Distribution center opens windows to West Coast for Marvin

Darrin Peterson started his career at window and door manufacturer Marvin in 1986 as a part-time laborer before becoming a full-time dockhand a few years later.

Today, Peterson is president of Marvin, the only non-family member to lead the company founded in 1912 in Warroad, Minn. Peterson is ushering in a new phase of growth for Marvin with the opening of the company’s first distribution center at 3030 Airway Drive in Reno. The facility streamlines delivery of Marvin’s extensive window and door product lines to both dealers and customers, Peterson said.

“As our dealer base and market share expanded in the West Coast, we saw a need to better serve our customers with a consolidated hub for our many products coming out of our factories across the United States,” he said. “We needed a center of gravity for the distribution center, somewhere in the center of where all our products would flow to and from.”

The decision to open the 110,000-square-foot facility in Northern Nevada rather than a competing location was simplified by a number of factors, Peterson told NNBW during a recent video interview.

First, Northern Nevada is the geographical center for Marvin’s western-region network of window and door dealers. Second, J.B. Hunt, one of Marvin’s longtime third-party logistics providers, was already established in Reno and shared with Marvin executives the many ways in which it enjoyed doing business in Northern Nevada, Peterson said. Additionally, he noted, Northern Nevada has a reliable interstate transportation network and strong employee base.

“It just became very obvious that (Northern) Nevada had the employees we needed, it was the center of gravity for our distribution network, and we had an established 3PL that already enjoyed doing business there,” Peterson said.

Marvin is leasing the facility from Tolles Development Co. Peterson did not state the length of the lease but noted that Marvin typically makes business decisions in terms of decades rather than years. TDC and Plenium Builders assisted Marvin with interior buildout and tenant improvements, Peterson noted.

Marvin has already hired a general manager and human resources manager, both of whom are Northern Nevadans. The company has already hired more than 30 people and expects total employment to reach around 60, Peterson said (the company employs more than 7,000 nationwide). The Reno distribution center received its first shipment of goods in early June and shipped out its first products a week later, Peterson said.

“We have had a really good start out there,” he said. “This facility will really help us with our growth on the West Coast.”

Darrin Peterson

The Northern Nevada distribution facility will significantly speed up delivery times for Marvin’s network of distributors, as well as streamline the process of getting windows and doors to customer job sites. Marvin had been shipping products directly to dealers from its various window and door manufacturing facilities across the country. In addition to its flagship 2.2 million square-foot manufacturing facility at Warroad, Marvin has additional manufacturing facilities at Baker City, Ore., Boston, Denver, Fargo and Grafton, N.D., Kansas City, Northwood, Iowa, Ripley, Tenn., Roanoke, Virg., and West Palm Beach, Fla.

With the new distribution center, all products will arrive in Northern Nevada from their various destinations, and orders can be shipped in their entirety to dealers. Previously, Peterson said, a dealer could get shipments from five or six different Marvin facilities in the same week.

“The distribution center provides a lot of efficiencies for our factories and for our customers,” he said. “We will be able to bring all our products to our dealers in one shipment versus sending them from our various factories and having them show up throughout the week.

“Builders who are working on a home are looking for all their products to show up at one time, and our dealers want to go to their customers’ job sites one time,” he added. “This will provide a much better customer experience. We will deliver shipments in full and complete to our dealers, and they will do the same at job sites.”

Marvin plans on building a network of distribution centers, Peterson added. A second distribution facility has already been announced for Windsor, Conn., with more to follow. Marvin chose to go West first due to the diversity of products it’s selling on the West Coast, as well as the growth in sales and dealer network.

“It just made sense to go there first,” he said. “We have products coming from Virginia, North Dakota, Tennessee and other places that are all going to the West Coast. Many of those products are mixed for different jobs.

“This facility is just an extension of our business to serve our dealer network,” he added. “We look at what their needs are, how we can best serve them, and we invest in those things. This is an investment in our dealer network so we can better serve them, and they can better serve their customers.”

Chris Hoerth, Marvin’s director of logistics, added that the new facility is yet another nod to Marvin’s dedication to continuous improvement.

“By centralizing our operations, we can reduce transit times, enhance delivery accuracy, and improve our overall efficiency,” Hoerth said in a statement. “This is a significant milestone in our ongoing effort to further strengthen our distribution network.”