FAST vs SE 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.

Sea started as a gaming business, Garena, but in 2015 expanded into e-commerce. Sea operates Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce company, Shopee, in terms of gross merchandise value. Shopee is a hybrid consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer marketplace platform operating in Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brazil. For Garena, Free Fire is the key revenue-generating game. Sea's third business, Monee, provides lending, payment, digital banking, and insurance services. As of March 2025, Forrest Li, the founder, chair, and CEO, owned 59.1% of the voting power. Tencent owned 18.5% of issued shares with no voting power.