Dan Morehouse
Morehouse Appliances
Morehouse Appliances is America’s second-oldest continuously operating, family-owned appliance retailer. Tell us about your history.
Morehouse opens first location on Columbia St in Downtown Utica
My great-grandfather was a blacksmith and a tinsmith, and he moved into stoves. In that time period, there was no electricity, no cars. It was all coal and wood-burning stoves. Deliveries would be by horse-and-wagon.
My grandfather went into business with him and was called up for World War I. My great-grandfather, at this point, had gotten ill, he was in a wheelchair, so my great-grandmother ran the business while my grandfather was gone, which was pretty unusual for those days. She was able to keep the business going while he was in Europe.
When my grandfather came back, he was able to build the business further. The original location was remodeled, and we were there from 1894 to 1992. We moved from downtown Utica to New Hartford.
My father ran the business until 1993, and then my brother and I started running it, and we moved to our current location in 2009.
What has been the key to your success over your 100+ years in business?
Certainly building relationships with our customers. We have a very cooperative relationship with our customers because we’re a full-service shop, so we do sales, service, repair and installation.
And we’ve been able to adapt as time goes on. We change the way we do business based on the current situation. It’s changed a lot in the last 25 years and probably over the next 5 or 10 years, it’s going to change even more. Adaptability has certainly been a key to success.
What can a customer expect when coming to Morehouse Appliances?
We have a low-pressure, friendly environment. We don’t push people. We have experienced people here. When you have people with experience, you get good advice. Our pricing is competitive but we offer a lot more. Our deliveries are done by our own people. We’re flexible with deliveries and we show up when we say we’re going to.
We also take things into account to make sure our customers are taken care of. If somebody has a down refrigerator, that becomes one of our priorities. That’s more important than pretty much everything else.
How do you decide which ones to offer?
We carry a wide range, but we don’t carry them all because we want to make sure we can service the brands we sell. Things that are not repairable, we don’t sell.
If we have ongoing issues with a brand, we’ll move away from the brand. We want to work with brands that support us and that have good service and technical support. It can be pretty aggravating to have a year and a half old product or a six-month-old product and not be able to figure out how to fix it. We migrate toward brands that support us in supporting our customers, and we certainly recommend them more.
What trends are you seeing in home appliances right now?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being integrated into more appliances.
Cleanability when it comes to laundry and washers, adaptive cycles for more or less soil. Self-ordering refrigerators. They will learn over time with barcode scanners what you normally have in your refrigerator and order for you, or make a list for you for the grocery store.
Some appliances have apps now. It will show you the history of what the appliance has done. Door openings on refrigerators, defrost cycles, things like that. They can even spot potential problems or if it knows what the problem is, it will tell you. Those are really helpful.
For washers and dryers it can send you an alert when your cycle is finished. Refrigerators tell you when you change the water filter, when the doors been left open.
Adaptive cameras in your oven will help figure out how to better cook your turkey. What temperature and for how long. And it won’t just learn from your stove. It will learn from everybody’s and there will be a shared learning experience for the AI from all of these appliances. Over time it will just get better.
We don’t have a lot of people who come in to buy a new appliance because it’s got a smart app, right? It’s a nice bonus, but it’s not selling appliances.
What should customers consider when purchasing a major appliance?
Certainly the reputation and reliability of the brand and the dealer. If you’re considering where to purchase, certainly a dealer who provides service and can repair it is important. Not only delivery time, but also delivery quality. Obviously budget comes into play but for the long-term, buying the cheapest appliance is usually not the cheapest way to go.
Are there common mistakes people make when buying appliances? Or a piece of advice you would offer?
Don’t shop based just on the price of the product. It’s important, but there can be additional charges for installation and accessories. You need to look at the whole picture and know what the best value is.
What goes into an appliance installation that we might not know about?
We do measurements on-site for built-in appliances, wall ovens, cooktops and built-in microwaves. People think you can just slide out an old appliance and slide the new one in. Hook up the power and the water and off you go. More often than not, it’s not the case. A lot of the times, please have put down new flooring. If you put new flooring down, thick flooring, and then you go to pull out a dishwasher you’ll realize that it won’t come out because of the new flooring. We run into that fairly regularly.
Having people who have done it for a while really helps. They’ve seen a lot of this stuff before.
What was COVID like for your business?
We were able to adapt. We got a lot of exposure during COVID. A lot of people came to us who hadn’t shopped with us before and helped us grow. It was a lot of word of mouth. A lot of people thought it was a good time to redo their kitchen since they couldn’t go anywhere.
As a locally owned business, how do you stay connected to the community, and why do you think customers continue to choose and support independent appliance stores like Morehouse Appliances?
We hear more people today saying that they like to support local businesses. It’s become a theme people take pride in. We do lots of charitable work and make lots of donations to charitable organizations locally. If you shop at a local business, the money is going to stay in the community.
We take a lot of pride in being a 4th-generation business. My daughter Ellie is here now. She’s our office manager and our 5th-generation. We’re excited to have her.
March 2026
