Company History
Mel Scheib and Company opened their doors on December 31, 1952 as a pipe, valve and fitting distributor located at West Boulevard and Rapid Street with three employees. In 1959 the company moved to 808 Philadelphia Street followed by changing its name to Northwest Pipe Fittings in June of 1961. Succeeding the 1972 flood Northwest Pipe needed to move and built at its current location on the south side of the Omaha and Deadwood Avenue intersection.W.R. “Bob” Barbour led the company for 48 years after becoming President in 1956 by taking out a second mortgage on his home in order to purchase stock in the company. Majority ownership of the company was shared with Mr. Bob Kuhns who was a pipe fitting supplier from Ohio until his death in 1997 at which time, majority ownership transferred to Bob Barbour, his son Scott and daughter LeeAnn Rieman and their families. Scott moved the company to its second generation after joining Northwest Pipe in 1983 and succeeded Bob as the company’s President in 2004. Involvement of Scott’s sons and son-in-law in the daily operations has brought the company into its third generation!
Our Core Values
The core values that were instilled in the company by Bob Barbour early on of providing customers with excellent service, a broad and extensive availability of products in stock, and knowledgeable, experienced personnel have continued to this day. Additionally, he believed that the company should be involved in and contribute back to the communities that they operated in.Over the years Northwest Pipe has grown from serving customers in the five-state region surrounding its single Rapid City location, to 20 locations serving plumbing and industrial contractors and customers throughout the Dakotas, MN, NE, WY, and MT.
The company’s product offering has also grown from the initial pipe, valves and fittings to include plumbing fixtures, water well pumps and supplies, hydronic heating equipment and accessories and more recently turf irrigation products. Northwest Pipe provides the products that take water through a complete cycle of pumping it out of the ground, distributing it for use through pipes, faucets and fixtures and then putting it back into the ground with turf irrigation. “If it touches water, odds are Northwest Pipe carries it.”
Northwest Pipe now employs 44 people and has been a supporter of the local community through involvement in various ways over the years at Ellsworth AFB, Mt Rushmore, Economic Development, Western Dakota Tech, and the Chamber of Commerce. Other local involvement includes supporting United Way, Storybook Island, Children’s Home Society and multiple other local non-profit agencies and organizations.
