By STAN BULLARD
4:30 am, July 12, 2010
As home building dries up, supplier dips toe into appliance waters
Edelman diversifies with lineup of luxury items
Sheldon Edelman, president of Edelman Plumbing & Supply Inc. of Bedford Heights, likes to recall how the family-owned company evolved into a supplier of decorative hardware, luxury kitchen and bathroom plumbing fixtures to contractors from its 1953 start as a materials supplier to hardware stores.
From once supplying 100 stores, it now supplies five as big-box retailers overwhelmed independent hardware stores, and plumbing contractors and about 80 designers became Edelman’s clientele.
Confronted by the decimation of the home-building business that made up 40% of its business just three years ago, Edelman has embarked on a new direction: adding top-end household appliances to its offerings. The company has just started offering the big-ticket luxury items to its contractors and their clients to ease their remodeling or new-home shopping chore — and hopefully yield Edelman more sales.
He hopes appliance sales someday make up half the company’s sales, although the appliance push, just launched in May, is too new to produce results.
Moreover, Mr. Edelman did not go into the effort halfway. That is no surprise, given the colorful showroom for sinks, faucets and cabinets that resembles a high-end furniture store rather than a trade showroom at Edelman’s corporate office and warehouse at 26201 Richmond Road.
Edelman displays the appliances in a new 4,000-square-foot interactive addition to its showroom, which includes kitchen displays of various manufacturers. There is even an operating kitchen designed for chef demonstrations. It’s to “show customers how things work and make some coffee,” Mr. Edelman said.
“I didn’t want to line them up so they look like little soldiers,” Mr. Edelman said. “It’s a word-of-mouth business, so I wanted everyone to have a good experience when they come here. I wanted it to look nice.”
He rebuffed requests from women to rent the central kitchen for wedding and maternity showers since it opened in March, noting, “I don’t want to be in that business.”
Nor should the approach be low-key. This is the world of $900 to $1,900 cooktops, $600 to $1,300 dishwashers, $3,800 to $6,500 outdoor grills, and $4,000 to $15,000 refrigerators.
This is a showroom suited to display wares from more than a dozen renowned manufacturers, from Bosch to Dacor, DCS, Fisher Paykel, Miele, Sub-Zero, Thermador, Wolf and Viking.
Mr. Edelman said he considered several directions to replace business he lost when the last of the new-housing business dried up in 2008. However, a friend in Florida who ordered all the plumbing to remodel his condominium tipped Mr. Edelman toward appliances by saying he would have ordered the kitchen appliances from him if he had offered them. An appliance salesman also approached Edelman about adding his line to the company’s offerings. The salesman was surprised by the answer he eventually got.
“I think that to be in the business you have to be all the way into the business,” Mr. Edelman said. “I got all the high-end appliance manufacturers. When we were arranging this last year, some of the manufacturers’ reps nearly fell out of their chairs because everyone else was cutting back.”
Cooking up new business
Putting the showroom together was a team effort at the 28-person company, which also has a Westlake showroom. Workers from Edelman’s Bedford Heights warehouse, with time on their hands due to the slowdown, pitched in to paint the appliance showroom. “It was fun for us to put the plumbing into the central kitchen,” Mr. Edelman added.
Edelman also took a different tack from many in adding appliances to its mix. Rather than hire people with appliance experience, the company cross-trained its plumbing salespeople to sell appliances. Many are attending three-day training schools at appliance manufacturers to learn the equipment inside and out.
Because it was entering appliance sales, Mr. Edelman kept his sales force intact through the downturn. “The hardest thing in this business is having good sales personnel,” he said. “I did not want to let them go and then staff up again when the business came back.”
Mr. Edelman also takes the long view because his is a family business. His father, Alan, launched the company in the basement of his home in 1953. Dan and David Edelman, Sheldon Edelman’s sons, also work in the business.
Jack Dever, a Kirtland-based design-build contractor, said he has not seen a plumbing contractor embrace appliances — a brutal business on its own — the way Edelman has. “It makes sense to provide one-stop shopping,” Mr. Dever said, “but only time will tell how it works out.”
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