ABC Warehouse, Inc. or ABC Appliance, Inc. is a chain of retail appliance and electronics stores based in Pontiac, Michigan. It was founded in 1963 by Gordon Hartunian, and operates 42 stores in

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

and

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

. The chain also operates 16 Mickey Shorr Mobile Electronics stores and 2 Hawthorne Home Appliances & Electronics stores. They are known for their advertising motto "The Closest Thing To Wholesale". In the last few years ABC has added mattresses and furniture to their retail offerings, including products from Sealy & Lane.

History

Gordon Hartunian opened the first ABC Warehouse store in a former warehouse in

Center Line, Michigan Center Line is a city in Macomb County in the U.S. state of Michigan, surrounded entirely by the city of Warren. The population was 8,257 at the 2010 census. History Historically, the land that Center Line came to occupy was swamp and wilderness ...

. By 1980, he had opened a second store in

Pontiac Pontiac may refer to: *Pontiac (automobile), a car brand *Pontiac (Ottawa leader) ( – 1769), a Native American war chief Places and jurisdictions Canada *Pontiac, Quebec, a municipality **Apostolic Vicariate of Pontiac, now the Roman Catholic Di ...

and a third in

Flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

. Hartunian was previously employed by another appliance store called Hot & Cold, which closed all of its Detroit stores. ABC Warehouse was one of the 30 consumer electronics retailers selected in 2007 to participate in an IBM program that tracked metrics on consumer application requests based on data provided by the

NTIA The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that serves as the President's principal adviser on telecommunications policies pertaining to the United States' eco ...

. In 2009,

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

signed a financial contract with the chain to provide the in house ABC credit card.

Advertising

In the 1980s, ABC Warehouse used

Ernest P. Worrell Ernest P. Worrell is a fictional character portrayed by American actor Jim Varney in a series of television commercials and later in a television series (''Hey Vern, It's Ernest!'') as well as a series of feature films. Ernest was created with ...

in its television advertising. Children were offered a paper Ernest mask in the store. In the 1990s, ABC commercials featured "The ABC Warehouse Employees Choir" who sung their own songs like "Price Protection" (sung to the tune of Alouette). From the late 90s to the late 2000s, ABC featured their founder Gordon "Gordy" Hartunian in a series of ads called "Gordyisms".

References

External links

* Retail companies established in 1963 Consumer electronics retailers in the United States Companies based in Oakland County, Michigan Pontiac, Michigan 1963 establishments in Michigan {{US-retail-company-stub