Mansfield's Advantage Appliance Thriving in Big Store Competition

Mansfield's Advantage Appliance owner Neil Speroni has been in the appliance business for over 30 years, and if one thing has taught him anything at all he said it's that service matters.

Advantage Appliance has been in Mansfield for over 16 years now, and shows no signs of stopping. In a store where customers usually come in to buy appliances for a remodeling of their home, the store itself has now remodeled and increased their floor space by about 1,500 square feet.

Speroni said he started in the appliance business right out of Stonehill College. He graduated with a degree in marketing, but found the job market tense.

"Couldn't find a job out of college actually," he said. "My friend's father was a [General Electric representative] and he just got me a job in a store in Boston where I worked for 10 years."

Speroni said he was always itching to own his own business, and when the opportunity came he took it right on North Main Street.

"I actually interned at an appliance store [in Mansfield] while I was at Stonehill," he said. "They went out of business... they were out for a while before I bought this place."

Speroni said that the biggest difference between his store and the big warehouse stores is that he and his employees service and repair the items they sell, regardless of manufacture’s warrantees.

"The majority of the big box stores don't do that," he said. "In fact, they usually give the customers our number to call when they have problems with their product."

Speroni said that while the store does service other stores' products, his customers get priority in repairs and maintenance. And selection is not a problem; Advantage Appliance uses a buying group with over 125 other small businesses to a warehouse of their own for catalog ordering.

Speroni said that he appreciates the history of the building his business occupies, and doesn't think he or it are going anywhere anytime soon.

"It's been here forever," he said. "It was a supermarket a long time ago, then a drug store and then a hardware store."

In conjunction with President's Day and the remodeling, Advantage Appliance is holding a sale on Monday.