Homemaker-farmer turned appliance dealer Leshia Thurman
The owner of Thurman’s Appliance learned retail on the fly
By Janet Weyandt, YSN
When Leshia Thurman was approached last year about joining by BrandSource, she couldn’t have been less interested. A committed member of a different buying group, she just didn’t feel the need.
“I pretty much told them I had no interest in moving,” she said.
But Thurman, owner and general manager of Thurman’s Appliance in Fort Payne, Ala., was too polite to shut down the request entirely. Instead, she took a meeting with VP of Sales Jarred Roy and Southeast Region Manager Denny England and never looked back.
New Beginnings
“It was quite the conversation,” Thurman said. “I was already having some issues with my website that I wasn’t happy with. That got me thinking about the differences. After they guaranteed they would hold my hand through the whole process, and several more conversations, I decided to make the change.”
Thurman and her husband Danny opened Thurman Appliance together in 2017. Before that, Danny was a service technician and Thurman had made it her career to raise and homeschool their three children and manage the family farm and homestead. She had also spent 30 years doing the books for Danny’s contract service business.
When their oldest child graduated from college and the twins were getting ready to begin pursuing their four-year degrees, Thurman had a whole different life in mind.
“I was thinking I would stay home, visit with grandchildren,” she said. “We really were homesteading at that time; we had a garden, I was always busy doing things like that. I was super active in our church.”
Danny, however, had other ideas.
Pre-Owned Appliances
“He just said, ‘You’re going to have to go back to work. We’ve got to put the twins through college,’” she said. “And he threw me into the appliance business. It’s been a steep, steep, learning curve.”
They opened their store with pre-owned appliances “because that’s what he knew well,” Thurman said. They gradually added scratch-and-dent inventory, and the business grew so much that son Ross came on board in the service department.
“During COVID we became a GE dealer,” Thurman said. “We had already been doing some new appliances, but GE supported us so well. That’s when the expansion really hit.”
The Thurmans still sell pre-owned appliances but you won’t find them on the showroom floor. Instead, they’ve gone all-in on luxe and carry the Forno, Zline, GE Café brands. And that’s not the only change.
Who’s the Boss?
“I’m the sole owner,” Thurman said. “He works for me now.”
The business that started out with just the two of them now has six employees, including Ross and Thurman’s “right-hand woman,” sales manager Kathy Clanton.
“He learned from his father and he also went to school,” Thurman said of her son. “After he finished he knew he wanted to do what his dad was doing. He’s been working with his father off and on since he was 13. He is amazing. We get so many compliments about him all the time.”
Also making a big difference at Thurman Appliance is its membership in BrandSource, which the store officially joined last April.
In SYNC
“Overall, I’m in love with SYNC,” Thurman said, citing AVB’s proprietary point-of-sale platform. “Once I realized how important it was for SYNC to work with my website, we started working with the website. That’s still ongoing, but I’m very pleased with it. Next, we’re going to embrace HUB.”
Another big reason Thurman is pleased with her new group is the people she’s met and the experiences she and Danny had at their region meeting and the 2023 Convention.
“I just want to brag on the BrandSource staff – just like they said, I was never deserted, they continued to reach out to me,” she said. “We felt like we just connected there so much better. In [our previous group], a lot of the people were not willing to share what they knew. We’ve only been in business seven or eight years and we’re always looking to learn. Everybody at BrandSource was, ‘How can I help you, what can I do?’”
Oh, Denny Boy
Since their first “intense” meeting, Thurman has forged a strong bond with her region manager. “Denny – he’s precious,” she said. “He’s taken me by the hand and taken me where I needed to go.”
England said that even in the short time Thurman Appliance has been on board, he’s already sent potential BrandSource dealers Leshia’s way to talk about the value of membership.
“She just knew and understood her side of the business like we don’t see very often,” England said. “She’s holding her own at every level. We’re just kind of blown away at what she knew and how she knew it; how in touch she was with how to run her business, what her needs were and what we could do to help ease some of her pain points. To date it was the longest meeting either one of us has ever been in. We love her.”
England added that despite recent hardships, including the death of her father, Leshia hasn’t missed a beat. “She’s had a lot of tough sledding on the personal side, but I’ve never met anybody more engaging,” he said. “She’s just a delight. We’re so happy to have her in the group. I wish I had 100 of her.”
Multitasking
Thurman said owning and running a business at this point in her life wasn’t at all what she had in mind, but it’s working. And that includes the occasional angry customer who doesn’t want to deal with a woman, which sometimes is part of the job.
“It’s a rare issue, but sometimes men … try to bulldoze a woman,” she said. “I’m not going to be bulldozed very easily. As women, we wear so many hats. I think we have to multitask in a way men don’t understand. We’re still in charge of not only the business, but also the homelife. We don’t think about it, we just do what needs to be done.”
YSN publisher AVB BrandSource is the nation’s largest merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, mattress, furniture and CE dealers.
