong balance sheet and no debt – “we’re not just going to go chase anything to grow.”

“It’s going to be very intentional and very aligned with what we’re trying to do strategically,” she said.

Global Industrial also isn’t simply a distributor for its supply partners, either: the company’s private-label lines – Global calls them “Exclusive Brands” – account for more than 40% of its overall sales and represent its fastest-growing sourcing channel. Chaibi, however, said that she doesn’t have a specific goal for those brands in mind; instead, she envisions an offering that will remain a mix of Exclusive Brand products and solutions from its suppliers — all providing more of what its customers really need.

“It’s been a good learning curve if you will,” Chaibi said of her first months on the job. “And the other thing that I’ve experienced is just a tremendous culture of people that are open to change and willing to help us figure out: how do we drive the company to the next level?”

This article originally appeared in the November/December issue of Industrial Distribution magazine. Sign up here to subscribe to ID’s Today in Industrial Distribution daily newsletter.