Legends opens East Coast warehouse
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, January 26, 2009
LEXINGTON, N.C. — Case goods source Legends Furniture has opened an East Coast warehouse here and is considering a future manufacturing plant in North Carolina.
On Jan. 5, the Arizona-based company began shipping from a warehouse here operated by Shelba D. Johnson Trucking. Legends is using about 50,000 square feet of the facility.
The North Carolina facility will carry 90% of the company's import and domestic line. It will receive goods from the Phoenix-area factory and also from a warehouse in Yantian, China, which mixes product from seven factories in southern China.
Tim Donk, Legends' director of marketing, said the company wants to boost its East Coast business in 2009 and beyond.
“We have been considered a West Coast vendor,” he said. “Our numbers have not been where they could be on the East Coast. Eighty percent of our business is done where 20% of the population is and 20% of our business is where 80% of the population is.”
He said that “realistically, we can double our business on the East Coast in 2009” with the North Carolina warehouse, although he declined to reveal sales figures.
Previously, goods were shipped to East Coast customers from China or from the company's Phoenix-area warehouse. Donk said the North Carolina facility will cut shipping times dramatically, allowing retailers in the East to receive goods in a matter of days.
In the past, it could take three weeks or more from the time of order to get the product to the East Coast customer from Phoenix, partly because the company needed to load full truckloads heading in that direction.
With the North Carolina warehouse, the company has been getting the goods to the customer in six or seven days, because of shorter driving distances and the fact that Legends is shipping the goods on less-than-truckload carriers.
“We're very excited to be able to provide this level of service to our customers in the Eastern states,” said Legends Furniture President Rick Schmidgall.
Eventually, the company may open a manufacturing facility in the High Point area. Legends, which has a 180-worker plant in Tolleson, Ariz., has contacted North Carolina economic development officials about its plans and has scouted locations along the Interstate 40/85 corridor near Mebane, N.C.
The plant might be smaller than the one in Arizona, but it would produce goods from raw materials, versus just finishing and assembly.
“We would do the product start to finish,” Donk said, adding that it was too soon to reveal further specifics about the project.
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