Cali opened its first east coast distribution center in Summerville, South Carolina, last week. The new location will serve customers along the eastern seaboard, enabling faster deliveries and more reliable service of flooring, composite decking, and other home design collections.
Floor Trends connected with Cali President Doug Jackson to learn more about the investment.
Floor Trends: Tell us about the new distribution center.
Doug Jackson: We've been working here in South Carolina now for three, four years, and when we decided to build our own, we felt like South Carolina and Charleston gave us a far better opportunity to get up and down the eastern seaboard than we did in Savannah. We started the build project about a year ago. We built ground up. It's 260,000 square feet. We've got 50 associates here, and we've got room to grow. We probably have 60% of our product on the east coast going out of this facility, and we should be running out of this facility 100% by the end of the year.
Our long-term plan is this is one of four. We intend to put something into the Baltimore area, into the Texas market, and then build something of our own in Southern California, too.
We think those four DCs gives us a fantastic footprint to grow. We are also using this [east coast] facility to help other Victoria PLC companies as they think about expanding into the U.S. and get their products out.
Floor Trends: What's next for Cali?
Jackson: We have got a great partner in Victoria PLC. Victoria PLC is very keen and focused on allowing us to grow and investing in Cali in the right places. You'll see continued product diversification. We are going to continue our march in the turf world. We will introduce rugs, and you'll see a renewed interest in the engineered wood area. And you'll see us continue to invest in some fun store displays and things that we feel can help dealers keep consumers in their stores.
We're also in the processes of re-platforming our website, and we feel it'll give us a really good opportunity to get some of these additional diverse product categories we're working on to market, top of funnel. That consumer awareness allows us to drive business to our partners.
