QVC To Open First West Coast Distribution Center

QVC will open a distribution center in Ontario, CA, that will serve as a West Coast hub for the home television shopping retailer.

The facility is set to open in the third quarter of 2016 and is expected to have more than 500 employees by 2018 and as many as 1,000 employees by 2020.

"At QVC, distribution plays a significant role in enriching the customer service experience," said James Reid, vp/distribution operations at QVC. "This new distribution center will enable us to efficiently and swiftly serve our customers throughout the Western United States."

QVC's current U.S. distribution centers are located in Suffolk, Virginia; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Rocky Mount, North Carolina; and Florence, South Carolina. The existing distribution network has shipped more than 570,000 units in a single day, according to the company.

The West Coast distribution center will be designed to accommodate approximately 20% of QVC's total U.S. business, with plans to store and ship all product categories.

Over the past 28 years, QVC said it has shipped more than 1.7 billion packages in the United States.

The new LEED-certified facility will utilize high efficiency systems for lighting, heating and cooling and will feature a 250 kW solar array on its rooftop. The West Coast distribution center will also lower the company's use of trucking by more than 10 million miles annually, leading to a reduction of more than 35 million pounds of CO2 emissions per year, noted the company.