New catalog launches today with 183,000 products
CHICAGO, Feb. 4 -North America's leading distributor of facilities maintenance supplies, today announced the release of its 2008 catalog featuring more than 183,000 facilities maintenance products. The new catalog includes an increase of 44,000 items over last year's offering.

"Our customers count on us to be the one-stop shop for all their facilities maintenance supplies and we bolstered our offering this year in several key categories including power transmission, raw material, and fleet maintenance products to help ensure that when they have a need, we are ready to offer solutions," said Y.C. Chen, President, Grainger Industrial Supply. "By providing easy access to a broad array of maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) products, Grainger helps customers be more productive in maintaining facilities."

Customer feedback drove the addition of more than:
4,000 power transmission products such as bearings, couplings, linear motion products and belts; 9,000 raw materials products such as metal, plastic, rubber and felt; 4,200 fleet maintenance products such as lift equipment, battery chargers and accessories; as well as 30,000 gap fill products across all major product categories including plumbing, electrical, tools and material handling.

In addition, the company launched Tough Guy(TM), a private label professional cleaning supplies brand designed to offer customers a quality, single-source facilities cleaning solution. The product category includes products such as degreasers, disinfectants, foam and lotion soaps and dispensers and polyethylene trash containers.

In order to drive down the high costs associated with procuring unplanned MRO items, customers including facilities managers, contractors and purchasing professionals need quick access to a wide array of facilities maintenance supplies across multiple product categories. Easy access to product helps provide businesses and institutions the opportunity to consolidate their MRO spending and drive efficiency in their businesses.

Grainger's expanded product offering is featured in the company's new 2008 catalog and on the company Web site at http://www.grainger.com/news. With more than 3,900 pages of product and technical information, this year's catalog offers enhanced search and selection tools to help customers quickly find the products they need to keep their facilities running smoothly. The product line expansion is part of a multi-year program to create a comprehensive offering across MRO categories. In 2007, the product line expansion program accounted for approximately 2 percentage points of revenue growth in the branch-based segment.

"Our newly expanded product offering combined with dedicated professionals with the tools and desire to exceed customer expectations puts us in a unique position in the industry," said Robert Cocks, vice president of merchandising. "We will continue to listen carefully to our customers and enhance our products and services so they have no reason to go elsewhere for MRO products."