For a quarter century, The Granite Group’s only location in Maine was a low-key storefront in Portland’s West End, a short walk from the water.
Then in 2014, the plumbing and heating wholesaler added a branch in Auburn. In 2019, it put roots in South Portland, Lewiston, Augusta and Bangor. In 2023, The Granite Group expanded to Farmington, then Ellsworth, Brunswick and Windham last year. And earlier this month, it announced new locations in Sanford and Caribou.
The company’s rapid growth in the Pine Tree State is an indication of its desire to tap into a market that has largely been dominated by one competitor. And — as its executives are quick to assert — it’s not done yet.
“You could fit the rest of New England in the state of Maine,” Chris Ploss, The Granite Group’s president, said in an interview. “So you really need a lot of locations to cover Maine and do it justice. We still have some cities and we still have some holes on the map that we need to fill in.”
By sales, the company is the second largest wholesaler in the Northeast, behind only F.W. Webb, according to an annual ranking compiled by the Supply House Times, an industry publication. The Granite Group’s sales for 2025 totaled $518 million, it said, the first time the company has broken $500 million.
By contrast, F.W. Webb is the ninth largest wholesaler in the industry nationwide. It is worth $2.6 billion, the company has said.
But The Granite Group has near-equalled its physical presence in Maine, with 12 locations to its competitor’s 13.
Based in New Hampshire, it currently operates 79 wholesale branches and 19 retail showrooms spread through all six New England states. It has 800 employees, 85 of whom either live or work in Maine.
The company, which distributes plumbing, heating, cooling, piping, water systems and energy products, has steadily grown its footprint across all of New England in recent years, through both acquisitions and opening new locations. It has added as many as two dozen branches and showrooms in the past five years, and expanded outside of New England for the first time this month by acquiring a distributor in Plattsburgh, New York.
“It’s hard for us to go east,” Ploss said, referring to the company’s future expansion strategy. “We’re not going to put a branch in Portugal or even probably New Brunswick or anything like that, so we will definitely head west as we either have people to do it, or we make acquisitions.”
The Granite Group’s track record of acquiring small wholesalers mirrors an industrywide consolidation trend. Its overall growth pattern is also in line with the trajectory of the plumbing and HVAC industry in the U.S., which market analysts expect to balloon from generating $67 billion in revenue in 2025 to more than $100 billion by 2033.
As for where it will expand next in Maine, Ploss isn’t certain.
“We’re up and down the Maine turnpike every day,” he said. “So to be able to have another location to drop off to, or to plant a flag, that’s what we kind of look to do.”
In order to open a new branch, he said, the right people have to be in place. The company added a branch in Caribou because it has an outside salesperson who lives in the area and championed the expansion.
The location opened last week and employs four people.
“We’re unapologetically a people-first organization,” Brad Dupuis, The Granite Group’s vice president of marketing said. “That’s why our tagline is what it is. It’s great people first, and then followed by the great products. It’s just kind of our compass.”
