One of the oldest retailers in Bakersfield celebrated its first expansion outside Kern County with a ribbon-cutting Thursday at its new store in Fresno.<\/p>\n
The ceremony outside the new, 15,000-square-foot store Urner\u2019s at Herndon and North Willow avenues came as the company considers opening another location later in the Visalia area, leveraging its longstanding connections with builders across the Central Valley.<\/p>\n
While the new location directly supports half a dozen jobs north of Kern County, President and CEO Cameron Illingworth said the move could lead Urner\u2019s to make additional investments in Bakersfield as the company looks at hiring more drivers and warehouse workers to serve the expansion.<\/p>\n
Expanding east, west and south were out of the question for different reasons, he noted, but heading north has already shown promise as sales have increased month by month since the store\u2019s opening Jan. 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s growth and we\u2019re excited,\u201d Illingworth said. He called the area \u201ca little underserved in respects.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new location sells products ranging from affordable to high-end goods, with about two-thirds of the floor space devoted to appliance sales and the rest to mattresses. The store won\u2019t sell furniture, at least initially, he said, because of local competition and the store\u2019s modest size.<\/p>\n
Fellow Bakersfield retailer Mark Carroll, who as president of Carpet Outlet Plus has also overseen northward expansion, agreed with the wisdom of tapping connections and name recognition in the Fresno and Visalia areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes perfect sense, really,\u201d Carroll said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very similar markets,\u201d he said, comparing the Fresno and Visalia markets to that of Bakersfield. All three areas benefit from relatively affordable housing.<\/p>\n
He predicted Urner\u2019s will do well selling to homebuyers outfitting new construction and to existing homeowners moving into other properties.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll those transactions create opportunity for our retail space,\u201d Carroll said, referring to his business as well as Urner\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Celebrating its 107th birthday this year, Urner\u2019s has half a dozen stores around Bakersfield, including what it calls outlets that sell discount items that may have been scratched or dented.<\/p>\n
Illingworth said companywide sales have increased 5% to 7% annually in recent years.<\/p>\n
He let loose a few zingers at Thursday\u2019s event, including quips about how his father handed him the reins to Urner\u2019s last summer so he could test out the company\u2019s mattresses instead of selling them.<\/p>\n
Cameron added that he\u2019s been looking forward to handling giant scissors without anyone calling security.<\/p>\n
The company has seen a good many trends come and go, he said, setting up another joke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe survived the era of avocado green, outlasted harvest gold and we\u2019re still standing after the great waterbed movement of the \u201880s,\u2019\u201d Illingworth said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen it all, and luckily for you, we didn\u2019t bring any of those classics with us to this new showroom!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the oldest retailers in Bakersfield celebrated its first expansion outside Kern County with a ribbon-cutting Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[115473,151,115471,11104,112,114,113,115474,735,115472],"class_list":["post-263060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-appliance-sales","tag-bakersfield","tag-cameron-illingworth","tag-expansion","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-illingworth","tag-kern-county","tag-mark-carroll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}