And so, Ron, several years ago, when we were shareholders and I wasn’t in the chair I’m in, was giving metrics around cost to serve. And at one point, it was up in the 30s, I think if I remember, and we were trying to get 1% of selling costs a year out of the business. And we — we are back in a mode where we can see line of sight to how what used to be 25% might be 15% as it relates to where we want to go in terms of total productivity out of our reps and total volume out of them. And that means that the reps going to make 30% or 40% more than what they did maybe on an average comp basis. I think it’s — where we want to be is probably — I think it’s 30% or 35% more than where they were or 40% more than where they were on an average basis a couple of years ago.
Kevin Steinke: Okay, great. That’s helpful color. I will turn it back over …
Bryan King: There’s 70 — there’s 35 new territories and there’s 35 backfills that are open efforts right now. Is that too much detail, Ron?
Ron Knutson: No, that’s fine, Bryan.
Bryan King: There’s 70 chairs that we are chasing right now, Kevin.
Kevin Steinke: That’s great. I appreciate the — all the detail as usual. I will turn it back over. I have to jump on to another call, but appreciate all the comments as usual.
Bryan King: Thanks, Kevin.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Katie Fleischer with KeyBanc Capital. Your line is live.
Katie Fleischer: Hi. Good morning. I’m on for Ken Newman today. Thanks guys.
Bryan King: Good morning, Katie.
Ron Knutson: Good morning.
Katie Fleischer: Good morning. I was wondering if you could give a little bit more color on the commentary from the government orders that drove some of the weakness in Lawson and maybe when you would expect an inflection in that.
Bryan King: Yes, I hit that in my early comments and Ron can probably give more discreteness to it. There was a change in the way that the government — every 5 or 7 years, I guess, they change their order entry program, and that’s something that could be disruptive for all of us that sell in — small piece goods into the Class C parts into the government. And then there’s also was just kind of a lot of spending that was — that we knew — that we know is out there and that we can see that’s coming towards us, but it was a pretty significant delay in some spending that took place in the first quarter. There was about equal parts between a broad set of customers across our up and down the street core business at Lawson and then government.
And the two of the — decrease from prior year first quarter for Lawson was about equally weighted to those two areas or strategic accounts were up in the first quarter versus a year ago, and that’s just continuing to grow engagement with the relationships that we’ve got there. But that was a big detractor to Lawson’s organic growth in the first quarter. Ron, do you want to …
Ron Knutson: Yes. Bryan, I would just add to that. You’re spot on in terms of the ordering system that we are now and others as well are required to go through. And it’s just a longer process, Katie. So it’s — we saw some of that decrease versus a year ago within that end segment for us. The other piece I would say is, I mean, the government, the military business is its great business for Lawson. I mean there is a high demand of the consumable Class C parts that we sell. We’ve not lost any locations, any large locations that we’ve historically seen some pretty large volumes in the past. So it’s not that we are concerned about any customer attrition around that. It’s just — it’s more timing. Our sense is that, that will come back to us for the most part throughout the rest of 2024. Certainly, it’s not an all catch up, let’s call it, in one quarter. I think it will come back gradually to us as 2024 develops.
Katie Fleischer: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just one more on test & measurement. So I know you mentioned that it’s difficult to have a really strong sense of when these markets are going to inflect just based on the limited visibility. But what are some signs that you would look for from your end markets or from your customers that would give you confidence that this demand is starting to come back?
Ron Knutson: Yes, Bryan, do you want me to touch on that one?
Bryan King: Yes. Why don’t you hit that, Ron, and — at least start it off? Thank you.
Ron Knutson: Yes. So — and Katie, Bryan had commented on this a little bit as well. When we look at that test & measurement business, even on a monthly basis as to how the first quarter developed, we — March was stronger than both January and February on a standalone basis and really was back to levels that we saw kind of in the November and December time frame. So we feel like we’ve — that business has kind of leveled off at the bottom right now. What I would say is that in the test & measurement piece for us is really kind of two separate — I divide it into two separate areas. One, TEquipment, which is one of the acquisitions that was made a year or so ago, they sell what I would say, more handheld units, lower average purchase price.
That business was up sequentially Q4 into Q1 of this year. So that’s a good sign that we continue to see down a little bit versus a year ago quarter, but sequentially up Q4 versus Q3. So I think that’s a good sign that there’s some additional demand coming back in the lower price point items. On the larger items, we continue to see some pressure there. But to my point earlier, March was the strongest month of the quarter. So for us, we are staying very connected into our customer base. Again, really no customer attrition there. It’s more that — what we are hearing from our customers is that the capital spend continues to be delayed. And the other piece, and I think we commented on this in the Q4 call, and I described it as almost the perfect storm was that perfect storm going in the wrong direction.
But the demand dried up primarily from delay of capital projects on higher interest rates, not shortly thereafter all the supply chain issues surrounding that end market were resolved. So there was a pent-up demand that came through or pent-up supply that came through and kind of mid-2023 — early to mid 2023, that release of the supply chain kind of hit squarely with the slowdown in the demand. So hopefully, that helps. But Bryan, certainly, any additional thoughts you may have on that.
Bryan King: So look, that is — I think Ron laid out a nice framework there. Katie, there — when we are looking at TestEquity and we are looking at Hisco and we are looking across that division, there was a — we hit the nadir as it turned out from what we’ve seen so far in January and February. We kind of hit the bottom of the lowest average or kind of lowest volume that we were seeing through Test & Measurement specifically. And that’s really, for us, looking at the desktop larger versions as opposed to what we are selling through TEquip or the [indiscernible] type handhelds. And Keysight and Tektronix would be our largest vendors there by far. And there was a nice kind of inflection point, it appears, but 2 months isn’t a trend because we still got lots of kind of concern about what’s going on, on the true demand side.
But some of the messiness in the channel and some of the activity in terms of quoting picked back up, and we saw by March, the revenue levels and then April stepped up again back to kind of where they were at the highest level during the 3 months of the fourth quarter, not yet by any means back to where they were in the first half of last year or even the third quarter. And so that — the nice thing is that we’ve kind of — we saw a sell-off or kind of a decline in activity. One of the things that we are also looking at is when we look at the OEM side of our engagements with Hisco, which are largely with similar type of customers and similar sort of industry verticals, we are seeing — we are seeing percentage declines in OEM programs that are still active in some of those segment markets.
