MADISON, Wisc. — Viking Electric’s new facility in Madison, Wisconsin was built to accommodate the growth of its customer base. Specifically, Viking Electric is interested in better managing the growing customer requests for additional storage, staging, and support services for a multitude of multi-million-dollar projects in and around Madison.
“Over the past few years, it became increasingly clear that we needed to grow along with our customers,” said Jim Blank, General Manager of Viking Electric’s Madison location. “That set off our goal to build a new facility in Madison.”
The answer came when Viking Electric opened the doors to its new, larger facility in early 2020 – right next door to their previous location. The new facility includes approximately 32,000 square feet of warehouse space and a brand new, customer-friendly, 2,500-square-foot showroom/city desk space.
The new, larger warehouse includes a 26-foot-high ceiling clearance, two receiving doors, five shipping doors, one overhead drive-in door for larger deliveries, and one overhead, roll-up door at Will Call for customer load out. In addition, Viking Electric is the sole tenant of their new facility which means they are better able to accommodate their customers’ trucks and trailers.
Blank is relishing his role as general manager of the new facility. It has allowed him the freedom to say yes to more of his customers’ requests for help and support on large-scale lighting and switchgear projects. “This new facility is beautiful, massive, and unbelievably functional,” Blank said. “We’re just thrilled about our new-found ability to support our customers’ needs on projects of any size – no matter how large or small.”
The larger facility has allowed Viking Electric to expand on additional support services like vendor managed inventory, locking jobsite boxes, lighting carts, and more. “The new facility provides the necessary space, in and around the building, to add a dedicated vehicle and the necessary staffing resources to manage the growing requests from our customers to help manage their jobsite inventory,” Blank explains. “It also allows us the capacity to add more lighting carts to our inventory, an area to unbox lighting fixtures and load them onto the carts, and the floor space to stage the loaded carts as they are queued for delivery to the jobsite.”
The company is also looking into more forward-thinking ways to service its customers after hours by attaching job lockers onto the side of the new building.
According to Blank, the new facility is already a big hit with Madison-area customers. “In our old facility, the space was much smaller, so we had to really strategize about how we were going to offer staging and storage services to our customers. There were many instances where our customers didn’t have confidence that we could support their larger projects from such a small space.”
Customer confidence seems to have returned as the Madison location has recently scored a number of large-scale lighting and switchgear projects. “I think the new facility provides a great deal of peace-of-mind for our customers. They really seem to appreciate it when all of their product is staged locally in Madison and not in some distant warehouse. Because we’re local, our customers know that we can react swiftly to changes in plans and can get staged material to their jobsite quickly. In turn, it allows our company to be more confident in the services that we provide to them.”
That feeling of confidence seems to be contagious among the Madison location’s 26 associates. “The new facility is a game-changer for our customers but it also benefits our associates,” Blank said. “It’s a great feeling knowing that our associates are working in a safer facility with improved lighting and ample space to operate machinery.”
In addition to safety, the additional space allows the company’s warehouse associates more room to better organize materials and locate product stock, which has improved accuracy when it comes to picking orders for its customers. “Not only can we safely manage large projects, we can more accurately manage multiple projects at the same time,” Blank said. “Our associates are no longer bumping into each other in the warehouse, and we are all just really excited to have the resources and the breathing room to get the job done right.”
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