ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL – GranQuartz recently moved one of its stores from its previous Chicago location to a 35,000-square-foot space in Elk Grove Village, IL. This new facility is a little over a mile from its former site where it had been for more than 15 years and it is approximately three-and-a-half times larger. According to management, as a distribution center, this location will carry just over two-and-a-half times the inventory and thousands of new SKUs that were previously only stocked in Georgia. To commemorate the opening of the new location, GranQuartz held a Grand Opening and Vendor/Customer Appreciation Day on Wednesday, May 15, 2019.

With the new location comes additional staff, equipment and technology. Below GranQuartz answers some questions its customers may have about the new facility.

• Question – Why a third distribution center?
  • Historically, GranQuartz had one large distribution center in Georgia and a smaller second supplementary distribution center in southern California. In early 2018, we took a step back and asked ourselves, “What is the best way for us to service our customers?” We looked at every shipment we’ve done over the last two years and determined that dividing the country into three regions and having a fully stocked distribution servicing each region was the best way to serve our customers’ needs. We went forward with a western region serviced out of Southern California, a south-central/southeast region serviced by one out of Atlanta, and a north-central/northeast region serviced out of a distribution center in Chicago. We started in the fall by expanding our California distribution by about 25% and began working on this distribution center this winter so we could transition to this distribution network. 
• Question – What does this mean for GranQuartz’s customers? 
  • With a distribution center in each region, we now have nearly everything that we stock within two days from every customer. With our previous network, we had the ability to reach 99% of the U.S. population within two days, but with these regional distribution centers we’ll now be able to reach 99% of the population with nearly every SKU within two days. There are some items that we will continue to stock only in our Georgia location, but these regional distribution centers put more inventory closer to every customer and decrease our shipping time – both on parcel shipments and those larger items/orders we ship through our freight partners.
• Question – How does this impact my local GranQuartz store?
  • On top of these new regional distribution centers, we also revamped how we stock our stores and put more inventory in each local GranQuartz store. Our goal is for 95% of what our customers need in these local stores that can reach nearly all of our customers within one day. These regional distribution centers also replenish the stores within their region, so having a distribution center closer to the store decreases this replenishment time and the instances where we are out of stock in that store.