Building the House of Brands

Polished’s Ambitious Rebrand Propels it to Market Leadership, Elevating the Online Home Appliance Shopping Experience

Many homeowners who locked in bargain basement interest rates during the pandemic have held on to their homes, watching their 2.65% mortgage rate – the lowest in history – creep into the 7-plus range. Renovation is infinitely more palatable than selling these days, and as a result, the highly fragmented household appliance market is in the midst of a growth spurt.

This year, market revenue in North America is projected to be near $94 billion, with CAGR of 3.29% annually through 2028. The largest segment is major appliances, with a current volume approaching $45 billion.

It’s a glorious time to be an innovator in the online home appliance sales business, especially if you’re creating a world-class shopping experience that’s garnering more market share by the day. That’s exactly what Polished (NYSE:POL) is doing.

Debuting in 2022, Polished is the new identity for 1847 Goedecker. Its ecommerce platform is Appliances Connection. Goedecker acquired Appliances Connection in early 2021 to become one of the largest independent online retailers of Household Appliances in the nation. It opened a 200,000 sq. ft. warehouse and distribution center in Hamilton, N.J.; a 23,000 sq ft showroom in Brooklyn; and added 29 delivery trucks, growing to a fleet of now 40 trucks.

In the two decades before the rebrand, Goedecker successfully simplified appliance shopping in the super-competitive industry, building an ecommerce platform, expanding product portfolio, and focusing on affordability. They assembled a team of product specialists, brought in easy-to-use search tools, and established their last mile white-glove delivery.

The new entity is positioned as a “House of Brands,” with an exhaustive portfolio of over 160 core, premium, luxury, and private-label brands. The impressive selection is coupled with a fresh take on customer experience, which includes high-touch, on-demand product expertise, and an expanding nationwide fulfillment network that enables customers to arrange delivery at a time and day of their choosing. Polished shines from selection to installation, offering extended warranties, a “Love-It-Or-Return-It” 30-day policy, and other enticements for buyers at all price points for consumers, designers, and builders.

At present, Polished’s lines of business are composed of Appliances Connection, luxury brand wholesaler Superior Marketing, as well as a logistics and distribution operation serving the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

Shake and bake

Polished’s first 18 months were profitable but volatile from a management perspective. In the fall of 2022, the firm went through an extensive leadership shakeup, replacing several key positions, including CEO, COO, and CFO. Retail specialist Rick Bunka, co-founder and president of Park North Capital, took the reins as interim CEO. When accepting the role, he announced, “The company has a strong growth trajectory and many of the ingredients for sustained success, including an extensive product catalog, proven ecommerce capabilities, and a unique value proposition in a $22 billion total addressable market.”

Recently, Peter Grenier joined the company as Chief Merchandise Officer and Chief Supply Chain Officer, tasked with standing up their merchandising and inventory planning divisions and installing data analytics. We recently spoke with him about the inner workings of the turnaround.

“Rick Bunka and I worked together at another company where I was his merchandising and supply chain head. So, he called me and said, ‘Come play with appliances.’ I said, ‘Appliances? That doesn’t sound fun,’ but I knew working with Rick would be a good fit,” he said. The more Bunka walked him through the transition strategy and the gaps in the organization, the more he realized that the role hit his sweet spots: inventory planning, data, analytics, merchandising, and supply chain.

Grenier has spent the bulk of his career assisting companies of all sizes either in a turnaround capacity or as a growth specialist. During the pandemic, he helped Hostess manage explosive growth as demand for snack cakes skyrocketed, and when the demand for snack cakes deflated to pre-Covid levels, brought the firm through the change. “They changed the entire supply chain infrastructure and how they deliver and service their customers. It was a significant turnaround, and it was very interesting to be part of that,” he recalled.

At Polished, the first order of business was democratizing their data so everyone could have access to the information that they needed. The company was also running without merchandising or inventory planning infrastructure; previously, all decisions were made by a single department manager without any kind of mid-level decision making or responsibility.

“You had 100 people reporting to one person, which made it difficult to get decisions done, but when the CEO and the COO were removed, a lot of people didn’t make decisions,” he explained. “They weren’t making decisions before, so we had to create an infrastructure and then the space to make a decision. We had to retrain the culture to make decisions without oversight.”

With a playbook for accountability, success metrics and measurement, decision-making responsibility, and an environment where people could fail fast, learn, and move forward in line with the overall company strategy, Polished became a truly nimble organization.

As an industry neophyte, Grenier trusted the existing team’s institutional knowledge and expertise and asked a lot of questions. The approach, he said, “creates great people and moves the culture to the way we want to develop. It takes a lot of trust to build that kind of environment so that people can challenge and fail so that we can grow. Those are the things we were able to put in place, an analytics structure, a vision, and a space for people to do what they do best.”

Having boots on the ground is essential, as is valuing and respecting your team. “That’s the only way to turn around a company, for the long term,” he added, stressing that he enjoys being a long-term partner in the companies he helps to grow. “You can turn and flip that culture, but it will recede back to where it was. When you come in and build trust and slowly move the company and let the team lead the movement, that is a change that will last.”

Historically, the company walled up their data and kept tight rein access. The leadership team broke down those multiple silos of data so that decision-makers could make impactful, data-supported decisions that would result in real change within the organization. “Now you can understand not only what you need to know to make a decision, but how your decision impacts downstream. You can see things upstream that are coming your way and have the data that you need to make those decisions,” he said.

Polished is seeing a significant improvement in gross profit and cost reduction as a result of democratizing its data. “Now we know each other’s needs and can better serve each other, reducing cost, work, and activities in between silos,” he added.

Grenier offers this advice for turnaround experts of all stripes: “You have to be patient. You have to put the right infrastructure in place. Build the right culture. Develop your people. Trust your people and it’ll get there. it’s a long, sometimes ugly process, but in the end, when it works, there’s absolutely nothing like it.”

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In the past two decades, we’ve done the heavy lifting, taking a fragmented industry and simplifying appliance-shopping. Polished is the next-level platform for the best kitchen packages, a team of product experts 24/7, intuitive search tools, and white-glove delivery as the new standard.

We’re laser-focused on bringing a sense of personal luxury, comfort and confidence to how you make a major purchase that affects your daily life. From inspiration to installation, a dedicated point of contact to a stellar delivery and install experience to post-purchase questions, we’re redefining the experience, so you can love your Polished home even more.

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Corporate Office

1870 Bath Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11214

Phone Number: 800.808.1674

Email: clientservices@polished.com

Homepage Link: https://www.polished.com/