Hughes Supply

Hughes Supply was a residential electrical supply distributor founded by Clarence Hughes and his son, Russell, in Orlando, FL in 1928. For the next two decades, we weathered the Great Depression and World War II with slow but steady expansion in Florida. In response to growing demand from customers who performed electrical and plumbing work, Hughes Supply added plumbing supplies to its distribution in the 1940s. Throughout the next 20 years, we expanded even further in Florida. In 1970, Hughes Supply went public, offering 350,000 shares of common stock at an initial price of $17.60 per share. We celebrated our 50th anniversary in 1978 and threw quite a party! We hosted a trade show for customers and vendors. It was the largest show of its type organized by a single company in the industry...a distinction we still hold today. Up to this point, nearly all of our business was in residential construction in Florida. But knowing housing starts can be unpredictable, we spent the ...