The rumor mill has been well fed with big portions of The Home Depot in talks to buy Hughes Supply (see p. 1 this issue). It should come as no surprise to those in any of the seven product sectors that account for Hughes' annual sales of $4.4 billion last year. Distribution channels are converging. So are national and international markets. Yet domestic industrial product markets appear to be shrinking, as the estimate of U.S. MRO market size on the next page indicates.

Hughes and HD offer each other key strategic bridges to the future, more so than the potential HD/Grainger link that was last year's speculation. Hughes' chief competitor is Ferguson, with $6 billion in revenue, owned by European distributor Wolseley, which also owns Stock Building Supply in the U.S. ...