NMG’s semi-annual PrimeTime! convention and exposition gives members the chance to meet with vendors.

Premier Business Partners:

Ashley Furniture LG Electronics Whirlpool Corp Miele Inc. Randahl Ramos Studios Electrolux Toshiba America Consumer Products LLC Citi Retail Financial Bosch DSI Systems Inc. Capital Solutions Peerless Industries Inc. Medi-Rub Corporation

Independent retailers have a powerful friend in Nationwide Marketing Group (NMG) – one that its management hopes more retailers will become acquainted with. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., NMG boasts a membership of more than 2,800 independent retailers in the furniture, electronics and appliances markets. These retailers represent more than 8,000 stores nationally. President Ed Kelly says members’ sales range from a few million dollars to more than $300 million.

NMG is the largest organization of its kind in the country, holding the top spot in market share for each of the categories it represents. “In regards to appliances, we’re the largest,” Kelly says, and NMG accounts for 17 percent market share in that area. “In electronics, we are approximately 8 percent of the domestic consumer television market. The dealers’ combined [sales are] in excess of $11 billion.”

Altogether, NMG wields an impressive amount of purchasing power. The group has more than 40 distribution centers across the country, and hosts a convention and exhibition for dealers and vendors called PrimeTime!. The organization has its own production studios in Atlanta for television commercials, and also has a partnership with BrandsDirect.com to help members sell on the Internet.

Getting It Together
The reason NMG understands the needs of the independent retailer so well is because the group is built on a solid foundation of experience in that area. Kelly’s father, Edward Kelly Sr., opened a home appliance and consumer electronics store in Winston-Salem in 1939. In the 1950s, it was one of the first retailers in the nation to carry color TVs.

After Kelly received his diploma from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., in 1963, he returned to the family store. He worked to build what was once a single family owned store into a regional chain during the 1970s. Kelly applied what he learned about the retail business and opened his own rent-to-own (RTO) store, Kelway Rent To Own. In 1976, it became a 40-store regional chain in its own right, which was sold in 1989.

Executive Director Robert Weisner got his start in the business in the delivery department of Kelly’s father’s store. He returned after graduating college to work on the sales floor, and eventually partnered with Kelly – now his brother-in-law – to purchase the store from Kelly’s father in the 1970s.

In 1971, a group of seven independent dealers decided to combine their efforts to survive the changing retail environment, forming Nationwide TV & Appliance. Kelly and Weisner formed their own buying group, Southeastern Businessman’s Association, in 1975 for the same purpose.

“In the early days, we actually got together to buy better, and it was really to compete with Sears because at the time Sears and Montgomery Ward were our competitors,” Weisner says. Nationwide TV & Appliance and Southeastern Businessman’s Association worked together from 1975 to 1992, when they merged to form what is now NMG.

Weisner says he and Kelly noticed shortly after the merger that independent retailers were in need of services other than purchasing, and so the group began branching out, first into financial services, and then later into training. “The evolution really began in the early 1990s and then became even more prevalent as we got into 2000 and beyond,” he says.

Executive Vice President and Director Les Kirk joined NMG after his consulting firm, RFS Inc., partnered with the group to provide competitive financial programs. Before starting RFS in 1993, Kirk was president of SR Superstores, a regional appliance and electronics retailer based in Shreveport, La.

Rave Reviews
Members of NMG say that not only has the group saved them money and time through its services, it has also saved their companies from going under. Terry Oates, owner of the King’s Electronics chain based in Indiana, is one of those members. He says life without NMG is too much for him to even consider.

“I really don’t want to even think about that,” he says. “Over the course of the last 20 years, we have grown from a single store operation to now 53 stores across the Midwest, and I think it’s a result of the information and all the other things that Nationwide has brought to our party, if you will.”

NMG’s services have allowed King’s to “look, be, act and perform” like a much larger company, Oates continues. “We utilize virtually everything,” he says. “The television commercials that are being produced by Nationwide are network-quality and obviously it would be very tough for us to put something like that out on our budget.”

Oates also cites the training programs established by NMG as essential in helping his stores’ employees get comfortable with new products. “It certainly gets them up to speed a lot faster than if we were to develop those programs on our own.”

“The biggest benefit is the information that’s available through NMG that I don’t think we would be exposed to,” he continues. “Only through something like [NMG’s exhibition] PrimeTime! would you ever have that opportunity. Typically, top-level management is there and we’re not seeing junior executives.”

Dan Schwartz is one of the principals of Karl’s Appliances, an independent retailer based in New Jersey since 1941. He says the company has been a member of NMG for 15 years, and the group has come to be indispensable for it.

“Our cost of merchandise, that’s the original impetus for joining a co-op, but this one has grown far beyond just pricing.”

Schwartz says Karl’s makes use of just about every service provided by NMG. “In addition to the pricing programs, we take advantage of the advertising programs that they create, the consumer financing they have developed, the lower credit card rates … it costs us less to process credit cards because we’re part of the co-op,” he says. “In addition, they do a lot of counseling and market direction on financial and business issues.”

Overall, Schwartz says he has few complaints about working with NMG. “I’m generally a very critical guy, but I think this is a very well-run organization,” he says, and adds that the benefits to Karl’s have been significant. “The first thing is that we’re in business today. I’m sure we wouldn’t have been in business today without the co-op.”