FAST vs FICO Comparison

Fastenal began as an industrial retailer, expanding its product portfolio from nuts and bolts to cutting tools, safety equipment, and janitorial supplies. It transitioned into a distributor by building out a dense network of branches close to its business customers. Once a customer becomes large enough, Fastenal installs vending machines and its own personnel on-site. Today, these on-site locations exceed Fastenal's branch count and remain the firm's main focus for expansion. Fastenal acts as a one-stop outsourcing partner for its industrial customers, offering value-added services along with a wide breadth of maintenance, repair, and operations supplies.

Founded in 1956, Fair Isaac Corporation is a leading applied analytics company. Fair Isaac is primarily known for its FICO credit scores, which is a widely used industry benchmark to determine the creditworthiness of an individual consumer. The firm's US-centric credit scores business accounts for most of the firm's profits and consists of business-to-business and business-to-consumer services. In addition to scores, Fair Isaac also sells software primarily to financial institutions for areas such as analytics, decision-making, customer workflows, and fraud.