County Wholesale Electric History

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County Wholesale Electric Company is the leading wholesale distributor of electrical products to the original equipment manufacturing (OEM) market in the Southern California area.

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County Wholesale started in business on April 1, 1974 at 560 North Main Street in the city of Orange, California. At that time, our newly built building was basically surrounded by orange groves backed up to the 57 freeway which was yet to be completed. The original ownership group, Richard Cooley, Lou Kliendeinst, and Chuck Frye started County Wholesale Electric with six outside salesmen who had been the leading salespeople at California Wholesale Electric in Commerce, California.

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County Wholesale was founded on the premise of exceptional service and that has been at the forefront of our focus ever since. Our main product lines at that time were Westinghouse Electric and Boss Enclosures. While our main market was providing material for OEM’s, we also serviced MRO accounts, contractors, panel builders, and municipalities.

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In 1979, County Wholesale Electric opened a second location in the city of Cerritos, California. At that time, we acquired the Hoffmann and Square D lines. A few years later in 1984, County Wholesale Electric opened a location in San Diego, California to service the contractor market there. In 1986, the Cerritos location was closed due to too much redundancy with the Orange location.

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In May of 1992, County Wholesale Electric was purchased by Consolidated Electrical Distributors. By the end of 2002, the San Diego location was transitioned from a full line distributor to a specialty lighting house and was no longer affiliated with County Wholesale. At that point, County Wholesale Electric was working towards changing its focus towards the OEM market and almost fully transitioned to OEM’s by 2004. Because of our constant focus on providing outstanding customer service, we are regularly acknowledged for our proven track record of excellence in service by our clients.

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Consolidated Electrical Distributors is one of the largest electrical wholesale chains in the world with nearly 600 branches in the United States alone and many locations in the United Kingdom and Europe. With the backing of CED, County Wholesale Electric will continue to be positioned as the major player of electrical material for the OEM market in Southern California.

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On March 18, 2019, County Wholesale moved into a new and larger facility located at 263 North Berry Street, Brea CA.  Today, County Wholesale Electric is a major supplier of the most elite lines of electrical material to original equipment manufacturers.  Our major lines include Hoffman, Square D (Schneider), Appleton, Thomas and Betts, Anaconda, Panduit, Hubbell, Killark, and Adalet, just to name a few. County Wholesale Electric distinguishes itself from the competition by supplying the finest quality products and by providing the best customer service in the marketplace. 

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Our staff offers our customers an average of well over 25 years of experience in the electrical industry.  Each member of our outside sales team has specific accounts on which to focus their skills. County Wholesale Electric provides exceptional service specialized to each focused market.  We are known for stocking material specific to each of our customer’s needs and we do provide vendor managed inventory (VMI) at our customer’s locations.