Buying a Plumbing Supply House
The Trade Behind the Trade
A plumbing supply house sells to the contractors this site already covers, which makes it the same market seen from the other side of the counter. It carries no license, dispatches nobody, and takes no callback risk on work it did not do. The 2022 Economic Census counts 5,917 establishments across 2,107 firms, close to three locations apiece and the most consolidated of the supply trades here, moving 97.81 billion dollars through 81,233 people. Read the code carefully before you read a comparable: it covers plumbing and hydronic heating, while metal pipe sits with the metal service centers and fluid power sits elsewhere again.
What Plumbing Supply Houses Trade For
There is no published band for a plumbing supply house by name, so the closest published band is the wholesale and distribution class it sits inside. Sold listings across that class run 2.00x SDE at the lower quartile to 3.44x at the upper, with a 2.68x median and 199 days on the market. It is a main street dataset, and a size-banded survey of brokered sales reads nearer 3.1x SDE between one and two million dollars. Inside either range the deciding number is what the shelves are actually worth, so ask for the aging schedule and the write-off history first.
Fill Rate Is the Whole Relationship
A contractor with a crew waiting does not compare prices, they compare whether the part is there. Fill rate on the first pass is therefore the number the trade actually competes on, and it is the number a seller is least likely to have measured. It is also expensive to hold: every point of service is inventory that is not turning. The pattern to look for is a house whose fill rate is high because the buyer is disciplined, and not one whose fill rate is high because it has never thrown anything away. Those two look identical on a service report and nothing alike on a balance sheet.
What Is Actually on the Shelf
Dead stock is the trade's characteristic problem, and it hides well. Project residue, discontinued fixtures and superseded fittings all sit at cost until somebody decides otherwise, and a house that has not counted in a while does not know what it owns. Cycle counting, where a slice of the warehouse is counted every week and not the whole of it once a year, is the practice that tells you whether the number on the balance sheet has ever been tested. Ask when the last full count was, what the adjustment was, and whether anybody signs off on writing something off.
What to Verify in Diligence
The value is in stock that turns and accounts that pay, so read both against their own history. Verify:
- Inventory aging with the share carrying no movement in twelve months
- The last physical count, the adjustment it produced, and who signed it
- Fill rate by month if it is measured, and what it is measured against
- Receivables aging by contractor account, with lien and bond exposure noted
- Manufacturer authorizations in writing, and whether each survives a sale
- Rebate and dating programs, with the tiers and dates they depend on
Financeability Notes
This is an inventory loan wearing a business loan's clothes, and lenders treat it that way. The stock is collateral and it is also the working capital the buyer carries from day one, so the facility has to fund the purchase and the float. Expect the inventory valuation to be tested against turns and not against cost, and expect questions about contractor concentration, since one builder going quiet moves both the revenue and the receivable. Model debt service after a market wage for the person who runs the counter and the warehouse.
Terms in This Industry
PVF
Pipe, valves and fittings, the industrial piping half of what a plumbing supply house carries.
Fill rate
The share of ordered lines a house ships complete first time, the line-fill form of the measure.
Dead stock
Inventory with no movement and no likely buyer, usually project residue or a superseded part.
Cycle count
Counting a slice of the warehouse on a rolling schedule instead of the whole of it once a year.
Backorder
An ordered line the house could not ship complete, owed to the customer until stock arrives.
Stocking dealer
A distributor a manufacturer requires to hold agreed inventory in return for carrying the line.
Contractor account
A trade credit line a house extends to a builder, secured by little more than a history.
What the Data Says
The 2022 Economic Census counts 5,917 plumbing and heating equipment and supplies wholesale establishments across 2,107 firms, with 97.81 billion dollars of sales and 81,233 employees.
The federal size standard for this code is 200 employees, counted with affiliates, and not a figure in dollars of receipts.
Source: 13 CFR 121.201, SBA table of small business size standards
The May 2025 OEWS puts the national median wage at 72,080 dollars for sales representatives in wholesale and manufacturing other than technical and scientific products, and at 107,230 dollars for transportation, storage and distribution managers.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
Holding a live deal in this industry? Underwrite it with the comps, cited band, and charge-off rate pre-loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
- Winsupply · Moraine, Ohio
A co-ownership group standing over hundreds of locally owned wholesale companies, which buys small electrical and plumbing supply houses and usually keeps the selling owner running the branch.
- Rural Pipe & Supply · 2026 · A family-owned waterworks and construction materials distributor founded in 1999, with two Texas locations and eighteen employees.
- 1 more confirmed on the firm's profile
- Core & Main · St. Louis, Missouri
The listed waterworks distributor, which buys family-owned pipe, valve and fitting houses and tells a seller they keep their local voice and presence inside a nationwide company.
- Pioneer Supply · 2026 · A distributor of water, wastewater and storm drainage products serving Moore, Oklahoma and Weatherford, Texas.
- 1 more confirmed on the firm's profile
Buyers is the shelf these come from, ordered by who closed something most recently.
What It Costs to Replace the Owner
The multiples above are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. Hire someone instead and the going rate for the role comes back out. For this trade that is usually the manager who runs a fleet or a facility, paid a median of $107,230 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $321,690 off what the business is worth to you.
Transportation, storage, and distribution managers, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025), national, all industries, before payroll taxes and benefits. Every role, and the same arithmetic worked end to end, is in Manager Wages.
The Numbers That Run This Business
- Fill rate on the first pass
- Inventory turns
- Dead stock as a share of inventory
- Receivables past sixty days
- Gross margin by product line