For nearly 40 years, Beacon Supply Company has been a one-stop shop for all of its customers’ oilfield and construction needs.
However, Beacon Supply Company, located at 1210 U.S. 98 Bypass in Columbia, recently purchased Columbia Welding Supply, and is introducing a full line of welding products.
“We have purchased Columbia Welding,” owner and store manager Greg Prine said. “Columbia Welding was a full welding supplier, such as rods, face shields, strikers and anything a welder uses on a day-to-day basis to do his job.”
On top of carrying all of the basic welding supplies, Beacon Supply is also taking over the rental side of the welding business.
“They also had a full line of oxygen, acetylene, argon, medical oxygen and other bottles that we acquired, so we have all that now,” Prine said. “We have the welding cylinders that we rent out on a yearly or monthly basis, depending on if it’s a commercial (monthly) or individual (yearly) that just needs a set of bottles.”
The company originated as Superior Supply in 1979 before becoming Beacon Supply Company in 1987.
“We have four different companies in one here,” Prine said. “First is our original Beacon Supply Company that services the oilfield industry. Along with the oilfield side of it, for all of your offshore and construction workers, we’ve got a full line of hard hats, steel-toe boots (Ariat, John Deere, Red Wing, etc.), safety vests for highway workers and anything to do with safety we’ve got it here. We have anything workers would need on an oil field or construction site. We custom make hydraulic hoses here for any piece of equipment that uses them. We also have all of our storage facilities, which is Columbia Storage, and we have three different locations.”
Beacon Supply is also the largest supplier of steel in the area.
“We’re one of the few companies in Columbia that I’m aware of that is stocking steel,” Prine said. “We’ve got angle iron, flat bar, expanding metal — to build anything out of metal that a welder would use you have to have the steel to do it. Customers can come buy 4 x 8 sheets just like they would buy 4 x 8 sheets of plywood or they can buy angle iron or flat bar just like they can buy 2 x 4s or 2 x 6s.”
However, Prine credits only one reason for Beacon Supply’s success.
“There’s not but one reason we’ve had success. The Lord has blessed us to be able to do that,” he said. “He’s given us the business, knowledge, wisdom and employees working together as a team to be able to come together. It’s not an accident. He sent the right people here and has blessed us for us to be where we’re at.”
With the economy ever-changing, Beacon Supply has adapted to best suit the market and will continue to do so.
“Since 2014, the oilfield has recessed. But we’ve still managed to move ahead and continue to grow some,” Prine said. “We don’t know what the next step is going to be, we’re just going to keep moving ahead as the Lord opens up the doors.”
A pillar of Beacon Supply is the service it provides its customers.
“Service is what we’ve built this business on. If you have repeat business coming from a customer, that’s the only way you can build a business. To have that repeat business, that customer has to have the desire to come back to you, so he has to have a good experience when he comes in or calls,” Prine said. “Our phone business is about 60 to 70 percent of our business, and we deliver from here. Seventy to 80 percent of our business for materials is delivery direct to the customer. If someone is on the job site and needs something, they call us, order it and we communicate with them a timeframe of when they need that material, and we do our best to make sure they’ve got it there when they need it. Keeping that relationship with your customer is what you want to be able to do.”
Beacon Supply Company is open from
7 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, but is always willing to assist its customers.
“We do have a 24-hour on call service that is if somebody is in a bind, we do offer a service for us to come and help them,” Prine said. “We have always tried to treat our customers as we would want to be treated and that is with respect.”
Beacon Supply Company can be reached by phone at (601) 736-2199.
Inside sales employees include, from left, Damon Roberts, Brandon Prine, Jimmy Boyd and Gus Cahanin Jr. | Photo by Joshua Campbell
