Electric supply wholesaler opens ninth Upstate location in Easley

Listen to this article

City Electric Supply has opened its eighth location in the Upstate with a new store in Easley.

CES is a family-owned electrical wholesale distributor headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

The company, which considers a ninth location in Toccoa, Ga., a part of its regional footprint, says its growth in the area is a reflection of growth in general across the Upstate. The company has added three locations in the last six years.

“The Upstate area of South Carolina is a place that continues to flourish,” the company said in a news release. “Ranked the No. 3 state for doing business and area development, more than $10.2 billion in capital investment has occurred from 2018-2022.”

CES will help supply the builders behind that growth.

“The Upstate area is growing. South Carolina has a great business climate,” said District Manager Don Corbett in the release. “A lot of people want to move here, and we are seeing tremendous expansion. CES wants to have locations in place to be ready to assist in developments when the time comes. Customers working on these developments have busy schedules. With these strategically placed locations, CES hopes to ease customers’ wait and drive times to help jobsites and projects move as quickly as possible.”

“With the CES business model, we take our business to the markets with centralized locations, so people don’t have to drive an hour trip into a big metroplex,” Corbett said in the release. “Four branches really serve the Greenville market. Greenville’s downtown branch backs right up to downtown airport. Greer, Simpsonville, and now Easley surround Greenville proper. CES Spartanburg is located downtown as well.”

As the downtown areas continue to grow and develop outside of Greenville and Spartanburg, the CES model will be implemented to help customers, Corbett said. 

“What we found when we opened the Greer location east of Greenville was that the business was impacted positively among those two branches, and more people were able to be helped with better service,” he said in the release. “We expect a similar dynamic from this Easley branch. It will build its own customer base, and it will feed off the Greenville base. And that’s what’s good about CES — your account is good at any location with us, so our customers can stop in wherever they need.”

The company was founded in 1951 by Tom Mackie in the United Kingdom and expanded to the United States in 1983. Today, CES employs more than 3,000 people in more than 550 branches across the country, the release said.