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Andrew Terry

Name: Andrew Terry
Age: 39
Job: Title President
Company: O’Rourke Sales Company
Years in the Industry: 16
Education: B.A., Business Administration & International Management; B.S. in Economics from UVM

Dealerscope’s 40 Under 40 Honoree 2021

Describe your current role.
Support the operations, sales, marketing and vendor management for O’Rourke Sales Company.

What accomplishment(s) are you most proud of?
Expanding the philanthropy work we do through our OSC Cares charity organization. One specific cause we are proud of is our work fighting brain cancer in children. Brain cancer is the deadliest childhood cancer and leading cancer killer of children. O’Rourke Sales Company is one of the Founding Partners of the Tee Off Against Brain Cancer Annual Golf Tournament that supports the Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University. With the money that we raise, we aim to help families in need and ultimately cure pediatric brain cancer. And best thing is, it is not too late to sponsor this year’s golf event. Please reach out if you are interested!
Another proud accomplishment is the successful expansion of our distribution footprint across the U.S. After opening new facilities in Apopka, FL and Springfield, MA over the past three years, we now have seven branch locations. This gives OSC the ability to better service our customers with one-to-two-day shipping to all 48 contiguous states. This expansion additionally enhances our single-unit drop ship capabilities as more dealers look to integrate with OSC to support direct to consumer transactions.

What do you like best about your job?
OSC is a family-owned and -run company, which I believe has helped shape the culture in a very positive way. The level of importance put on family and charity by the O’Rourkes allows our team to set priorities without compromising their life–work balance. As an example of this, we launched “A Day of Service” that provides an additional paid day off to volunteer in the local community.
Another aspect of OSC I love is the fact that the O’Rourkes have an extremely entrepreneurial attitude and approach to business that has allowed me and our team to try new things to expand into new categories. If you told me when I joined four years ago that we would be selling e-bikes, lawn mowers, tools, grills, gaming chairs, patio furniture and air purifiers, I would not have believed you. This approach to the business has allowed us to expand our importance to our dealers and to the buying groups that we support.
And finally, what I enjoy best about my job is the relationships and friendships that we build with our colleagues and dealers. We stress the importance of face-to-face meetings and believe there is significant value in knowing the local markets. We want our sales team to walk the showrooms of our dealers so that we can understand their go-to-market strategies and merchandising strategies.
This allows us to better service them and to add value to ultimately help them succeed.

What technology are you most excited about at the moment?
We are making significant investments in proprietary backend software that we believe will be a game-changer with regard to customer service for our dealers. We plan to leverage our data and more importantly the analytics of our data to provide insights and best practices to dealers. For independent retail and rental dealers to compete and thrive, we strongly believe leveraging aggregated data to improve gross margin through assortment and pricing rationalization will be critical. Inventory management needs to be improved and one way to do that is to make the right buying decisions based on trends and true consumer demand.
The other aspect of this software that we are excited about is the ease of integration that it will allow. We need to provide solutions for independent retailers to expand their product offerings to their customers without the necessary inventory investment. We plan to build curated expanded online assortments that we can either ship to store or ship directly to the end consumer. This allows dealers to not only show a better selection to their customers but also try and test non-core categories that they otherwise wouldn’t try in-store.

What career advice would you give to people just getting started in the CE or technology industry?
The only thing constant is change. And honestly, I look at that as a positive aspect of this industry. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are something that you should try and develop as much as possible. No two days will be the same, and yesterday’s answer might not work today… so don’t be afraid to voice new ideas. This industry thrives on new ideas.

And finally, go to your kids’ ballgame or dance recital… There will always be another meeting.