When your company spans five states, eight branches and hundreds of employees, keeping everyone connected can be a real challenge. For Industrial Supply – a fourth-generation, family-owned business – maintaining a close-knit, inclusive culture was just as important as growing its market presence.
But leadership faced a problem: how do you keep communication flowing, build unity across dispersed locations, and deliver consistent, impactful safety training – especially when your brand is known for selling safety products?
Using the Tyfoom platform, Industrial Supply bridged the communication gaps, strengthened its safety programs, and created a sense of one team united in a common purpose.
The Challenge: Distance and a Safety Disconnect
Industrial Supply is no stranger to growth. From its early days producing rubber-based mining supplies, it’s evolved into a leading distributor offering more than 200,000 products for industries like construction, aerospace, defense and manufacturing. This rapid expansion, while exciting, also brought growing pains.
“We wanted to deliver a very consistent message – a cultural message, a message of safety, but information just wasn’t making it from one branch to another,” said Tyler Whipple, Regional VP of Sales. “Our HR team is small, and it was hard to get messages to everyone in a timely way.”
For a company known for selling safety products, Industrial Supply didn’t have a cohesive safety training program. “We sell safety, so we should be engaged in safety in our own operations. We’re one of the largest safety and industrial distributors in this part of the world, and we didn’t have our own plan,” said Whipple.
Leadership also wanted to strengthen its family-oriented culture. “We want to be a culturally inclusive business with a small-company feel,” Whipple explained. “Even with 250 employees, we still think of ourselves as that 40- or 50-person team we used to be.”
The Solution: Consistent Communication and Safety Training
At first, Industrial Supply looked to Tyfoom for sales enablement – quick product trainings to help sales reps feel confident in front of customers. But the platform quickly proved to be much more.
Through Tyfoom, Industrial Supply addressed three major needs:
- Cross-company communication: Reach all employees instantly, regardless of location.
- Unified safety training: Build an in-house safety curriculum that matched the company’s values and expertise.
- Cultural connection: Reinforce belonging and team unity across state lines.
Quick Deployment and Strong Engagement
One of the early wins was how quickly the program rolled out. “We were able to launch the app very quickly, and we already have an 85% engagement rate,” said Whipple. “That’s light years ahead of where we were.”
With Tyfoom, company updates, training videos and safety alerts can now be shared instantly to everyone’s devices. In-app features like compliance tracking and alerts ensure that no critical safety message gets lost in an inbox.
For example, when a PTO policy change went into effect, employees were able to acknowledge the update right in the app, ensuring everyone received and understood the message. This same functionality now supports training acknowledgements, ensuring 100% completion rates and accurate records.
This makes it possible to push out safety training and policy changes to the entire company at once – something that used to be nearly impossible. No more mixed messages or delayed updates – just clear, actionable communication delivered company-wide.
Building a Culture of Connection
To strengthen the sense of team across branches, Industrial Supply started producing “Meet the Team” videos. These short, personable clips introduced employees from different branches, helping put faces to names and fostering mutual respect.
“It’s made it less likely for people to use ‘keyboard courage’ when someone makes a mistake,” Whipple noted. By humanizing colleagues, the company reduced misunderstandings and built camaraderie.
Safety Training with Custom Content
Before Tyfoom, Industrial Supply didn’t have a true internal safety training program despite being a leader in safety product distribution. One of the biggest advantages of Tyfoom is its ability to standardize training and communication across every branch. Now, the company enjoys a comprehensive safety curriculum, delivered in short, engaging videos that are easy to consume during the workday.
These videos cover everything from product usage to workplace safety best practices, reinforcing the company’s reputation as an industry authority.
Leadership is also exploring advanced options like digital badges and masterclass-style modules to take safety training to the next level, giving employees visible recognition for completing specialized training paths.
The Ripple Effect
Consistent safety training minimizes incidents, improves productivity and now positions Industrial Supply as a leader in workplace safety – not just in what it sells, but in how it operates.
By combining cultural initiatives with robust training, the company is building stronger connections between employees, which translates to smoother collaboration and better customer service.
Next, Industry Supply plans to expand its safety curriculum by building out a complete library of specialized safety training modules. The organization also intends to develop internal leadership training paths using the same video-based approach to upskill supervisors and managers.
Looking Ahead
For Industrial Supply, the shift to Tyfoom has helped build a better, safer, more connected company. By pairing consistent communication with a cohesive safety training program, the organization has strengthened its culture and improved compliance. Industrial Supply is now positioned as the go-to safety experts in its industry.
Whipple summed it up: “We got the unification and cultural inclusion we were looking for. Tyfoom helped us connect people, build culture and deliver safety messages consistently – no matter where they are.”
Learn faster, communicate better, and build safer, stronger workplaces every day by scheduling a meeting to speak with a Tyfoom training consultant.