Collaborating for a stronger HVACR industry

HARDI works alongside leading industry organizations to create a unified front that advances the interests of the wholesale HVACR channel. Together, we inform lawmakers to shape better policies, collaborate on top-tier training and educational programs that serve our respective memberships, and foster environments that encourage open communication and idea sharing. By aligning our efforts, we strengthen the industry, ensuring a more innovative, efficient, and prosperous future for all stakeholders.

Our History

Wholesaling matured at different times for different types of merchandise in North America. Food and apparel wholesalers were well established in the 19th century. However, today’s mechanical products were not possible until the development of the small electric motor in the early part of the 20th century.

The market for refrigerators began in the 1920s and in the early 1930s for store display cases – hence the emergence of the Refrigeration Parts Association in 1935, which in 1958 became the Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Wholesalers (ARW).

In the late 1940s, heating wholesalers formed their own organization, the National Heating Wholesalers Association, to focus on the business of national distribution of lighter weight steel furnaces in the post-war building boom. By the 1960s this association was renamed Northamerican Heating & Air-conditioning Wholesalers Association (NHAW).

As the exponential growth period for many products gave way to maturity, the HVACR industry entered into an era of excess production capacity. For manufacturers, this led to mergers, acquisitions and closed doors. The 100 furnace manufacturers of the 1960s became just a handful by the 1990s. Channel power shifted from the manufacturer to the customer.

For wholesalers, too, real growth often came by increasing market share at the expense of another wholesaler, merging and acquiring other wholesalers and moving horizontally to handle other related products – air-conditioning wholesalers might expand into refrigeration and vice versa. As technology issues helped drive the merger of contractor, engineering and manufacturer associations in the 50s and 60s, pure distribution issues in the 90s helped inspire the two major HVACR wholesale trade groups to take a more collaborative approach.

In 2003, Northamerican Heating, Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Wholesalers (NHRAW) and Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Wholesalers International (ARWI) consolidated forming Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI).