Grand Appliance buys Kalona’s Appliance Barn

A longtime destination home equipment store — Appliance Barn — was purchased by a larger brand in June, called Grand Appliance.

For the moment, the acquisition hasn’t changed much on the customer-facing side of the Kalona-based business. Store Manager Kari Heusinkveld — formerly Appliance Barn’s sale manager — said the store had the same employees, and the same values. It hasn’t missed a beat during the busy summer season.

“There’s a lot that goes into the background of an appliance business in terms of inventory, and products and brands that you can offer,” she said. “When you continue to grow logistically, there’s a lot of things that have to scale with you … And they’re a family-owned business as well, they’re very customer-focused, and really care about their employees. Everything just kind of lined up and made sense.”

The affiliation will set the business up, however, with a wider range of products according to Heusinkveld, who said the store could now stock and service G.E. equipment long sought by community members.

Grand Appliance’s ownership also comes with a bigger operating budget, so much so that the store plans to move into the former CIVCO building in town, doubling the size of its sale floor from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet.

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“There are a lot of pieces right now that we just don’t have the space to show,” Heusinkveld said. “We have to use computers and get people a good idea, but any time you can have things in front of customers so they can see it, feel it, touch it, know what they’re going to be purchasing and having installed in their homes, it just makes it a lot easier [to] show people exactly what they’re going to get.”

The sale floor at CIVCO’s former building is expected to hold a “soft opening” some time in November, according to Heusinkveld, who said the space was undergoing extensive renovations to transform it from a manufacturing facility into a retail location.

Eventually, she hopes the affiliation with a larger company will allow the store to grow its employee count, though she cautioned it likely wouldn’t do so until after moving to its new building.

“We’ve been growing since we’ve been in business, and we don’t want to stop,” the store manager said. “I do think that in the near future, we will continue to hire additional staff. My guess is that we’ll bring on some additional sales people, we want to grow the service department as well … that’s certainly the goal, that we continue to scale.”

Partnering with the former Appliance Barn has already paid off for Grand Appliance’s brand as well.

While most stores from the major retailer don’t have dedicated maintenance departments, Kalona’s team already included a crew for just that purpose. And since the acquisition, the barn’s employees have started taking service jobs from another Iowa Grand Appliance store in Cedar Rapids. They’ve also added a Davenport-based technician to their roster, supporting another brand affiliated storefront in the Quad Cities.

Heusinkveld said she hoped the model could expand to Grand Appliance’s other locations with time.

“They’ve had some technicians in certain markets, but not at the same level that we are adding into the portfolio,” she said. “The goal is that we’ll continue to scale that and grow that for the rest of the business, so that all 30 retail locations are able to service everything that we sell.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com