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IT STARTED IN A GARAGE
AAO Appliance expands into stylist store
AAO appliance DSC 7613 edited-1
Moheba DAnna sister to the owner of AAO Appliance Outlet Odell Tristin and Ali Safdari, sales manager are outside their Moffat Boulevard store. - photo by GLENN KAHL/The Bulletin

The AAO Appliance Outlet recently opened in an expansive showroom on Moffat Boulevard just north of Austin Road is a success story that originated in a one-car garage in Manteca some seven years ago.

The 18,000-square-foot showroom is a one-stop shop for home improvement from everything from refrigerators and stoves to countertop granite and flooring and hardwoods plus solar power cost-saving programs for the home.

The Moffat location and its sister warehouse on South Main at Oak Street are operated by Odell Tristin and his sister Moheba D’Anna.  The warehouse adds another 30,000 feet to the appliance sales operation. 

D’Anna explained that the warehouse opened after her brother’s attempts to sell just a handful of refrigerators from his garage became too much of a full-time business for the size of his home.  She said the first four refrigerators were advertised on craigslist and the four grew to eight and the eight grew to 16.

For a short time he added a trailer to his property with more refrigerators, but that, too, blossomed into more of a business than space would allow.  He then transitioned into the old Kraft Foods building on Oak Street at South Main Street in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse that eventually grew to 30,000 square feet inside the building. 

“We realized it was too small for us and we saw the opportunity here where we could be seen from the highway,” D’Anna said.  “At the Moffat location Realtors, contractors, and designers can now bring their customers into the showroom setting with them where the designers get special discounts and cost free deliveries.”.

“The contractors love us in being able to just text us for five homes at a time – saying ‘here are our needs, get it done!’ “Our contractors are well taken care of by our staff,” she added.

Nikos Sotiriadis operates the “Solar Universe” franchise at the appliance store showroom – the largest in the country.  He said it not only saves his customers money on their utility bills, but it also increases the sales value of their homes.

D’Anna said her brother is good at interacting with the customers at the store that opened in mid-November and has had record sales with prices below that of the big box stores in the region. 

Odell played football as a running back at Newark Memorial High School and has a second degree black belt in martial arts, she added. He and his wife Mariana, a licensed vocational nurse, have one nine year old son Odell, Jr., a Walter Woodward Elementary School student.

The warehouse on Oak Street is open Monday through Saturday from 9 until 6 p.m.  Its Sunday hours are from 11 to 5.  The showroom on Moffat opens its doors at 9 Monday through Saturday and closes at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday 11 to 5.