Orgill’s Tifton DC turns 25
Orgill marked a milestone for its distribution network as its Tifton, Ga., distribution center celebrated its 25th anniversary, the company noted.
“A quarter century ago,” said Boyden Moore, Orgill president and CEO, “the Orgill team had a vision for how the company could grow beyond its regional roots and broaden its mission to help retailers be more successful across the country and around the world.”
Tifton was the first distribution facility that Collierville, Tenn.-based Orgill opened outside of the Memphis region.
“Opening this facility was a big step for the company,” said Randy Williams, Orgill’s executive vice president of distribution. “Here we are 25 years later. The facility has grown, Orgill has grown and we continue to grow.”
Williams pointed out that, “we are pleased to acknowledge this milestone and our hardworking team of managers, warehouse personnel, drivers and all the other team members who keep the facility running efficiently.”
To honor Tifton’s anniversary and the employees who made it possible, Orgill said it recently hosted a lunch and provided commemorative gifts to the 375 employees at the distribution center.
“We thought it was important that we put our employees at the center of this celebration,” said Bill Richardson, Orgill’s vice president of southeast distribution and a lifelong Tifton resident.
This was an important distinction for employees like facility manager Mike Newbern, who is one of about two dozen employees who have been with the Tifton DC since it opened.
“When I started here, I was picking orders in the warehouse, and we did so many things manually that are now automated,” Newbern recollected. “The technology has just come so far that it allows us to be very efficient.”
The facility represented a major step in the company’s growth, the firm pointed out, from a regional supplier to its position today as the world’s largest independently owned hardlines distributor.
When it opened in February 1995, the Tifton facility measured 330,000 square feet and was a model in distribution efficiency, the firm wrote. It also allowed Orgill to provide more efficient service to its growing customer base throughout the southeastern United States.
In 2003, with Orgill’s business rapidly expanding, the company noted it made an investment to double the size of the Tifton facility to 660,000 square feet.
Since then, Orgill added, it has continued to invest in enhancing and modernizing the internal logistics systems at the Tifton DC, adding features such as new conveyor lines, voice picking and more to drive efficiency. Most recently, Orgill added a second shift at Tifton to keep up with surging demand.
While Tifton was originally Orgill’s first distribution center outside of the Memphis area, Orgill now operates eight state-of-the art distribution facilities throughout the United States and Canada.
“It’s fantastic that we are marking this milestone for Tifton,” said Richardson. “When you think about the fact that Tifton is Orgill’s oldest facility,” Richardson related, “you really understand how truly modern our distribution network is.”
Newbern, born in the Tifton area, has enjoyed seeing his career grow with the facility and Orgill saying, “I know I have been working here for 25 years, and that’s a long time, but in a lot of ways it seems like it has gone by so fast,” he added.
Founded in 1847, Orgill noted, it serves more than 12,000 retail hardware stores, home centers, professional lumber dealers and farm stores in the U.S. and Canada, and in more than 50 countries.