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After purchasing inventory from Hardware Distribution Warehouses (HDW) and hiring several of its salespeople, House-Hasson Hardware is planning a 100,000-square-foot expansion of its warehouse in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In total, House-Hasson will spend approximately $10 million to acquire the HDW inventory and expand its Knoxville facility to 500,000 square feet.
HDW announced in January that it would close its distribution facilities and begin liquidating all assets.
“We’ve added eight former salesmen, which is growing our customer base in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas,” says Don Hasson, president of House-Hasson. “With their territorial knowledge and our focus on store dealer profitability, they’re having an immediate impact; we’ve quickly added 200 new hardware store and lumberyard customers.”
When complete, House-Hasson will have 750,000 square feet of warehouse space from its expanded Knoxville facility and its existing warehouse in Prichard, West Virginia, which recently underwent a 50,000 square foot expansion and modernization renovation.
“Last year’s Prichard expansion is serving us well because it’s better able to serve our customers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states to the north,” Hasson says. “As our customer base grows in the west, we may look at a distribution center somewhere in that region, but that’s not in our plans at the moment.”
Pat McCutcheon, House-Hasson’s vice president of sales, says HDW’s former customers can now benefit from House-Hasson’s inventory of 50,000 distinct products, advanced POS and ordering systems and its electronic marketing program.
“HDW was, in many cases, a secondary supplier to dealers, but House-Hasson can be their primary supplier, which saves them time and money,” McCutcheon says.
Construction on the Knoxville warehouse is expected to be finished this summer. Until then, the inventory purchased from HDW will be split between House-Hasson’s Tennessee and West Virginia facilities.
House-Hasson, the largest independent regional hardware distributor in the U.S., employs 366 people in Knoxville and about 100 in Prichard, according to the company. It serves roughly 2,500 customers in 22 states and the Caribbean Basin.
