TAMCO Breaks Ground on a New Warehouse and Order Fulfillment Facility in Port St. Lucie, Florida
Over the last decade, City Electric Supply brands have expanded and evolved tremendously, and the TAMCO brand is no exception. TAMCO is made up of its six unique brands: Tamlite Lighting, Fusion Lamps, RPP Devices, F4P (First for Performance), MCG (Motor Control Gear), and Centaur Electrical Installation. These six brands cover a wide variety of high-quality electrical products and consumable materials that are sold in City Electric Supply branches nationwide.
Due to the rapid growth both City Electric Supply and TAMCO are experiencing, TAMCO has outgrown their current facilities. In December 2017, City Electric Supply purchased 41 acres of land located in Port St. Lucie, Florida just 12 miles south of the current TAMCO facilities. This project will initiate large-scale community development in the area and assist in expanding TAMCO operations.
The planned facility will be 420,000 square feet with over 50 percent of the space dedicated to warehousing and order fulfillment. This state-of-the-art manufacturing and assembly space will allow TAMCO to build upon current capabilities and grow into new areas of production. The facility is due to be completed September 2019.
Since City Electric Supply opened its first North American manufacturing operation in 1996, and as TAMCO grew its product offerings and manufacturing capabilities, the need for more space required a solution. In the early 2000s, TAMCO saw the expansion of Centaur’s product offerings and the creation of Fusion Lamps, RPP, F4P, and MCG. In 2005, TAMCO moved across the border into Canada, and shortly after that opened fulfillment centers in both South Carolina and Texas.
To keep up with growing demands from CES, TAMCO expanded into several additional warehouses and fulfillment centers throughout the Port St. Lucie, Florida area — which served as the central hub of TAMCO operations. To this day, TAMCO continues to direct and develop exclusive CES brands and offers high-quality lighting and electrical products to supply the growing CES branch network.
The structure and uniformity that TAMCO provides have in part allowed the City Electric Supply brand to become globally recognized in today’s electrical market. However, the rapid growth CES and TAMCO are experiencing has its obstacles.
In the United States, City Electric Supply has branches located as far west as California, as far north as Boston, and as far south as Key West. With the bulk of goods shipping out of the main fulfillment center in Florida, pallets may have to travel over 2,600 miles to branches across the U.S. While there have been improvements in order fulfillment by introducing more efficient processes and systems — some shipments can still take upward of four days to be delivered to branches that are furthest away from the fulfillment center.
As the demand for CES branded products continues to grow alongside its expanding network, so does the need for support. TAMCO executives have designed solutions to help solve some of the most significant challenges and improve the ability to supply CES. Due to the exponential growth TAMCO has experienced over the years, the division has outgrown their facilities in a short period of time. Although TAMCO has a total of 210,000 square feet in Port St. Lucie, it’s made up of multiple facilities. The fragmented situation is the result of rapid growth and merging multiple product lines.
Moving forward, there’s a need to open more branches and continue to expand TAMCO product offerings. This is why City Electric Supply is developing solutions that will not only overcome the current physical limitations but will also allow room for future growth. In late 2016, CES began development on “Project Bourbon,” a sustainable solution for the TAMCO Port St. Lucie operations that will allow the local community to flourish.
“With 272 jobs paying more than our city’s average wage, a 400,000-square-foot manufacturing facility to anchor the Tradition Center for Commerce, and the opportunity to keep a local, established, and successful company like City Electric here at home, this is a slam-dunk economic development opportunity,” said Port St. Lucie Mayor Greg Oravec in an interview with the Economic Developed Council of St. Lucie County.
With the array of products TAMCO offers across all its brands, there is the opportunity for TAMCO to function as an omni-supplier within CES. Another goal for TAMCO is “The Factor of One,” and this new facility will play a critical role in executing this goal. “The Factor of One” will be the ability to send one purchase order, receive one shipment, and have it displayed all on one invoice when purchasing TAMCO products.
City Electric Supply and TAMCO executives have been developing solutions for a more centrally located east coast operation as well as expanding the product offering from the current Dallas facility.
CES is currently moving into a new 100,000-square-foot fulfillment center located in Charlotte, North Carolina that will stock all of the TAMCO brands. The facility is positioned 10 miles south of Charlotte International Airport, making it ideal for servicing the local market while also giving TAMCO a presence further north. In addition to the developments in Port St. Lucie and Charlotte, CES is planning to creatively increase the storage capacity within the Dallas facility to allow for fulfillment across all TAMCO brands.
When these new facilities open, the branches being served out of them will be repositioned. In doing so, there will be a one-day transit time on stock orders which will cover over 75 percent of the branch network. The ultimate goal of these expansions and developments is to make TAMCO products more accessible to branch managers and provide even more solutions for customers.