Turtle & Hughes Leverages eCommerce for Healthcare Sales

Turtle & Hughes, the 15th largest electrical distributor according to Electrical Wholesaling, is leveraging its eCommerce reach to solicit business in the healthcare market.

According to a recent press release, the company has joined Premier, a healthcare purchasing organization as a supplier.

Premier is a healthcare alliance representing more than 4,100 US hospitals and 200,000 other providers. One of Premier’s member benefits is group purchasing. The organization, based in Charlotte, has negotiated over 2800 “agreements” with suppliers.

The press release reads:

“Turtle & Hughes, an independent, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s top electrical and industrial distributors, has been awarded a group purchasing agreement for Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) products with Premier. The new agreement, currently in effect, allows Premier members, at their discretion, to take advantage of special pricing and terms pre-negotiated by Premier for MRO products.

Premier is a leading healthcare improvement company, uniting an alliance of more than 4,100 U.S. hospitals and 200,000 other providers to transform healthcare. With integrated data and analytics, collaboratives, supply chain solutions, and advisory and other services, Premier enables better care and outcomes at a lower cost.

“The challenges and opportunities facing the healthcare industry in a post-2020 world are monumental and we are poised to deliver every Premier member top quality service,” said Kathleen Shanahan, Turtle & Hughes CEO. “Turtle has a long history working in the healthcare community. Since the early days of COVID-19, we have supported these heroes by building field hospitals and creating additional ICU space for the influx of patients. We are here and ready to ease the burden of facilities management, procurement, and construction so our healthcare professionals can focus on what’s most important — patient care.”

Products and Services to Improve the Patient Experience

Turtle & Hughes meets or exceeds all standards when providing MRO products and technical innovations to improve facility efficiency and elevate the patient experience. Products include: safety equipment and PPE; HVAC; specialized lighting (germicidal lighting, anti-microbial switches, touchless controls); power quality equipment; and communications (mass notification, alarms, gate/door access controls).

Turtle & Hughes also offers a wide range of technical services. It is a recognized leader in electrical construction design and project management and has been involved in many major hospital projects. It also performs energy audits and upgrades to new energy efficient LED lighting and controls. Turtle & Hughes Integrated Supply (THIS) division provides virtual storerooms for next level inventory management within and across enterprises.

Turtle & Hughes has a dedicated MRO Sales team to source top-quality products and hard to find supplies and PPE. Products can also be purchased at a store counter location or at turtle.com, where over 2 million SKUs are available for purchase 24 hours a day.”

The Opportunity

To put the opportunity into perspective:

• Joining a “buying group”, as manufacturers know, is a hunting license but it get companies on a “preferred consideration list”.
• The healthcare market, according to DISC’s Market Track database, represents a minimum of a $769 million in electrical MRO business spent through electrical distribution (and could be larger when considering suppliers such as Grainger.) (Note – this excludes healthcare construction, which is captured under “contractor.)
• This segment of the MRO market, since it is considered an “institutional segment” is an Amazon target.
• Turtle & Hughes has invested much in its eCommerce initiative and brought Its readied its online site in record time. The site has more than 2 million SKUs for the electrical, safety, datacom, power transmission, air circulation, consumer / appliance and more markets. One of the first “categories” on its site is a section for the healthcare market.

While Turtle has 14 locations throughout the country and a CDC, the nature of Premier infers that this is a play to support the eCommerce initiative as it would be the primary ordering vehicle. Further, combine the model with, presumably, a 1-800 service (maybe a dedicated line) and the ability to leverage either an existing MRO sales center, remote staff or branch personnel (plus perhaps new leads for branch salespeople), this becomes a significant potential opportunity. A 1% penetration rate is a $7.7 million sales win. And MRO sales have good margins, enabling Turtle to provide “special pricing” to Premier and its members (rebates, discounted pricing, perhaps they negotiated SPAs with manufacturers.)

This new opportunity highlights how a robust website, populated with a significant number of SKUs, and “outside the box” sales thinking, can generate new opportunities. The question then becomes, is this a new “segment” for Turtle (calling on purchasing groups in other industries) and/or an idea that others can use to consider other segments?  

Just another example of why eCommerce, as a sales outreach and ordering solution, is becoming an imperative for growth-oriented distributors.