Peggy Revell
With a newly-finished showroom, a warehouse in the works, and continuing demand for their products, Northland Distributing & Manufacturing Inc. of International Falls is a family-owned business that continues to grow.
In fact, an open house is being held there this Saturday (Feb. 7) from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. to showcase the finished showroom, which is located on Crescent Drive (just past the Super 8 Motel on Highway 53 South).
“We’ve been working on it for about three years,” noted Jaime Horne, who is the daughter-in-law of owners Keith and Brenda Horne.
While the addition for the showroom was built a few years ago, working on other parts of the expanding business meant its completion was slower, she explained.
“So we’re all really excited about it,” she enthused.
The finished showroom features about 30 displays of the many things the business carries, including gas, wood, pellet, and corn fireplaces as well as hot tubs.
Northland also is a distributor for hot tub chemicals (many of which aren’t readily available in the Fort Frances area), along with outdoor wood boilers, wholesale plumbing and heating products, in-floor heating equipment, mantles, locally-made log mantles (both man-made and real stone), gas torches, gas patio heaters, and grills.
“A lot of people don’t even know we’re here because a lot of the business is done throughout the U.S., so we’re hoping that this [open house] brings in some people from the community; to have options other than driving four hours to go look at a fireplace,” Horne remarked.
There are plans to make the showroom even bigger eventually as offices that currently are located in the back section will be moved to the upstairs section of a new football field-sized warehouse that had its concrete foundation laid a few months ago, with construction expected to begin in the spring.
“So we’re really excited about that,” Horne added, referring to the warehouse.
“For right now, it’s just going to be a warehouse because right now our stuff is kind of scattered everywhere, so it will be nice to have it all in one spot,” she explained, noting there are plans for another warehouse to be built a few years down the road.
The warehouse also will help with the distribution of the outdoor wood boilers which are the mainstay of the business. Keith Horne previously was distributing boilers made by other companies but didn’t like how they were being made, so he designed and patented his own.
Now they are being manufactured in Canada, Jaime Horne said.
“The demand last year was unbelievable. We were back-ordered over 400 units within two months,” she remarked, adding they actually had to stop taking orders since there was too much demand and just service the dealers they had.
While they expect there to be just as much demand this year, the business is prepping for it, including putting in the warehouse, which also will accommodate containers they are importing for distributing Italian pellet stoves.
“What we’re doing now is we’re importing the Italian pellet stoves, and we’re the mass distributor for North America, so we have Canada and the U.S.,” Horne explained, noting they’re working to set up dealers.
“So that’s kind of the new thing that we’re doing in the last couple months, which is going really good.”
These freestanding pellet stoves are especially efficient at reducing home heating costs, she explained, and they also will be bringing in both a wood line as well as a hydro line that is completely new to the States and heats hot water baseboard.
“There’s only a couple companies that have something similar, but what they have is a unit that they put in the furnace room and close the door,” Horne said. “These are to be out in the open, so they look pretty contemporary-looking.”
