NAICS 416120Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment and supplies. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 2,048
Under 10 employeesA: 59%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–463131%

5–957028%

10–1945222%

20–4930515%

50–99623%

100–199221%

200–49950%

500+10%

Of 2,048 Canadian establishments with employees, 59% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario82440%

Quebec37518%

British Columbia31615%

Alberta23812%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 416, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 416 Building material and supplies merchant wholesalers

A yard, a fleet and contractor credit. Buying groups let independents survive, and delivered service is what they sell against the big boxes.

Who sets the price: Commodity lumber and panel prices, plus service to contractors.
The software it runs on: Building-materials dealer ERP with delivery, contractor accounts and estimating.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4161 Electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4161

Electrical & Plumbing Trade Supply BranchExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

The branch is a simple thing — a counter, a warehouse, a delivery truck and a book of contractor accounts — and there are 3,856 of them, four in five with fewer than twenty staff. The 416 Building Materials Distribution Yard record cuts the wider subsector on working capital; this group has a different gate. A contractor buys the brands the engineer specified and the inspector knows, and those lines are authorised by the manufacturer, distributor by distributor and territory by territory. A new branch can rent the building and hire the counter staff; it cannot stock the breaker panels, the boilers or the fixtures its customers are required to install unless a manufacturer chooses to open another account in a territory its existing distributors already cover. What the authorised networks earn is not generous either. Ferguson, which calls itself North America's largest value-added distributor of water and air solutions, reported Canadian net sales of $1,509M in calendar 2025 with adjusted operating profit of $54M — 3.6% of sales, down 10% on the year — against 9.6% for the company as a whole [A]. A billion and a half dollars of Canadian volume, with every line it wants, earns a little over a third of the group margin. An entrant would be working for less, with the second-choice brands, and extending the same trade credit.

NAICS 41615 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 416 Building material and supplies merchant wholesalers

Building Materials Distribution YardStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

A yard is inventory, forklifts, delivery trucks and credit extended to contractors who pay when the draw clears — working capital in three directions at once, against a demand line that tracks housing starts. The buying groups give independents some purchasing parity, and the national dealers beat it anyway. The dealer ERP serving this industry is screened separately at 444.

NAICS 4166 vendors named8 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Building-materials dealer ERP with delivery, contractor accounts and estimating.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →