Reliance Inc 's

The metals distribution industry is highly fragmented and competitive. We have numerous competitors in each of our product lines and geographic locations, and competition is most frequently local or regional. Our domestic service center competitors are generally smaller than we are, but we also face strong competition from national, regional and local independent metals distributors and the producers themselves, some of which have greater resources than we do.

We compete with other companies on price, service, quality, processing capability and availability of products. We maintain relationships with our major suppliers at the executive and local levels. We believe that this division of responsibility has increased our ability to obtain competitive prices of metals by leveraging our total size and to provide more responsive service to our customers by allowing our local management teams to make the purchasing decisions. In addition, we believe that the size of our inventory, the diversity of metals and products we have available, and the wide variety of processing services we can provide distinguish us from our competition. We believe that our competitors do not have the financial ability or risk tolerance to grow their businesses, and it is difficult for them to compete with our state-of-the-art processing equipment. We believe that we have increased our market share during recent years due to our strong financial condition, our high quality of products and services from significant investments in our equipment and facilities, and our acquisitions, as well as our continued focus on small order sizes with quick turnaround.