Fastenal opened its first fastener store in 1967 in Winona, Minnesota. Since then, Fastenal has greatly expanded its footprint as well as its products and services. Today, Fastenal serves its 400,000 active customers through approximately 2,200 stores, 950 on-site locations, and 14 distribution centers. Since 1993, the company has added other product categories, but fasteners remain its largest category at about 35% of sales. Fastenal also offers customers supply-chain solutions, such as vending and vendor-managed inventory.

Mettler-Toledo supplies weighing and precision instruments to customers in the life sciences (50% of sales), industrial (42%), and food retail industries. Its products include laboratory and retail scales, pipettes, pH meters, thermal analysis equipment, titrators, metal detectors, and X-ray analyzers. Mettler leads the market for weighing instrumentation and controls more than 50% of the market for lab balances.

Booking is the world’s largest online travel agency by revenue, offering booking services for hotel and vacation rooms, airline tickets, rental cars, restaurant reservations, cruises, experiences, and other vacation packages. The company operates a number of branded travel booking sites, including Priceline.com, Booking.com, Agoda, OpenTable, and Rentalcars.com, and has expanded into travel media with the acquisitions of Kayak and Momondo. Transaction fees for online bookings account for the bulk of revenue and profits.

Intuit develops and markets well-known and trusted software products such as QuickBooks for small-business accounting, TurboTax for preparing personal tax returns, and Mint for managing personal finances. The firm is targeting the additional needs of small businesses with payroll and payment processing products in addition to growing its self-employed user base. Intuit was founded in 1983 and is based in Mountain View, California.