Jeff Dice: Inside Winsupply's Entrepreneur-Owner Playbook
In this episode of the Titanium Economy Podcast, Akshay Sethi, President and Head of Commercial Excellence at Ayna, speaks with Jeff Dice, President of Winsupply, about how a distributor built on local ownership grew into an $8.4 billion business without going top-down. Dice explains the equity model behind Winsupply's 680-plus independently owned locations, how it absorbs acquisitions without eroding local culture, and why he believes AI will commoditize knowledge and reward grit instead. He also walks through the company's distribution expansion and his own path from auditor to president. Jeff Dice is President of Winsupply, the Dayton, Ohio-based wholesale distributor of construction and industrial supplies with roughly $8.4 billion in annual sales across more than 680 independently owned local companies. He joined Winsupply in 2004 as a regional financial officer and rose through internal audit, technology, and the company's Equity Group before becoming its sixth president in February 2023. A CPA, he holds a bachelor's in accounting from Indiana University and a master's in supply chain management from Wright State University. Discussion Points National in Scale, Local in Ownership: Winsupply has national reach without operating like a traditional national company. It’s made up of 680-plus independent C corporations spanning plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and waterworks. Rather than funneling decisions through a central office, the model puts them in the hands of local owners. Dice sees that as an advantage when it comes to moving quickly and staying close to customers, with Dayton serving as a support system rather than a command center. The Equity Model: A typical local company is 60% owned by Winsupply, 30% by its president, and 10% by key employees. That ownership structure gives local leaders a direct stake in the outcome. They set their own pricing and participate in dividends and uncapped profit sharing, making margin something they have a personal reason to protect. Acquiring People, Not Just Companies: Across 30-plus acquisitions in a decade, Dice's first rule is do no harm, keeping the people and customer ties that made the target worth buying. Integration is paced company by company, from day one to five years out. Grit Over Knowledge in the AI Era: Dice expects AI to make knowledge less of a differentiator. If everyone has access to the same tools, he argues, the advantage shifts to the people willing to keep pushing, stay close to the customer, and do the work. Winsupply’s minority stake in Dayton AI firm Mined XAI is one way the company is putting that thinking into practice, using AI to improve forecasting, purchasing, and e-commerce. Bigger Footprint, Distributed Wealth: A 1.6 million square foot expansion across Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and Dayton aims to put product within a day of every local company. Dice sees a larger, more connected network as a way to keep wealth distributed among owners while giving local companies the flexibility to respond to their own markets. Ayna is a premier advisory and implementation firm in the industrial technology space, leveraging a team of experienced leaders to help companies and investors drive performance improvement and value creation. The host of this episode Akshay Sethi is President and Head of Commercial Excellence at Ayna. For More Information Jeff Dice LinkedIn Winsupply Inc. The Titanium Economy Ayna Website
