Electrical supplier opens sales center in Aberdeen

Mary Paramore
HBL Associate Editor
2/20/09

United Electric Supply, a major electrical supplier for the building and industrial trades, has opened its seventh Maryland location, this one at 716 S. Philadelphia Boulevard in Aberdeen. The employee-owned company has nine other branches in Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The 6,700 sq. ft. of space United Electric has includes a 4,200 sq. ft. self-selection sales center, a warehouse and an office. United Electric stocks more than 23,000 different electrical items from 300 major manufacturers and offers products and services for industrial automation, lighting, wire/cable/conduit, gear and control, electro-mechanical and systems contracting.

The Aberdeen location is situated between United Electric’s regional warehouses in Jessup, MD, and in Wilmington, DE. Rick Freebery, the company’s regional vice president of sales, said, “This new facility has access to more than $9 million in inventory on a daily basis.”

United Electric engineers and product specialists can assist building and industrial clients by offering engineering expertise, hands-on product testing, lighting design and warehousing of customer inventory.

Although the business is new to Harford County, United Electric is in space previously occupied by Genesis Emergency Equipment and had been vacant for about two years.

“I’d been looking for a location for about a year, and happened to see it. It didn’t look occupied,” said United Electric Operations Manager Bob Crawford. Using tax records, Crawford determined Donley Construction owned the building and that the company planned to renovate part of it for its own office. Crawford negotiated with Brian Donley to lease half the building.

United Electric is on Route 40 across from Wal-Mart, but Crawford expects to outgrow the location within five years. He said United Electric locations usually open with twice the operating space. The Aberdeen location, managed by Bill Grothaus, is the company’s smallest site. United Electric’s largest location, which includes its New Castle DE headquarters, occupies 75,000 sq. ft.

“I’d been looking for so long and we wanted to get going. The space met our immediate needs. The layout was perfect,” Crawford said, noting Base Realignment and Closure activities led the company to target Aberdeen. “We saw this as a growing area with a lot of potential for a new business location to support local contractors and the base itself.”