Owners Put a New Charge Into Battery Firm : Couple have more than tripled sales to $3.5 million since they bought House of Batteries in 1990 and moved it to Huntington Beach.
A month ago, Bronx resident Gary Feldman was at the end of his rope--or, rather, cord.
The New Yorker had spent nearly two weeks and untold dollars in phone calls in a fruitless attempt to locate batteries to replace the three in his Plantronics brand cordless telephone. With the original batteries no longer available, similar batteries must be specially assembled.
“I’d say I searched a good dozen stores in New York before I called the manufacturer, who no longer carried them, and told them of my difficulty in finding it,” said Feldman, a job placement coordinator for mentally retarded young adults. “I was getting to the point where I thought I wasn’t going to be able to use this marvelous phone again.”
Then a Plantronics customer service representative advised Feldman to call House of Batteries in Huntington Beach, which he did. “I sent them the check, received the batteries several days later and now I’m a happy camper again,” Feldman said.
House of Batteries owners Don and Maggie West offer a promise to the Gary Feldmans of the world: If it is a battery, and House of Batteries doesn’t have it, it probably doesn’t exist.
Most visitors to House of Batteries’ single-story store only see a front showroom, a 20-foot by 10-foot retail space where flashlight, watch and sundry other batteries hang from pegs on the wall, all under the watchful eyes of an 18-inch stuffed Energizer bunny (the one that keeps going and going. . .).
The showroom, however, is only the tip of an alkaline, lithium and nickel-cadmium iceberg. Behind it lies a 10,000-square-foot, supermarket-sized warehouse where 500,000 batteries of 2,500 different varieties are stacked. The only sort of batteries the Wests don’t stock are those for autos and motorcycles.
Despite the overall depressed state of the consumer electronics market, battery sales are booming. The market for consumer electronic batteries is expected to increase from a projected $2.4 billion in 1993 to $4.2 billion in 1996, driven by sales of devices such as cellular phones and portable facsimile machines and the needs of existing products, according to Electronic Purchasing Magazine.
That has helped boost sales at privately held House of Batteries to $3.5 million in 1992, up from $1 million in 1990, when the Wests bought the business.
Don West said the previous owner, who had founded the now 28-year-old business, Bill Lusk, was in ailing health for several years and that the business had stagnated as a result. At the time, West ran a business started by his father that sold switches and circuit boards to stores like House of Batteries.
“He (Lusk) was not keeping up with the industry and we saw an opportunity to grow along with the industry if we invested our profits in the business,” said Don West, who declined to state the purchase price.
The Wests moved the company from a 1,500-square-foot Costa Mesa location to its current office park site, added 14 employees to the company’s existing 10, set up a network of 10 manufacturers’ representatives to cover the West and began aggressively marketing the company.
House of Batteries is active in the two major areas of battery sales: retail and assembly of battery packs for more complex uses. His competitors include several large assemblers on the industrial side and consumer stores like Radio Shack and Circuit City on the retail side.
Battery assembly is where the big money is in the industry. In that process, multiple batteries of the same voltage and current are welded together, producing a much greater flow of electricity than from individual batteries. West said that assembly is currently 40% of his work.
Battery Specialties in Costa Mesa is one of the Wests’ competitors for the assembly market. Jerry Kanen, Battery Specialties President, agreed that the battery market is booming and said that House of Batteries is more retail-oriented than his company and tends to compete on the less complex assembly jobs.
One tool the Wests use to win business is the company’s status as a certified woman-owned business. Maggie West officially owns 51% of the business and the company receives preference with some corporations and government agencies that have mandates to increase minority contracting.
Management duties are split between them, with husband Don West heading sales and marketing and wife Maggie West handling finances, administration and customer relations.
“I make all the financial decisions, but they still knock me down to get to Don when we go to a sales meeting, assuming he is the power behind the company,” said Maggie West. “But I believe success is the sweetest revenge.”
If your Orange County company has annual sales of less than $10 million, we would like to consider it for a future column. Call O.C. Enterprise at (714) 966-7871.
