Orgill invests in sales force and facilities
If you follow Orgill, you’ve probably heard of the plans for a new 500,000 square foot concept center going up adjacent to the company’s headquarters.
But that’s not the only big plan in the works for the Collierville, Tennessee-based hardlines distributor that serves more than 12,000 hardware store, home center, lumber dealers. The company said it is busy recruiting and developing additional field salespeople, while expanding and upgrading its infrastructure.
For Orgill, which is hosting its Fall Online Buying Event now through Aug. 13, it starts with people.
“As our business has grown and the needs of our customers have grown, we definitely recognize the need to grow our sales team, and that’s exactly what we are working to do in the coming months,” said David Mobley, Orgill executive vice president of sales.
To accommodate for Orgill’s growth during the last three years, the company announced that it will be making an investment to expand its field sales team by as much as 10%. Currently, more than 400 sales professionals serve as business consultants to the retailers they work with, keeping them up to date on the latest industry trends, products and services that can help them grow their operations, according to Mobley.
“We really put an emphasis on consultative selling,” Mobley says. “We want our team of sales professionals to serve as an extension of our customers’ businesses—an extra set of eyes and ears to help them find ways to grow and improve their operations.”
A DC upgrade in Tifton
Along these same lines, Orgill’s investment in building a new, 800,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art distribution facility in Tifton, Georgia, has been taking shape over the summer as construction on the new facility is well underway.
This new distribution center will replace Orgill’s existing Tifton facility that was opened in 1995.
“One of the most important commitments we fulfill is to get our customers the products they need, when they need them, and at a price that is going to help them maintain and grow their profitability,” says Boyden Moore, Orgill president and CEO. “Having an efficient, state-of-the-art distribution network is central to our ability to fulfill this commitment.”
Not only will the new facility add an additional 150,000 square feet of capacity beyond what the former Tifton facility offered, but it will also include leading-edge distribution technology to streamline the order receiving and fulfillment process, according to Randy Williams, Orgill executive vice president of distribution.
From the utilization of robots to the installation of a new goods-to-person picking system, Orgill is embracing the latest in distribution technology in its future plans.
“We are taking advantage of every opportunity to build technology and new distribution techniques into this facility that will help us create efficiencies for both our team and our customers,” Williams says. “The investments we are making in this facility will ultimately help us get products to our customers more efficiently.”
Construction on the new facility is expected to be completed in early 2024 and Orgill customers will begin to receive orders from the new facility during the first quarter.
In addition to the new construction in Tifton, over the past two years, Orgill added 1.3 million square feet of warehouse space when it opened its new Rome, New York, distribution center in 2021 and expanded its Hurricane, Utah, distribution center in 2022.
Orgill now operates eight distribution centers in North America with 6.7 million square feet of capacity and more than 75,000 SKUs in each distribution center.
A cool concept
In addition to the enhancements Orgill is making in 2023 to its distribution network and sales force, Orgill also is looking for new ways to expand the idea of what a distributor can offer retailers in terms of concepts and ideas for growth.
Earlier this year, Orgill announced plans to expand its campus in Collierville, Tennessee. A large part of the expansion will include the ground-up construction of a new, 500,000-square foot Concept Center.
Orgill has broken ground on the project and once completed, the new facility will replace Orgill’s existing, 250,000-square-foot Concept Center located in Olive Branch, Mississippi.
“We hope to use the new Concept Center to do everything from hosting customer events and vendor conferences to opening it up for industry events or customer functions,” said John Sieggreen, Orgill executive vice president of retail. “We see this serving as a central hub for a lot of our customer and vendor interactions and becoming a significant addition to our other regular events where we showcase our programs and services, like our Dealer Market and four annual Online Buying Events.”
