Streamlining a Senior Supply Company

Currently celebrating its 100th anniversary, the CE Sundberg Company has a lot to be proud of. The appliance and HVAC parts distributor has the industry’s highest fill rate, one at more than 95 percent, and that’s thanks in part to its knowledgeable employees and capital investments. “Getting our customers the right part at the right time at the right price is the key to our success,” chairman and CEO Bob Burke says. He bought the business, founded in 1912, just two years ago, and he’s already driving it into the next century.

Burke, who has been in the parts-distribution business for 15 years, saw potential when he looked at CE Sundberg back in 2010: the industry leader had 22 locations, a good business model, and a solid reputation. But there was room for improvement. “When a company has been around 100 years, there’s always good and bad,” Burke says. “You’ve been doing something right because you have a long operating history, but you need to evolve by upgrading your products, management, and procedures. I wanted to take the company to the next level.”

And that’s just what Burke did, first by making some significant capital improvements. The company just built a 110,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art distribution center in Chicago, much of it fitted for improved performance. Its Thermoplastic Olefin (TPO) white-membrane roof, for example, in addition to being environmentally friendly, is ozone- and algae-resistant. Also, a Kalwall window system on all the external walls fills the space with diffuse natural daylight, the heating and cooling systems are energy-efficient, and the lights are controlled by motion sensors. “Our advanced systems make it easier to find parts, but we also renovated our warehouse to make the space more comfortable for employees,” Burke says. “People tend to work better in sunny environments.”

People, Burke adds, are also key to the company’s ongoing success. He wants salespeople who are “hunters, not gatherers,” in the sense that they seek out orders and find new sectors to serve in an attempt to actively grow the business. “In some ways we’re a quiet company that no one knows a lot about,” Burke says. “We serve a lot of businesses that resell our products, so the end user doesn’t know who we are. Even customers who buy directly from us don’t know about the breadth of our product offerings. We have 75,000 unique products, which people may not fully understand. So we add value by hiring salespeople who have technical knowledge of the machines. They can have a two-minute conversation with a customer and know exactly what part is needed.”

Burke is pleased with his sales staff, but in an attempt to push CE Sundberg ever further, he’s asking them to get specific and proactive. “We sell a lot of things you wouldn’t think a parts distributor would sell, such as paint that fixes scratches and dents on appliances,” he says. “So we’re asking our salespeople to look for the niche markets that might be served by those products—in [the paint] case, for example, moving companies, who often scratch things. We’ve done an extremely good job of order fulfillment: you call us, you place your order, we have it in stock, and it ships to you the next day. You could call us at 4:55 p.m. and still get the part the next day. Now it’s time to take it to the next level and anticipate what the customer needs.” ABQ