Intercounty Appliance, a chapter of the mighty NECO Alliance buying cooperative and a member of the BrandSource buying group, has opened a second warehouse to better serve its 83 tech and appliance dealers and pave the way for market expansion.
Like its fellow NECO chapters, Intercounty leverages its own distribution centers (DCs) to make low-cost, container-size buys, and to relieve independent dealers of inventory overhead while providing same-day deliveries of small-lot orders.
See: NECO Plays In The Big Leagues By Wielding Its Warehouses
The new 208,000-square-foot facility, located in Burlington, N.J., also marks the start of a five-year expansion plan for Intercounty, which already extends from New Hampshire to Virginia.
The plan includes an aggressive, dealer-specific digital marketing and advertising strategy designed to extend Intercounty’s reach into new markets in in Virginia and Maryland.
John Graff, director of merchandising and marketing, said the initiative follows three years of “exponential growth,” when the group’s appliance business expanded at two to three times the industry average.
“We went from being a warehouse group to a marketing group within the last three years,” Graff said. “That is our success story.”
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To build on that momentum, Intercounty added the second warehouse after outgrowing its 250,000-square-foot headquarters and distribution facility in Medford, N.Y.
The new state-of-the-art DC, located outside Philadelphia along the main I-95 corridor, is “a more centrally located warehouse,” said president Bud Gerhard, allowing the chapter “to add dealers in Virginia and Maryland markets and offer better service to our Southern dealers.”
Intercounty was founded in 1972 and helped form NECO in 1997 under the leadership of former president/CEO Jay Lebowitz, who was instrumental in bringing rival Northeast dealer groups together under a cooperative umbrella.
Fellow NECO chapters include Appliance Dealers Co-op (ADC), Dynamic Marketing (DMI) and the New England Appliances and Electronics Group (NEAEG).
