Core & Main’s sourcing-led expansion in technical product lines offers procurement leaders a replicable model for driving growth, compliance, and margin through category orchestration.
In Brief:
• Smart meter volumes rose 10% in Q1, on top of 30% growth the prior year
• Others delivered double-digit gains linked to technical complexity and compliance needs
• Procurement alignment, enablement, and governance underpin the growth model
Categories as Growth Engines
Core & Main, a global distributor of water, wastewater, and utility infrastructure materials, is finding growth in the places most companies struggle—spec-heavy, tightly regulated categories. And what’s driving that success isn’t just the products. It’s procurement.
For sourcing and procurement leaders, this is a model of what happens when category strategy becomes structural, not reactive. The company’s growth is anchored in long-cycle demand, technical execution, and contractual continuity—all domains where procurement can lead.
“We drove 10% growth in meters,” CEO Mark Witkowski shared in the June 2025 earnings call, “on top of a prior year quarter where we grew at 30%.” These gains weren’t the result of pricing tactics. They were secured through disciplined sourcing, multi-year customer programs, and solution-led engagement—enabled by procurement.
Other category successes followed a similar pattern: regulated, performance-critical categories that require supply assurance, validation, and tailored go-to-market strategies. In this context, procurement isn’t fulfilling demand—it’s creating the conditions for it.
Inside a Category-First Operating Model
What sets Core & Main apart is not simply category growth, but how procurement structures it. Procurement doesn’t sit at the end of the value chain—it integrates across commercial, technical, and operational domains to deliver margin-accretive ecosystems.
“We’ve invested in a lot of technical resources to continue to drive the adoption in some of the larger metropolitan areas that are a little further behind,” Witkowski explained. This kind of technical enablement—funded, aligned, and embedded—is procurement’s footprint in the field.
Every high-growth category is guided by a commercial and operational roadmap. Procurement leads supplier capability development, secures continuity across cycles, and drives adoption in complex environments—where growth depends not on price but on technical credibility and compliance alignment.
Category Governance Is the Next Procurement Discipline
For CPOs and VPs managing performance-bound inputs—regulated components, ESG-qualified materials, engineered subassemblies—Core & Main’s strategy offers a clear signal: category ownership must evolve. Procurement needs to move from oversight to orchestration. From cost-focused management to pre-emptive, value-building governance.
When category growth is planned, structured, and sequenced from the outset—as it is here—procurement becomes an infrastructure builder. That’s the shift: not category management, but category architecture. If sourcing teams are still evaluating supplier performance after the fact, they’re too late. In spec-bound, high-stakes categories, the margin is in the design. And procurement needs to be the one designing it.