
January 13, 2025
BRILLION – Endries International, located at 714 W. Ryan St. in Brillion, recently announced it has acquired Assembly Fasteners.
“We are thrilled to add Assembly Fasteners to our list of acquisitions,” Endries President/CEO Michael Knight said. “Assembly Fasteners is a lot like us in many ways – it’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
Knight said Endries is a supplier of industrial fasteners.
“That is a fancy way of saying nuts, bolts, screws, washers, rivets, etc. – the things that help hold the world together,” he said. “We supply those parts to OEM (original equipment manufacturers) for companies that make HVAC equipment to commercial kitchen equipment. For the vast majority of our customers, we supply the materials directly to the production line.”
Checked a lot of boxes
Knight said the acquisition of Assembly Fasteners is a perfect example of what Endries is looking for in an acquisition.
“It checked a lot of boxes,” he said. “It made us stronger in geographies where we are underrepresented. Assembly Fasteners is headquartered in Florida, and they also have a nice operation in Raleigh, North Carolina. They are also in northern Tennessee and Garland, Texas, which is east of Dallas.”
Knight said Texas “is a huge market.”
“I often tell my team, ‘If we did nothing but concentrate on acquiring new customers in Texas, we could meet all of our numbers for quite some time,’” he said. “To add that team and customer base to Endries will be very helpful.”

Knight said the acquisition is also a good fit culturally.
“Assembly Fasteners is very similar to Endries,” he said. “It started at about the same time, and there is some overlap in terms of parts.”
Knight said when Endries thinks about acquiring a company, it looks for a team of people who know their business and are committed to said business.
“We also want to have confidence they will stay with the business,” he said. “Assembly Fasteners also brings some knowledge or expertise to Endries in areas we maybe did not have before. We are only as good as our people. One of the great things about an acquisition is we get a lot of great people.”
More on Endries
Knight said Endries has a fleet of trucks and warehouses all over the country.
“We have people who go into a customer’s facility up to twice a day to restock bins of parts, so the people on the production line – who are making the washing machines or whatever it might be – have what they need,” he said. “Every time they reach their hand back to grab a part for the next step in the process, there has to be a part in that bin. We do all the material planning, manage it and in essence, guarantee their production lines never go down because they are missing parts.”
Knight said Endries does not actually produce the materials – “that’s standard in this industry.”
“You have the fabricators – the people who make the stuff – but Endries is a distributor,” he said. “With a lot of the parts we supply, we also design. A customer gives us an application specification for a part, we design it and then we source it from the manufacturers we have relationships with and find the best fit for the product.”
Though Endries does not actually manufacture bolts, screws, washers, etc., Knight said the company does do some light manufacturing in certain situations.
“For example, if a part needs to have a washer that’s preassembled, we have equipment for that,” he said. “If the head of a part needs to be painted so it matches the cabinet it needs to hold together, we can do that. Then there is a kitting component. For example, if you buy something from Home Depot that has to be put together or assembled, it comes with a kit of parts – nuts, bolts, screws, etc. We do that work as well. Endries is a lot more than just being a middleman.”
A little history
Knight, who has been president/CEO since November 2022, said Endries is a 54-year-old company.
“In the early 1970s, this industry was made up of a lot of smaller, local companies – Endries was one of them,” he said. “The founder of the company started in his basement and had relationships with auto body shops, etc. The business eventually grew to the point that it moved into a former cheese factory. That is a very Wisconsin story.”
According to the company’s website (Endries.com), Endries was founded in 1970 by Bob and Patricia Endries.
Knight said as Endries grew outside of the Brillion area, it took on more space.

“We are now north of half a billion in revenue – it is a remarkable story,” he said. “Among the thousands of companies in the 1970s like Endries, not many have been able to break through to the scale we have been able to.”
Today, Knight said Endries has distribution centers all over North America, from Canada to Mexico.
“We’ve also got a distribution center and a group of people in the Netherlands, and we’ve got sourcing teams and quality labs in Asia – Taiwan, China and India,” he said. “From those humble beginnings, this team has been able to do something rare in the industry. We have a long track record in growth.”
Growth
That growth in the last 10 years, Knight said, has come in two forms.
“It’s been organic with new customer acquisition, along with inorganic growth where we are an industry consolidator,” he said. “With a lot of companies that have not grown out of their local market, we have acquired quite a few of those. By purchasing those businesses, we have given them access to the purchasing scale we have and get them growing faster than they could do on their own.”
Knight said Endries’ growth – and in the industry in general – was “phenomenal” in 2021-22 but has since slowed down.
“It started to slow down in summer 2023 when the industrial sector got pretty sleepy,” he said. “It has been pretty slow since, so that has had a dampening effect on our growth and the entire industry. During this period, most of our growth has come from acquisitions. However, the down parts do not last, so I am very confident we will see an upscale in 2025. I think 2025 will financially be an exciting year for us.”
Knight said Endries “is absolutely not done” acquiring more companies similar to Assembly Fasteners.
“As a matter of fact, I think we’re going to wrap up another (acquisition) by the end of February (2025),” he said. “We have a pipeline of companies that we have been talking to, in some cases, for years. We are staying close to them, waiting for the owners to feel like it is the right time for their personal plan to merge the business into something like Endries.”
Knight said in 2024, Endries acquired three companies.
“One of those started in 2023 but spilled over into 2024,” he said. “I think you can expect to see another three or four acquisitions in 2025.”