Page 8 - LPG August 2018 Newsletter

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The Luxury Report August 2018 Luxury Products Group
Showrooms were never supposed to be in the cards for Greenville, South Carolina- based ProSource.
Until they were.
ProSource was started by the husband-and- wife duo of Grover and Tonya Martin, who have a combined 69 years of experience in the industry. When the doors opened in 1996, ProSource was a one-location, six-employee PHCP distributor working out of a small 13,000-square-foot warehouse in Greenville.
“Grover and I met through the industry,” Tonya Martin explains. “We both love this industry and have a passion for what we do. In 1996, we took this passion one step further and created our own company. Originally, there were no plans to have a showroom, but that is where my love is!”
Martin adds in the beginning she worked counter sales, receiving and accounts payable. “Accounts payable should never be handled by a salesperson,” she says. “I did it and we never missed a discount, but it gave me a headache every day.”
Martin quickly found a way to relieve that head pain. She took several unoccupied of ces at ProSource headquarters and used them to hatch the company’s rst showroom. “As the reps would come in I would start wheeling and dealing for a few displays,” she recalls.
In 1997, ProSource’s rst showroom debuted — all 800 square feet of it. “I made it work,” she says. “The joke was every time Grover would
be out of town for business he would come back to a larger showroom. One time I actually sheetrocked over the door going into his of ce.
ProSource's showrooms are loaded with the latest luxury kitchen-and-bath products on the market. "We want to spark the imagination as our customers shop," Greenville Showroom Manager Suzanne Hoggard says