Centurion Hobby Distributors, Inc. announced today that it will open a new warehouse in Sparks, Nevada (near Reno) next Tuesday, October 22nd.  The move will give Centurion, which has previously operated a single location in New Jersey, the ability to reach most of the Western U.S. within two days of shipment, expanding its reach from that of a regional to a national distributor.

The 6,000 square foot warehouse will be run by Brian Collins and will be supported by Centurion's strong technological infrastructure -- its Aegis on-line pre-ordering system, on-line ordering/back-ordering system, and retailer-to-retailer inventory swap system.  Billing and purchasing will be centralized in New Jersey. 

We caught up with Centurion CEO Michael Cox, who answered our questions about the move.

Can you give us some background on (local manager) Collins?

Brian was a sales manager for Berkeley Game Dist, and left after the Alliance buy-out to work as sales manager for Chessex Manufacturing.  He missed distribution, and I approached him to come back into it.  He has been part of the industry on all tiers since the mid-70s.

Why did you locate in Nevada instead of California?  Is your facility within one-day UPS of San Francisco and LA? 

I don't believe that California is very friendly to business, period.  We can hit the entire West Coast in two days from Reno, and I am very happy to be a #2 distributor for stores, as we are very aggressive with our stocking.  Once stores give us a shot, we tend to move up on their ordering chain fairly quickly.  We do hit the San Francisco area in one-day ship time.

How many skus do you have now in your Nevada facility, and how does that compare to New Jersey?  How many skus will you be stocking in Nevada when you've got stock levels to where you want them?

We will be lighter in out-of-print product than in NJ, where we make a concerted effort to keep such product available, but that market is hard to find stock for anyway.  Most manufacturers are carried by Centurion, and we plan on stocking very similar to NJ.  Currently we have over 7,000 different SKU's in stock at our NJ warehouse, and will probably be at about 2/3 of that within a month or two in Reno.  I will be stocking the manufacturers who have worked with us in the past first and foremost.