F.W. Webb Co.’s owner, emeritus President and CEO John D. Pope died Jan. 9 at the age of 86. Pope had been in poor health recently with Parkinson’s disease, but continued business as usual coming at the company headquarters in Bedford, Mass. He led F.W. Webb for more than five decades — longer than any other previous owner or leader in the company’s 151-year history.
John Pope was a visionary who embraced emerging technology as a way of ensuring customers always received the best products, services, solutions and expertise. In 1962, F.W. Webb was among the first wholesale suppliers in the industry to adopt computerized inventory management. Among the other innovations he spearheaded to keep the company on the cutting edge was the establishment in 1973 of a novel yet unproven concept for wholesalers – central distribution (CD) warehousing.