Post-Acquisition, Valin Enabled to 'Do What We Do Best'

Last year, electrical distribution giant Graybar announced that it would buy San Jose-based Valin Corporation in a bid to bolster Graybar's automation solutions. Since then, the big headlines haven't stopped, and Valin has announced several acquisitions of its own.

Industrial Distribution (ID) recently spoke with Anne Vranicic, President of Valin Corporation, to learn more about what we can expect from this dynamic distributor.

ID: What big opportunities do you see on the horizon for the business?

Anne Vranicic: Over the last couple of years, Valin’s focus has been on growth in certain markets: semiconductor, energy, health sciences and industrial.  Through our market research, we identified specific opportunities within our capabilities and product portfolios in which we created focused initiatives to align our resources to pursue capturing. Most of the opportunities we see today are coming from government spending within specific markets to bolster the United States competitiveness in advanced technologies, as well as the changing demographics as the baby boomers continue to age.

We see the semiconductor industry as a big opportunity for Valin. As more attention and investment is currently happening globally, we’re working with our key customers and supply chain to support it. As AI technology continues to develop, we see a greater demand for more processing power and additional data centers. Higher computing processing will require more demands on the need for energy. Along with the push for electrification and companies converting to cleaner fuel sources such as natural gas, we expect to see demand for energy increase, which will require investment in oil and gas and utilities. Although renewable power is the desired push to offset the increased demand, the reality is that renewables cannot handle industry’s base load power needs. This results in continued reliance on traditional power sources as we decide as a nation if we will choose to evolve our nuclear and hydrogen power capabilities.

Health sciences is another area of opportunity. The tail end of the baby boomer generation will be exiting the markets in 2028, and with them, many groups of skilled surgeons and medical technicians. Now, there is a big push toward automation and more advanced medical equipment. This is a big area of investment and R&D and all fits well with our automation portfolio.

With general industrial, there is plenty happening with infrastructure, from transportation to wastewater. There’s much that needs to be done in the US to modernize and keep the water and air clean.  Within the construction and infrastructure world, we’ll see continued investment in those areas. Many of the companies we’ve acquired throughout the years specialize in those areas. 

ID: As a 50-year-old distributor, tell us how Valin's business has evolved to meet the market.

Anne Vranicic: In 2007, Valin became a 100% employee-owned company. Ownership meant we all had skin in the game. We started looking at the business and how it was conducted.  Are we doing it most efficiently?  Are we evolving and meeting the customer needs?  Can we scale and grow this business in our current state? That was the launchpad into our digital transformation.  To scale, we had to digitize, taking a hard look at our business infrastructure.  What data did we have both internally and externally?  How do we make decisions faster? Can we give quicker answers to customers if we have the right technology in place? Do we have the right skill sets and are they aligned to our goals? Do we understand our customer?  Are we pricing correctly?  Are we communicating correctly?  Are we giving them what they need? Are we gaining market share? 

To scale and be competitive, we wanted to be a lean and agile company that could pivot when needed. To accomplish this, we took a digital first approach by taking the low value administrative work out of our staff’s hands, automating it, and then reinvesting in our employees through higher value work that brought them closer to the customer. 

ID: Tell us about Valin's acquisitive growth strategy and how recent acquisitions have helped support that.

Anne Vranicic: Valin is always looking to strengthen our capabilities and portfolios in our core markets to provide customers with the services and products they need. Recently, we acquired Dynamic Solutions to broaden our reach within the medical equipment industry. Through the acquisition of Ad Tech Seals, we were looking to round out our product portfolio to serve the energy and industrial market sectors. By acquiring Jensen Instruments, we could gain further access to the customer ecosystem in the energy market and strengthen our portfolio with a couple of key suppliers. By aligning their strengths with ours, our respective companies have a stronger platform to scale our capabilities to the customers we serve.

Our focus is to continue to enhance our portfolio and provide our customers with higher levels of technical applications and product expertise.

ID: Can you share any details about how the integration has gone after the Graybar acquisition?

Anne Vranicic: Graybar is a great parent company. Their strategy is to continue to diversify their portfolio to the industrial automation world. They recognized us for what we were, a well-run company.  Thus, they let us do what we do best. Their support comes through seeing how we may utilize their resources to improve operational efficiency and communications. We now have access to much more expertise in HR, legal and finance, which then gives us the ability to invest further in revenue producing resources rather than administrative. 

ID: When it comes to challenges, what do you see impacting your business the most? How are you working to offset these variables?

Anne Vranicic: Retirements are becoming the biggest challenge because there is so much knowledge that’s getting ready to retire, and you can’t just replace that by hiring a new person.  We’ve been actively training, automating, and preparing to ensure no disruption in the level of service our customers expect.  We are committed to staying ahead and have been proactive in our workforce development as we promote, hire, train and automate the skills and knowledge that are needed to make us competitive over the next decade.

ID: What do you believe to be your company's biggest differentiator, and how do you nurture that going forth in a competitive landscape?

Anne Vranicic: Our biggest assets are the people who work at Valin and the employee ownership culture.   They’re the individuals providing high value information that can’t necessarily be automated. They’re building relationships and bringing them across the entire organization.  When people talk about technology, automation, AI, and how everyone’s job is going to be taken over, I disagree.  Will it take over roles, yes. However, skills that enhance a relationship can’t be automated.  Those skills are critical to nurture as we get more digitized.  Humans still want to connect with humans.  The more we can evolve the high value around human interaction while being able to solve customers’ problems and provide information and technology solutions, that will be the differentiator.

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