Any time I see a distributor that’s frequently making acquisitions, I can’t help but wonder how its leadership team is managing all of the moving pieces involved. 

Just to make one acquisition in a calendar year is a big event. The level of communication, strategic planning and integration coordination is immense to ensure a smooth process. We at MDM have witnessed this first-hand so far in 2024 with our mid-January acquisition by the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.

Green Mountain Electric Supply — a distributor with 34 locations across the U.S. northeast — has made 11 bolt-on deals since the start of 2021, making it a company I was compelled to learn more about.

So, I invited Green Mountain’s Vice President of Operations, Luc Choquette, and VP of Sales, Jeremy Henderson, onto the MDM Podcast to get the inside scoop.

Those two have been with the company for 16 and 17 years, respectively. When they first joined Green Mountain, it had about 40 employees. Today, its headcount is about 450. So, Choquette and Henderson have seen the vast majority of GMES’ rapid expansion, which includes 18 acquisitions since 2001 when the company began aggressively growing.

So, how has GMES navigated all of the moving parts that come with frequent acquisitions? Choquette and Henderson both were quick to point to the character of the company’s staff

“We have a really hardworking team, from our accounting team, purchasing team, inventory team, IT team, branch efficiency team, to all the local people in that market that come and help for the weekend,” Choquette gleamed during the podcast. “It’s something to be really proud of when you walk away on Friday and say, ‘Man, we just accomplished all of that this week.’ It’s pretty amazing.”

“I tell people all the time, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know.’ We’ve grown up in only this business. We haven’t worked for a bunch of other companies,” Henderson added. “I think our focus is really creating the company culture and the direction that we want to go in, and getting buy-in from the team to help us get there.”

Our discussion covered everything from GMES’ recent history, to its digital transformation, to how the company closed for the afternoon on April so that its entire staff could watch the total solar eclipse that a handful of its locations were in the line of totality for.

But what struck me the most during our conversation was how Choquette and Henderson both alluded that Green Mountain may never ‘get there’ in terms of a desired final destination for the company’s growth and evolution. And that’s intentional.

“People always ask, ‘What’s the end goal?’ We don’t look at the end goal. We look at the process,” Henderson told me. “And I think if there was an end goal to all this, we’d be completely distracted and we would not be where we are today. People — certainly in our industry with consolidation and different things happening — always wondered what the agendas are. We’re not thinking that way. We’re working through the process and we’re not focused on an end goal.”

Listen to the full podcast via the audio player above, and check out our full episode library at our podcast webpage here.