MEMPHIS — Orgill, Inc., the world’s largest independent hardlines distributor, will be expanding its network of world-class distribution facilities with the addition of an approximately half-million-square-foot distribution center in Post Falls, Idaho.

Orgill has signed an agreement to acquire the facility and is expecting to close on the purchase September 1.

The new facility will be Orgill’s seventh full-service distribution center, in addition to locations currently operating in Tifton, Georgia; Inwood, West Virginia; Sikeston, Missouri; Hurricane, Utah; Kilgore, Texas; and London, Ontario.

“We are excited to announce this expansion to our distribution network and look forward to the enhanced efficiencies this will create for our customers as we move forward,” says Ron Beal, Orgill’s chairman, president and CEO.

The primary reason for the addition of the new Post Falls facility was to provide faster and more efficient service to Orgill’s growing customer base. The new facility will service customers in five states throughout the Northwest including Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska as well as Canadian customers in British Columbia and Alberta.

These customers had previously been served out of other Orgill distribution centers but the addition of the new facility will streamline the delivery process.

“Orgill’s investment in this distribution center will further enhance our ability to provide retailers with access to all the products, programs and services they need to compete effectively,” says Brett Hammers, Orgill’s Chief Operating Officer.

Following the completion of the purchase, Orgill will begin retrofitting the facility and expects to be fully operational and serving customers in these states by March 31, 2017.

About Orgill, Inc.
Orgill, Inc. is the world’s largest independently owned hardlines distributor providing retailers across the United States and in more than 60 countries throughout the world access to over 75,000 products and industry-leading retail services. Operating seven distribution centers representing over four million square feet of warehouse space, as well as three export consolidation facilities, Orgill distributes hardware and home improvement products to hardware, home improvement and building material retailers of all types and sizes.

House-Hasson Hardware likes what it saw at summer market

Sales territory expansions and sales staff additions in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio helped to propel House-Hasson Hardware’s June dealer market to the highest ever-attendance for the company’s summer market.

The event held at the Wilderness of the Smokies Resort in Sevierville, Tenn., just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Attendance, which is normally around 2,000, was up at least 10%

“We’re very pleased,” said Don Hasson, president of House-Hasson Hardware. “Our geographical area expanded into Louisiana when we acquired Long-Lewis Hardware (formerly headquartered in Birmingham, Ala.). We’ve added salesmen in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and those areas are showing solid growth.”

Amish customer base is just one of the areas where House-Hasson moves are paying off, the company says.

Hasson said the targeted areas were central Pennsylvania; Ohio north of Columbus, the state’s capital city; and around Baton Rouge, La.

“Adding territories is working well,” Hasson said. “A significant percentage of our growth in past years was through acquisitions, but it’s to the point at which there aren’t that many independents available to acquire. Our strategy is changing somewhat to accelerate growth through even greater store sales for our dealers and by adding territories.

“For example,” Hasson said, “we’ve had an expanding presence for years among Amish dealers, and we saw a strong increase in Amish dealer attendance as a result of our expanded focus in Ohio. Overall, we’re very pleased with everything we’re seeing across our entire region.”

Hasson said market attendance is influenced by dealers liking the discounted deals available at the company’s three annual markets and because the events are set up to be enjoyable for dealers and their families.

“Another aspect is that there are a smaller number of independent distributors,” Hasson said. “We’re one of the very few independents that can take care of everything from the front to back of the store, and everything around it.”

House-Hasson’s next market is scheduled for October 20-22, 2016, again at the Sevierville Events Center, Sevierville, Tenn.

Industry leaders, manufacturers and retailers spent last week scouring for new products, attending educational seminars and connecting with peers at the National Hardware Show in Las Vegas.

The Show began Wednesday and ended Friday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The event featured thousands of exhibitors and attracted more than 20,000 attendees.

Show areas that highlighted new products, such as Inventors Spotlight and the Featured Product Gallery, attracted crowds of people looking for new items to sell and wanting to stay abreast of up-and-coming industry trends.

The Show partnered with the North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA), the association presenting its All-Industry Conference on the Show floor. The conference offered seminars on topics such as the state of the economy and how to compete with Walmart.

Many companies and retailers were honored at the Show, presented with awards recognizing innovation, business acumen and retailing vision. The awards included the Industry’s Top Gun Awards, which NRHA presented to recognize the work of four of the industry’s best independent home improvement retailers.

The Show offered fun, too – attendees enjoyed food fresh off the grills in the Tailgate, Backyard & BBQ area. There were even celebrity sightings as well, with Bob Vila greeting crowds at the Viatek booth and signing autographs.

By adding a Canadian company into its operations, Orgill is broadening its available product assortment, increasing buying power, improving sales support and offering more competitive pricing to Canadian customers.

Customers are already noticing a difference. Ken Meier, hardware purchaser for Warman Home Centre in Warman, Saskatchewan, is seeing better fill rates, competitive pricing and a simpler way to do business.

“Before, I was purchasing products both from Orgill and another Canadian supplier,” Meier says. “Now, I’ve been able to switch all of my purchasing to Orgill. They can fill anything I carry.”

Orgill had already opened up new opportunities to Warman Home Centre over the past several years, and the service is only getting better.

“We keep finding those products that are new and different from anything else we carry,” Meier says. “Orgill’s Dealer Markets have been crucial for us to see what’s new, what’s coming and how that can look in our store.

“We love looking at the model store sets to get ideas,” he says. “As a retailer, you should never stop changing. If you do, you’ll die. Orgill helps us keep changing.”

Orgill’s expanded presence in Canada has come as a result of its acquisition of the assets of Chalifour Canada, a former distribution arm of TIM-BR MART Group.

As part of transitioning Chalifour into Orgill’s fold, Orgill established Orgill Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of Orgill, Inc.

The purchase was finalized Oct. 1, 2015, and launched a companywide effort to shift Chalifour into Orgill’s existing operations as part of the new Orgill Canada.

Teams of Orgill employees have worked as quickly as possible to make the transition happen seamlessly, without disrupting service to any Canadian customers.

With the acquisition, Orgill instantly got a London, Ontario, distribution center and brought on board more than 250 new employees, hundreds of new vendors and over 1,000 new customers across Canada.

Read more HERE

GET THE NEW METALTECH APP ON YOUR IPHONE OR IPAD TODAY

We are excited to announce the first Metaltech App!

Install this new tool on your iPhone or iPad to calculate the scaffolding frames, braces, platforms, wall attachments, levelling jacks, and guardrails needed to cover any size wall. Just enter your wall size, frame size, brace length and number of platforms per deck. The Metaltech App calculates your list of material (BOM).

• You will be able to share the results to any contacts as well as, with just a click of a button, request a quote from Metaltech’s customer service.
• In the pull down menu, you will find links to our Metaltech website, brochures, catalog pages and YouTube videos.

Note: An Android and a Metaltech website based version of the calculator will soon be available, regular updates and new features are also going to be made from time to time.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Ed Marcum, Knoxville News Sentinel
Jan. 31, 2016

The Internet has replaced the train and the horse for connecting with customers, but a lot of things about the hardware business are not that different from when Knoxville’s House-Hasson Hardware Co. formed more than a century ago.

People still need nuts, bolts, nails and tools, although the ways of getting these things to them are a lot different now, said Don Hasson, House-Hasson president.

Now, the independent hardware stores served by House-Hasson can make use of a website customized to their stores that displays the more than 50,000 items House-Hasson keeps in stock at its Forks of the River warehouse/headquarters, he said.

“So, Sloan’s Hardware, down in Madisonville, can look like a really big deal on their website,” he said. “You can go click 50,000 items on their website and buy them, and our program is a ship-to-the-store program. So, a customer buys a Skilsaw, and goes down to Sloan’s store and picks it up, which keeps the store in the loop.”

House-Hasson Hardware is marking its 110th year. The company formed in 1906 when C.S. Hasson, Sam House and 12 other employees of Knoxville-based hardware company C.M. McClung left that company to start their own.

They developed the business by sending out salespeople to establish territories. The “railroad men” went by rail and worked the towns along the way. The “bush men” would arrive somewhere by train, rent a horse and explore trails in search of remote communities served by a general store.

Since those days, House-Hasson has grown to become the fifth-largest wholesale hardware distributor in the country. In December, the Hardware and Building Supply Dealer online industry magazine named Hasson one of its People of the Year in the home-improvement industry.

The article noted that House-Hasson had done a major acquisition that allowed it to make a significant expansion. In 2015, House-Hasson acquired the Alabama-based Long-Lewis Hardware Co. distributorship, adding 500 dealers, 10 salespeople and their territories, and boosting annual sales by $30 million.

This is actually the fifth such major acquisition the company has made since he joined it in 1973, Hasson said. These included Paris Dunlap Hardware, in Gainesville, Ga., in 1988; Alabama-based Sheffield Hardware in 1997; West Virginia-based Persinger Supply Co. in 2007; and Alabama-based Moore-Handley Inc. in 2007.

The Persinger Supply acquisition gave House-Hasson a facility in Huntington, W.Va., and Moore-Handley was actually a larger company than House-Hasson. Currently, House-Hasson has about 500 employees between its Knoxville and West Virginia locations, and serves a network of about 3,000 hardware dealers and lumberyards in Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi, Florida and the Caribbean islands.

“When I started in 1973, we were at $15 million, and this year we will go over $200 million,” Hasson said. “So, those acquisitions have been right helpful along the way.”

The Long-Lewis acquisition will allow House-Hasson to get into new markets in Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida panhandle, he said.

As House-Hasson has picked up stores and territories in new areas, it has developed some diverse customers. Each year, the company holds a dealers’ conference in which it gathers as many dealers as possible to check out new merchandise and to mingle. In the past few years, there have been more and more dealers from Amish communities.

“If you had been to our dealers’ market in Nashville, you would have seen a lot of black shirts and black pants and flat hats, because they have become a significant part of our customer base — maybe 15 to 20 percent,” Hasson said. “They make quite an appearance at one of these markets.”

The bulk of House-Hasson clients are independent hardware stores in rural areas, and its salespeople have encountered more Amish communities as they have moved into Pennsylvania and Ohio, Hasson said. His company has had to be flexible, he said. The Amish have different attitudes about what kinds of tools are suitable. Some won’t use power tools, but others do.

“They are different from town to town, and it depends on the patriarch of their group,” Hasson said. “We have some who use computers and communicate to us with computers. We have some who don’t even allow electricity in their stores. We have some who will drive a car and some who won’t drive a car. We have some who drive horse-drawn buggies.”

Getting Amish customers to attend the dealers’ convention in Nashville was a bit of a challenge. Some of the Amish dealers would not drive a vehicle, but did not object to going as passengers, so House-Hasson chartered a bus to take them from Pennsylvania to Nashville.

Dealers from the Caribbean make up nearly 20 percent of House-Hasson customers, Hasson said. The dealers’ market in Nashville saw a good representation of people from Belize, St. Johns, Nassau and other Caribbean locales.

“We had a real good bunch of folks who had never seen snow before,” Hasson said. “One of them even got out there and made a butterfly.”

House-Hasson moved into the Caribbean market about 18 years ago. Three salespeople cover the territory by air, working out of Florida.

The Caribbean is an interesting market because it has no “big box” stores, which are usually the arch competitors to House-Hasson’s dealers, Hasson said.

“You don’t see Home Depot and Lowe’s out in the Caribbean. They’re just not there,” Hasson said. “So the hardware stores can be ‘the guy.'”

One of the largest House-Hasson accounts there is Al Thompson’s Home Depot, on Grand Cayman.

The 130,000 square-foot store is a giant in its locale, Hasson said.

“And he was named Home Depot before there was a Home Depot so he just kept the name. He has done very well,” Hasson said.

Much of House-Hasson’s success has been because of its efforts in helping its independent hardware store clients compete against big-box retailers, Hasson said. Custom websites linked to the House-Hasson website, custom marketing programs, help with social media efforts and other types of assistance have been crucial, he said.

But, even with so much being done to help stores make use of the Internet to compete, sometimes it’s still necessary to do things the old-fashioned way. Maybe not with trains and horses, but close.

“We still make a paper catalog for about 20 Amish customers,” Hasson said.

http://www.knoxnews.com/business/house-hasson-hardware-cos-growth-connects-new-and-old-ways-2a2ea0b5-75b6-0190-e053-0100007fb252-367015101.html

The market for meat snacks is hot, with more consumers choosing jerky and proteins over chips and carbs, said Troy Link, CEO of Link Snacks.

“We have been on-trend with all the low-carb, low-fat diets,” said Link. “We are definitely a better-for-you snack. We are very fulfilling and when you eat a bag of beef jerky you are full.”

Link Snacks is the largest manufacturer of meat snacks worldwide with sales over $1 billion. The company currently operates 11 manufacturing and distribution facilities in four countries and has sales in more than 40 countries. Link Snacks’ portfolio of brands includes Jack Link’s, Matador, Squatch, World Kitchens, Bifi and Pepperami.

Troy joined the family business in 1988 while still in high school to work with Link Snacks’ founder, his father and namesake to the company’s leading brand, Jack Link. Troy was named vice president of sales and marketing in 1996 before being named president in 2003 and then CEO in 2013.

Link said the majority of the company’s sales are domestic, but jerky is starting to translate to international markets like South America and Asia, as the company cultivates the brand overseas.

“We’ve got a lot of teaching to do,” said Link, about his foreign opportunities. “Eating dried meat in some of those companies is a different dynamic so we have to use our marketing to teach them the benefits of eating better-for-you protein snacks.”