Reliance Worldwide Corporation Limited (RWC) and its family of brands transform performance and efficiency for plumbing and heating, and specialist industries around the world.
Built on its founders’ entrepreneurial legacy, RWC was born from the desire to challenge convention and constantly pioneer, while helping make customers’ and end users’ lives easier, safer and more efficient.
Founded as a small tool shop in Brisbane, Australia in 1949, RWC has since grown into a global operation with nearly 3,000 employees around the world. The company moved into the U.S. market in 2000 and in the last fiscal year conducted almost $800 million in sales.
“Our relationship with IMARK is longstanding and we have seen a lot of growth with IMARK and its members,” said Will Kilpatrick, president and EVP of the Americas region. “We see the relationships we have developed with IMARK members as a real strength. Our goal was to become a Platinum supplier and we achieved that in 2022 and are also on track to reach Platinum status again in 2023. This is a testament to the strength of our partnership, which we want to continue to cultivate and grow.”
The company has grown rapidly over the last 20 years and has developed a strong team of experts that drive product leadership, operational excellence, customer support and sales. “Achieving results in the marketplace is absolutely a team effort. We are not where we are today based on any single person,” Kilpatrick continued. “Ultimately, we are all very focused on delivering innovative products that make the life of the end user, the professional plumber, easier.”
RWC supports distributors by adhering to the following three pillars:
- Offer clever products that can set distributors apart from the competition—provide everything in a plumber’s truck.
- Create value through exemplary customer service, ongoing support and merchandising help.
- Maintain operational and industry-leading excellence, as well as deliver high-quality products in an efficient way—on time, in full, when and where needed.
“Plumbing matters and we make it better,” Kilpatrick said.
In the last five years, RWC acquired three businesses to provide a more complete solution for both the distributor and end user. The company also built a new distribution center in Cullman, Alabama and opened four additional distribution centers, with the Americas regional president noting that “we wanted to get closer to our customers to serve them better with the product they need.”
Kilpatrick stated that the company has also invested significantly in domestic manufacturing, reasoning that enhances the effectiveness of RWC’s supply chain, while enabling the company to be more responsive to the needs of its customers. “We invested in the U.S. footprint to support end users and our distribution partners as well,” he added.
The company’s goal is to drive as much value as possible for its distributors in a frictionless way. “We want to be as easy to do business with as possible,” he continued. “Essentially, we want to provide a more complete assortment of solutions end users want to have in the back of their truck and provide our distributors with a single invoice for all of the products they want to stock.”
Ultimately, RWC is focused on product leadership and innovation and as part of that goal, it has a strong pipeline of product development efforts that can drive a lot of value for plumbers. “There’s more to come in product development and we can’t wait to share it,” he said. “As always, we are going to continue to innovate to help customers solve problems in a creative way. That’s the legacy of our business and what consistently positions us ahead of the competition. We’re hyper-focused on being a consistent leader, as well as writing the next chapter in our product leadership story.”
As a global family of powerful brands, RWC has developed a complementary product portfolio to help its customers deliver, control, optimize and solve in innovative, reliable and simple ways every single day. The company offers leading push-to-connect technologies and engineered solutions that deliver high-performance, time-saving solutions for plumbing and heating.
For more information, visit rwc.com.
Jennifer Kohlhepp
Jennifer Kohlhepp is the managing editor of IMARK Today and has more than 20 years of experience developing award-winning content for various platforms. Reach her at jkohlhepp@cmasolutions.com.