Six Acquisitions in 19 Months: ORS Nasco's Kevin Short on Growth Without Attrition

ORS Nasco has closed six add-on acquisitions in 19 months — and kept the leaders of every acquired company on board. That retention record is the quiet headline of the latest episode of NAW's Distributors Deliver podcast, recorded at the 2026 Innovators Summit in Nashville.

Kevin Short, CEO of ORS Nasco and Treasurer of NAW's Board of Directors, sat down with NAW CEO Eric Hoplin for a conversation spanning 33 years in distribution, M&A integration and an early, pragmatic approach to AI.

How do you buy six companies without losing the people?

Short's answer runs through culture. He names four traits that guide ORS Nasco: likability, tenacity, curiosity and humility. They are not wall art. They are the filter for who stays after a deal closes — and, implicitly, for who fits before one does.

The pace itself deserves attention. Six add-ons in 19 months works out to roughly one acquisition every three months, a cadence that leaves little room for integration errors. For practitioners, the takeaway is simple: retention of acquired leadership is the cheap part of M&A only if the culture does the holding.

What did Short learn before he was allowed to sell?

His career started at 19, on his father's advice — his father was a chemical manufacturer who told him distributors "make money and have fun." Short joined a chemical distributor and spent his first two years driving a forklift, managing inventory and collecting bills before anyone let him call on a customer.

That grounding carried him through three industries. It also shapes how he talks about technology adoption, which brings us to the most practical segment of the episode.

Where should distributors start with AI?

Not with a platform-wide rollout. ORS Nasco became an early adopter by starting small: product recommendations for its inside sales team. That is a narrow use case with a direct line to revenue per call and salesperson productivity — the kind of measurable, near-term payoff that justifies a bigger bet later.

Short's advice for distributors evaluating new technology leans on an asset most already have: the branch network. Use branches to run smaller tests before committing capital. It is a pilot-first discipline familiar to anyone who has managed inventory turns — you do not stock the whole warehouse on one forecast.

What else is in the conversation?

The episode covers:

• Short's mainstage discussion with 3M CEO Bill Brown at the Summit;
• his year representing the industry in Washington as NAW's 2025 Board Chair;
• the story behind the nickname President George W. Bush gave him;
• the golf courses still on his bucket list.

For wholesale distribution leaders weighing growth by acquisition versus organic investment, the ORS Nasco record offers a data point worth interrogating: serial add-ons can work at speed when leadership retention is the metric that matters. The full episode is available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and NAW members or distribution leaders interested in appearing as guests can contact [email protected].