Industrial Distribution - January/February 2014

Western
Water Works
Supply

Start to Finish: People, Products, Systems.

For Western Water Works Supply Company, Inc., this motto is more than just lip service. WWW is a distributor of waterworks materials and products that are used in the transmission of potable water. This company was the first waterworks distributor in Southern California in 1945 — formed by three gentlemen with extensive backgrounds in water transmission products, who perceived the need for a local distributor of waterworks products and materials in Southern California.

Today, this business currently has five locations in Southern California and one location in Salt Lake City, UT, and is the largest independent waterworks pipe, valve, and fitting distributor in Southern California — which is one of the nation’s largest waterworks markets.

This company’s success is not simply based on being in the right place at the right time. Western Water Works Supply has consistently emphasized innovative strategies to improve service and access to technology for its customer base. Not only does WWW offer mobile apps, its website also features a customer portal that allows its customers to see, in real time, their open orders, invoices, and job management tools.

Additionally, the company’s “Grand Guarantee” creates an additional internal incentive to not make mistakes. “Unlike anyone in our industry, we guarantee accurate invoicing, accurate delivery times, and accurate orders. If we make a mistake, we will give you a $1000 credit. We have a 99.5 percent accuracy rate,” explains Eric Loudon, Director of Business Development. For WWW’s Premier Customers, the company holds an annual Grand Guarantee Club Conference, which is designed to serve as a business building event. “The objective is to help our customers improve their businesses,” he says.

WWW also works hard to help its staff and customers alike by a focus on training objectives — specifically via its Waterworks 101 program. This effort embodies an intensive learning environment for new hires of WWW’s premier customers (project managers, estimators, superintendents, etc.), providing a hands-on opportunity for them to learn the material that they may not be familiar with. In an effort towards customer collaboration, WWW recently teamed up with Kana Pipeline for a superintendent apprenticeship program, where WWW hosted Kana’s apprentices for an intensive training program relating to water, sewer, and storm drain pipelines.