About us
Who We Are
Since 1974, 1st Ayd has been a family-owned American manufacturer and B2B distributor of maintenance, safety, janitorial and industrial supplies. Today, our 130+ person outside sales force serves customers throughout the Midwest and across the United States, backed by a product offering of more than 100,000 items — including over 100 products we manufacture ourselves. We help maintenance departments, manufacturers, food processors, automotive facilities and other businesses consolidate purchasing with one dependable source for the products they use every day — just ask our customers.
Our product line includes chemicals, brake cleaners, hand cleaners, gloves and PPE, degreasers, disinfectants, paper products, trash liners, wipers, floor and carpet care, hose clamps, wheel weights, fasteners, sanitizers, deodorants, mops, LED lighting, material handling equipment, tools and much more.
More than 98% of our stocked orders ship the same day, with most arriving the next business day. We also manufacture over 100 liquid and powdered cleaning products in-house, giving us greater control over quality, availability and value.
We remain proudly family-owned, customer-focused and built around personal service. Learn why the Chicago Tribune has repeatedly recognized 1st Ayd as a Top Workplace.
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The Manufacturer's Edge
Most distributors sell what someone else decides to make, at a price someone else decides to charge. We're not most distributors.
Alongside our 100,000+ item catalog, we manufacture more than 100 liquid and powdered cleaning products ourselves — the same chemicals our sales reps sell, formulated, batched and quality-checked by our own team. That dual identity, distributor and manufacturer, isn't a side project. It's the edge our whole business runs on.
For customers, it means supply that doesn't disappear when a single supplier has a bad quarter — we control our own production, so a shortage upstream doesn't have to become your downtime. It means quality we can trace back to our own floor, not a vendor's spec sheet. And it means pricing that reflects what it actually costs to make something, not what three middlemen decided to mark it up along the way.
For supplier partners, it makes us a different kind of customer too — one that understands raw materials, production scheduling and formulation from the inside, because we live it ourselves every day.
"We don't just distribute the products American businesses run on. We manufacture a lot of them."
Our Purpose
How We Help Customers
Cheaper. Better. Faster.
We think of ourselves as assistant buyers for our customers. Our job is to help you:
We don't just sell products — we help you find better ways to get the job done. And because we manufacture a real piece of what we sell, we have more room to work with on price and more control over whether it shows up on time.
What Makes 1st Ayd Different?
Personal service backed by serious capability.
Our owners are still out in the field, talking with customers and seeing firsthand what's happening on the shop floor. With our 130+ person outside sales force, you have a knowledgeable local resource who can visit your facility, identify problems, and recommend solutions — backed by a company with 100,000+ products, in-house manufacturing, fast fulfillment and five decades of industry experience.
"Family-owned agility combined with a 100,000+ product catalog and 98% same-day shipping."
Our Culture
Open-book. No ivory towers. Built by people who work.
We're a family-owned company, but "family" isn't a slogan on a wall — it's how we run the place. Whether you're on the warehouse floor, on the phone with a customer, closing the books, or closing a sale, you're expected to understand the business and empowered to make calls that improve it. That goes for someone's first week as much as their twentieth year.
Our History
It Started With Blue Soap
Tom Schreiner Sr. founded 1st Ayd in 1974 with a simple product and an entrepreneurial idea. He developed a blue hand cleaner strong enough to cut grease, glue, paint and grime — and started driving from service station to service station, handing out samples and selling cases out of the trunk of his car.
The product worked, and word got around.
At one stop, Tom met a young man named Jim Evans pumping gas. Around 7 p.m. Tom drove off — and when he passed the same station near 7 a.m. the next morning, Jim was still there, hard at work. Impressed by his work ethic, Tom invited Jim to join him selling soap, promising he could make twice the money for half the hours. Jim said yes, and the two of them started building the business together.
Customers who bought the soap started asking for more — a case of brake cleaner here, a box of trash bags there. One product became a handful. A handful became a full line. What began with two salesmen, a car and a case of blue soap grew into the 1st Ayd of today.
The Next Generation
Tommy Schreiner started at 1st Ayd the way most of the warehouse team does. In 2008, he began working summers in the 1st Ayd warehouse — packaging soap, labeling brooms, picking orders and filing invoices. After graduating high school in 2010, he moved into outside sales while attending Illinois State University, cold-calling door to door to build a book of business that didn't exist yet.
His first week was rough — five days without a sale, and he'd told himself he'd walk away from sales if that streak didn't break. Then, around 4 p.m. on the fifth day, an auto repair shop in Des Plaines, Illinois placed an order. He kept going, eventually building his customer base almost entirely from scratch, and today helps lead 1st Ayd into its next chapter.
He brings that up not for the résumé, but because it's why this place runs the way it does. He's packed the soap. He's eaten the cold-call rejections. He knows what it takes to earn a customer, and what it takes to fill an order correctly at 4:45 on a Friday. Every department's grind is one he's either done himself or watched up close — and that shapes how the company builds its culture: open-book, frugal, always improving, no ivory tower.
Our history shapes our future. As we keep growing, we're grateful to the employees, sales representatives, suppliers and — most of all — the customers who have helped build 1st Ayd over more than five decades.
Explore Highlights From Our History →