ShoreView Announces Sale of GradeEight

The Partners of ShoreView are pleased to announce the sale of GradeEight (“GradeEight” or the “Company”), the parent company of Winzer and FastServ.

ShoreView partnered with GradeEight in September 2017. Founded in 1978, the company was a distributor of fasteners and maintenance supplies that pioneered the franchise sales model in MRO distribution. GradeEight was owned by its founding family and run by a professional management team.  ShoreView structured a transaction that:

• Provided liquidity to the founding family
• Established a well-capitalized partnership to support the Company’s next phase of growth
• Preserved Winzer’s unique franchise-based go-to-market model and its long-standing customer and vendor relationships
• Created an equity incentive plan for key managers
• Provided resources to invest in systems, talent, and acquisitions

Over the next nine years, ShoreView worked with GradeEight management to:

• Invest in a modern ERP platform to support the Company’s franchise network, vendors, and customers
• Recruit a new leadership team and execute a CEO succession plan
• Complete a material add-on acquisition, expanding the Company’s capabilities and customer reach

Through these initiatives, GradeEight built a modern operating platform and a repeatable growth playbook. ShoreView exited its investment to a strategic acquiror.

About GradeEight:

GradeEight is a national distributor of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) products through its two divisions, Winzer and FastServ. Winzer is a general line distributor of fasteners and consumable maintenance supplies, offering more than 70,000 products from over 1,000 vendors. Winzer markets and sells through a network of approximately 300 independent, route-based franchisees, serving customers across industrial, automotive, institutional, government, military, and facility end markets. FastServ operates brick-and-mortar stores selling products similar to Winzer’s. GradeEight is headquartered in Plano, Texas. For more information, please visit https://www.gradeeight.com/.

About ShoreView:

Founded in 2002, ShoreView is a Minneapolis-based private equity firm that has raised over $1.8 billion of committed capital across five funds. ShoreView partners with family- and entrepreneur-owned companies across many sectors, including niche manufacturing, value-added distribution, business services, residential services, industrial services, and aerospace/defense. ShoreView structures various acquisition, recapitalization, and build-up transactions, typically in businesses with revenues ranging between $20 million and $300 million.

If you are interested in speaking with ShoreView about platform or add-on investment opportunities, please contact Garrett Davis at garrett@shoreview.com.