As tariff volatility keeps growing in 2025, Core & Main offers a tactical case in preemptive sourcing, domestic mix leverage, and cost pass-through discipline, revealing how procurement can actively defend margin without stalling growth.
In Brief:
• 85% of Core & Main’s volume is domestically sourced, buffering direct tariff exposure across categories
• Inventory builds were strategically timed to blunt supplier cost hikes before they hit operations
• Procurement teams maintained price pass-through discipline without margin erosion or availability risk
When Trade Disruption Hits, Procurement Moves First
With tariff uncertainty once again reshaping cost structures in 2025, Core & Main’s procurement function hasn’t waited for impacts to hit, it’s absorbed, neutralized, and preempted them. The company’s real-time response highlights an operational model in which sourcing architecture is the first, and most effective, line of defense.
“Approximately 85% of our sales are products that are domestically manufactured and distributed,” CFO Robyn Bradbury stated, positioning the company to sidestep direct fallout from trade friction. For the remaining 15%, where imports or components face risk, a secondary layer of defense is already in place: “there is usually a domestic alternative.”
This isn’t a static footprint advantage — it’s a deliberately maintained procurement buffer. With tariff-related cost increases starting to flow from suppliers, Core & Main took action upstream: “We definitely took an opportunity to bring in some extra inventory… to mitigate against some potential increases,” CEO Mark Witkowski explained. That move reflects a high-agility sourcing posture, one in which tactical inventory builds act as temporal shock absorbers against sudden shifts in cost base.
Margin Control Without Market Retreat
What makes this approach notable is not just that procurement absorbed tariff friction, but that it did so while maintaining customer-facing pricing alignment and safeguarding gross margin. “We are actively working with our suppliers to mitigate any supply chain disruption and we have taken pricing actions to the extent necessary,” said Witkowski. That balance, between containment and pass-through, reveals a mature pricing governance model tightly coupled to sourcing intelligence.
Even as indirect pressures emerged, the procurement team ensured that any unavoidable increases were handled with clarity: “We are starting to see some tariff-related cost increases from our suppliers, and we expect to pass through these costs as we have done historically,” Bradbury noted. No margin panic. No operational squeeze. Just continuity, strategically orchestrated.
What This Reveals About Strategic Procurement in 2025
This is not a tariff story. It’s a story about procurement architecture that’s built to bend, not break. Core & Main’s margin continuity under trade pressure is the result of three interlocking capabilities: a domestic-first sourcing footprint, dynamic inventory timing, and a pricing model engineered for real-world volatility.
For global manufacturers facing exposure across metals, chemicals, tech components, or packaging, the takeaway is direct: cost control isn’t achieved by locking in price, it’s enabled by designing sourcing systems that can flex across time, mix, and geography. If procurement isn’t operating with this level of foresight and cross-functional orchestration, margin exposure isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.