White River Junction
Davis, the branch manager of the new Rexel electrical supplies and equipment store on Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction, lives nine-tenths of a mile away on Stacie Lane. Cooper, his mellow, 6-year-old, giant yellow Labrador, sometimes accompanies Davis and curls up on his office floor.
“Don’t worry about him,” Davis assures as Cooper mournfully watches his master from the other side of the glass door as Davis shows a visitor around the premises. “He lacks for nothing.”
Rexel, which has 300 stores in the U.S., opened its first Vermont location on Feb. 7 in the building formerly occupied by White River Discount Foods. The 4,900-square-foot building, which is leased from Crossroads Cafe owner Randy Jacobs, had been vacant since the food store closed in 2014. It underwent a $200,000 top-to-bottom, inside-and-out renovation for the new Rexel shop and could be mistaken for an entirely new structure.
“We took one of the biggest eyesores on the street and made it into an attractive, functional place of business,” Davis said, noting that Rexel hired Wilder contractor Curtis Carpentry for the project because the company believes in working with local businesses whenever possible.
The new store supplies electrical cables, wires, casings, fuses — some as large as shock absorbers — lighting, connectors, switches, tools and hundreds of other electrical items to contractors and the residential market. Davis has been developing the Vermont market as a sales representative for Rexel operating out of an office on North Main Street since 2014. But he said the company is now making a major push into the state, where it will compete against such other Upper Valley distributors as Needham Electric Supply, Central Supply and Green Mountain Electric Supply. The Sykes Mountain Avenue site likely will be followed by a second Rexel outlet in Burlington, Davis said.
The White River Junction Rexel store is unique because the company typically acquires pre-existing electrical supply businesses and converts them to the Rexel name. This time, however, Rexel chose to build the business from scratch.
“Vermont was an untapped market for us,” he said, and White River Junction was a logical location because of its proximity to interstates 91 and 89.
Rexel also does electrical engineering consulting. The company is conducting an audit of the electrical needs of Kearsarge Elementary School and Kearsarge High School, which Davis estimates will be able to save 30 percent in electricity costs after the audit is complete.
The opening of the White River Junction store was such a ground-breaking move for the company that Brian McNally, chief executive of Rexel USA in Dallas, even paid a special visit to the store to see how it was laid out and organized. Rexel went with an open floor plan so customers can browse the aisles and shelves themselves, rather than wait while an employee retrieves the item from the stock room.
As a state-of-the-art electrical supply store, it is not surprising the Rexel deploys the latest in lighting technology and management there: Davis can control the office lighting by an app on his iPhone.
Before joining Rexel three years ago, Davis, a Windsor High School graduate, worked at Blood’s Catering, where he managed the tent rental business. Earlier, he worked for Central Supply in Lebanon.
