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Hercules remains the most powerful name in the distribution of aftermarket hydraulic equipment parts. Hercules has mastered distribution for nearly 6 decades, supplying superior quality replacement parts and last year they made another commitment to their customers by adding a large array of metal working products. Hercules now offers a comprehensive line of drills, taps, end mills, countersinks, dies, band saw blades, carbide inserts and holders, honing stones, and rotary thread repair tooling. Hercules is an ISO 9001 registered distributor, dedicated to industry best practices. Quality control begins at the loading dock with strict inspection of incoming products. From there products enter Hercules ‘Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement Program’ to ensure all processes and procedures are performed accurately. Hercules’ 120,000 square foot facility in Louisville, Kentucky features advanced automation and a robotic picking system with 70 autostore robots and 12 pick ports with 26,205 autostore bins and they work from a large $17 million plus inventory. They process over 1400 orders per day, 95% on the same day to get parts and tools to their customer team next day.
Hercules is proud of their associations with top quality tool manufacturers, and they now have their own private label brand of machining products under the name of ‘CLEARCUT’. These tools are made in the USA and Hercules has opted to go with high quality tooling versus throw away tooling. Hercules has also partnered with global powerhouses like Korloy for carbide inserts and Wikus for band saw blades. The combined Hercules inventory from seals to end mills is over 17 million dollars and maintained to support their vast customer base. So, you can have the largest inventory of high quality sealing solutions and tooling solutions but if repair and machine shops have to wait a week, how can they stay competitive? Getting parts the next day is a competitive edge! Kurt Kocik, Director of U.S. Sales & Marketing says, “You’ve got to work harder, stay longer, and do what you say.
We take orders all the way up until 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time so our customers can receive what they need by 10am the next morning almost anywhere in the US.”
Kurt continued, “It’s pretty simple, Hercules has been the best company for sealing solutions in six decades and we are highly trusted. Why not further help our customers
by selling the tools they need to machine their parts?” Hercules invested over $750,000 in an inventory of high quality metal working tools. Then they priced them very competitively and shipped them next day air so that the customers could get the job done and keep their customers happy. That’s a secret sauce that has been tried and true for over 59 years. They also have 12 Regional Sales Managers and 30 highly trained Inside Sales Agents with over 200 US employees.
What does the next 5 years look like for Hercules? According to Kurt Kocik the future looks very bright, especially for the Western United States, as Kurt has strategically positioned key sales professionals in major cities in the western region to provide the best in customer service for the highest quality machining tools. Kurt says, “Hercules already has the best distribution network, we just need to continue applying this business model to the ‘metalworking tools’ side of the business, make our new customers very happy, and thus complete the loop for greater customer support.”
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A Brief History of Hercules
Hercules Sealing Products was founded 59 years ago in Clearwater Florida as a byproduct of a seal manufacturer from Buffalo, New York called Hercules Products. At that time, OEM cylinder manufacturers lacked sufficient support for aftermarket repairs. The founder of Hercules realized that there was a niche for aftermarket seal kits and built a company to serve those manufacturing sectors. Today Hercules is one of the leading distributors of aftermarket hydraulic equipment repair parts on the planet.
Hercules Sealing Products has been a subsidiary of Diploma PLC since 1995, a major publicly traded company based in London, England specializing in three sectors. These are life sciences, controls, and the sector that Hercules operates in: hydraulic and pneumatic seals. Under the Diploma banner, Hercules belongs to a family of seal companies called the Hercules Fluid Power Group that distributes sealing solutions in two key markets. Half of the members of this group are focused on the distribution of industrial OEM products and the other side, including Hercules, specializes in the distribution of aftermarket parts and machine tools.
Customers depend on Hercules to provide seal solutions for equipment in a broad range of industries including construction, mining, agriculture, dump and refuse, logging, and industrial applications. Roughly 400 people are employed across the entire Hercules Fluid Power Group, 200 support Hercules Sealing Products serving thousands of customers throughout the United States, Canada, Central, and South America.
