WIS International

What if the most crucial data for a retailer wasn't sales figures, but an accurate count of what's on the shelves? This is the story of WIS International, a company built on the simple, yet critical, need for accurate inventory. The journey begins with two separate entities. In 1953, Jack Washington founded Washington Inventory Services in San Diego, creating the first inventory company with national coverage in the US. Fourteen years later, in 1967, Ray Wesenberg established Western Inventory Services in Vancouver, achieving the same feat in Canada. Both companies solved a fundamental problem for retailers: providing a reliable, third-party verification of physical inventory against records. Their paths eventually converged. After decades of independent growth and technological evolution, from manual transcription to barcode scanning, the two companies unified in 2005 under the single name WIS International, leveraging their shared acronym. This created a dominant force in North American inventory services. The business attracted private equity, and in 2003, was acquired by ONCAP. The firm later sold WIS to American Capital Strategies in 2007 for US$411 million. The company's journey of consolidation continued, culminating in the major 2021 acquisition of its competitor, RGIS, which positioned WIS International as the world's largest inventory services provider.