Coburn: Everything a Contractor Needs

With 49 branches spread across four states and a strong presence in HVAC, plumbing, electrical and waterworks, Coburn Supply Co. Inc. is a wholesale distributor that understands the value of diversification. For much of its existence, Coburn was a plumbing and A/C equipment supply house, but it took the oil bust in the mid-1980s to convince its owners that the business had to expand its offerings and grow geographically.

The company was founded by Albert Coburn, who started his career as a plumbing and heating contractor, first in Louisiana and later in Beaumont, TX. In 1929, he became the manager of a plumbing supply distributor in Beaumont and, when the store closed in 1934, Albert convinced the owner to let him buy the materials on consignment. With that, Coburn Supply was born.

As east Texas grew, so, too, did Coburn. It opened branches in east Texas and Louisiana and established the “show room” concept in its Beaumont office as a way to help plumbing contractors sell more products. This idea of a show room later spread to all of Coburn's branches. As Don Maloney, the president of Coburn and the great nephew of Albert, recalls, the late 1970s and early 1980s was the era of a great oil boom in Texas, and businesses throughout the region were doing very well. Coburn was no exception. But an oil bust in the mid-1980s — fueled by a national recession — brought many Texas businesses to their knees. “We literally watched our sales drop one year 50 percent,” Maloney says. “The rest of the world said they were in a recession, but we were in a depression.”

That's when Coburn decided to change its business model. “In the 1950s, we were known as an equipment house, selling the boxes and then the bigger boxes as the air-conditioning units evolved,” Maloney says. “We needed a larger footprint if we were going to grow. We needed to emphasize some things other than A/C equipment itself.” Coburn's growth in the mid and late 1980s came through acquisition — buying Cagle Supply Co. and American Supply Co., both with branches in Louisiana. With the growth of the company, it also began to expand its focus with new product lines, which included an emphasis on full-service HVACR distribution.

Today, Coburn has branches in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee that fulfill the mission the business made for itself following the oil bust — virtually any contractor can come to Coburn and find what he or she needs for their residential and commercial jobs. Coburn kitchen and bath designer show rooms that appeal to consumers as well as contractors also have become an important way to differentiate itself from its competitors.