Forty-seven years of selling appliances in Canada, from a Vancouver wholesaler to seventeen locations across five provinces.
Coast Appliances started life in 1978 as Coast Wholesale Appliances, a Vancouver appliance wholesaler. Forty-seven years on it runs seventeen retail locations and three hub distribution centres across five provinces, selling to retail buyers, builders and commercial clients alike. Greater Vancouver new-build is one of the most competitive appliance markets in the country, and it is the one their Vancouver sales associate sells into.
- Appliances are a package, not a product. A multi-family or custom-home job is specified as a whole suite: refrigeration, laundry, cooking, dishwasher. Usually once, to one supplier.
- Which means timing is everything. Win the package and it is the whole job. Arrive after it is awarded and there is nothing left to sell.
- A national footprint behind a local rep. Seventeen locations and three distribution hubs stand behind what a rep quotes.
- Builders and retail, both. The builder channel sits alongside the showrooms rather than replacing them.
- Founded
- 1978, as Coast Wholesale Appliances, in Vancouver
- Locations
- Seventeen retail showrooms and three hub distribution centres
- Provinces
- British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario
- Sells
- Refrigeration, laundry, cooking, dishwashers and small appliances
- Customers
- Retail buyers, builders and commercial clients
- This story
- A sales associate selling appliance packages into Greater Vancouver new-build
The problem worth solving
In the most competitive appliance market in the country, their sales associate was spending his best hours on research and still arriving after the package was awarded.
- The package is awarded once. Appliances get specified as a whole suite to one supplier. Late is the same as absent.
- Portals ate the morning. Working out which projects had a fresh permit, and who was behind them, meant hours of manual searching across several cities.
- Cold calls to closed jobs. Without knowing a project’s stage, too many calls went to builders who had already picked, the least useful call there is.
- Coverage was patchy. Some areas got worked hard, others not at all, with no way to see what was being missed.
How BuildMapper helped
He works off the map page and very little else. It is where his morning starts and where the day gets planned.
- Filtered to the work that buys appliance packages. Multi-family and high-value home permits across Vancouver, Burnaby and the North Shore, the areas he already knows cold, rather than every residential filing.
- Scored, so the timing shows. The score surfaces the permits closest to choosing appliances, which is the difference between a useful call and a wasted one.
- Builder and contacts on the same screen. Who is building it and who to ask for, read before the call instead of hunted for after it. “The information is at your fingertips.”
- Site visits grouped into one drive. The map turns a scattered list into a route, so a day in the field costs half the windshield time it used to.
What changed
More than 70% of everything he closes in a year now starts on the map.
- 70% of his yearly sales. His own estimate, and the reason he recommends it to other sales pros unprompted.
- Twice the qualified first conversations. Roughly double the useful first calls per week, because the timing and the contact are known before he dials.
- Half the research time. The portal-hopping that used to front-load every call is gone.
- Fewer calls to jobs already lost. Scored permits mean he reaches builders while the appliance package is still open.
How Coast Appliances uses BuildMapper
Feature by feature: who leans on it, what they actually do with it, and what it gave them back.
He starts on the map, filtered to multi-family and high-value home permits across Vancouver, Burnaby and the North Shore, and works it down by score. It is the single surface he spends his day in.
The score puts the permits closest to selecting appliances at the top, so the call order is driven by timing rather than by what he happened to see first.
The builder behind the permit, the owner and the contact to ask for, on the project itself.
Top permits are grouped geographically so jobsite visits in Vancouver, Burnaby and the North Shore fall on a single drive.
Leads from the map go onto a shared board, assigned by area across several reps and tracked to close.
Background on an unfamiliar builder and a first email drafted against the specific project, which he edits and sends himself.
What changed
One rep works off the map page and little else. The call list, the timing and the research all live on the same screen.
Scored permits surface the jobs still choosing appliances, so the package is still there to win.
The hours that went into portals go into calls instead, roughly double the qualified first conversations a week.
Site visits grouped by area, so a day of driving becomes a day of meetings.
A shared pipeline assigned by area keeps several reps off the same builder.