Industrial Motion finds success overseas
Brad Perriello, Associate Editor — Industrial Distribution, 12/1/2007

Industrial Motion Inc. focuses on supplying American manufacturers' overseas operations and finds success in the process.

"A few years after graduating from the University of Illinois, Eric Kozlowski and Brian Pfeifer assessed the distribution industry and noticed an opportunity: Though the U.S. market was saturated with distributorships large and small, there were no companies catering to American manufacturers that were moving their operations overseas.

The two were well-positioned to make that observation. Pfeifer was working for bearings manufacturer Timken Co. and Kozlowski was working for a small export firm.

To fill the niche they saw, the pair scraped together their meager savings—about $100 each, they say—and started Industrial Motion Inc. in 1994 out of president and CEO Kozlowski's bachelor apartment.

Their insight bore fruit. Today the company has offices in Singapore, China and India, in addition to its headquarters in Mooresville, N.C., and employs about 40 people worldwide. The niche they noticed 13 years ago has widened in the intervening years; the average distributorship loses 9 percent of its business each year when companies move operations abroad, according to INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION's 61st Annual Survey of Distributor Operations."

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