GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL Co

We have launched several initiatives, in the past, with our vendors and freight partners, and in our own distribution centers, to improve our customer’s experience and measure customer satisfaction on a regular basis to identify key pain points that must be improved. This initiative, involving phone and online surveys to obtain our customer’s input on their experiences with us and our products to ensure we deliver on the promise, to better focus our sales, service and marketing efforts on our customers' needs and to target areas of improvement to enhance the overall customer experience, led us to add additional improvements to the experience including offering 24 hour, seven days a week chat supported by both AI chatbots and live chats with our associates. As part of a culture of continuous improvement, our Customer Experience team is focusing on the idea of "Make It Right" to ensure that when our customers experience a problem, we are able to solve if effectively and to their satisfaction the first time. Upgraded training and technology solutions will play a large part in continuing to improve our customer satisfaction scores.

A significant proportion of our orders are received electronically via internet, extranet, EDI, customer punch out catalog, online chat, or through broadly utilizing vendor and customer portals such as Ariba or Coupa. These e-orders continued to represent over 60% of our transaction count on our core Global Industrial business in the United States for the year ended December 31, 2025. The balance of our orders are received by telephone to our inbound call center, direct dial to our inside account management team, placement through one of our field sales representatives, and to a small extent via fax. We provide toll-free telephone number access for our customers nationwide which are linked automatically as a backup in the event of a disruption in phone service.

The Company utilizes a sourcing strategy encompassing sales of in stock items that are either national brand, private brand, and to a limited extent via brand licensing agreements, as well as supplementing its stocking strategy with product fulfilled directly by our vendor partners via a drop ship relationship. In stock items tend to be higher in velocity, higher in gross margin, and offer a higher service level to our customers. In stock items are distributed via a network of five primary distribution centers in the U.S. located in the Northeast, Midwest, West, Southeast and South Central regions, one large distribution facility in Canada and several smaller distribution facilities in the United States and Canada. Product deliveries to our customers are made through a network of common carriers that we contract with directly in order to establish and maintain high service levels and enhance operational efficiencies. We tend to stock items in our distribution center, and invest the requisite working capital in inventory position, after demonstrating sales volume success in the drop ship sales of that item effected through our suppliers. Orders are generally shipped by third-party delivery services and we maintain relationships with thousands of distributors and product vendors.

We maintain a database of commonly asked questions for our technical support representatives, enabling them to respond quickly to similar questions. We conduct regular on-site training seminars for our sales representatives to help ensure that they are well trained and informed regarding our latest product offerings.