Last updated on June 10th, 2025
I had the pleasure of sitting down recently with Nicole Ellsworth, owner of Sun Valley Appliance Center in Sun Valley, Nevada to chat about her business and how they serve the local community.
Located at 5490 Sun Valley Blvd in the Sun Valley Shopping Center, Sun Valley Appliance Center has been serving Sun Valley residents for almost 17 years now. It was formerly owned by Jerry Duke (who retired in 2023, at just shy of 80 years old, and who passed away in 2024). Jerry had been in several different buildings within this same shopping center, and started off with a diverse business focus, but eventually settled into the appliance business.
When Jerry was ready to retire after 15 years, he posted the business for sale on Craigslist. Ellsworth saw the ad and they started talking in the summer of 2023. The sale was an asset sale, so she just basically took over everything inside the business, the trucks and everything, but she started her own LLC (limited liability company), and October 20, 2023 was the official day that the switch flipped.
Ellsworth has run several different businesses for other people, but this time, she wanted something for herself, and she also wanted something that was a salt-of-the-earth type business. Something pure, something people really need, something that she could feel with her hands and do the work. “I wanted to own a business that doesn’t go out of style—to offer something that everyone needs, and to have the ability to help people out who need a little extra break.”
“I think Sun Valley is adorable,” says Ellsworth. “I’ve always had sort of a soft spot for it, and when I saw it on Craigslist, I was like, ‘that sounds kind of awesome.'” She employs Sun Valley residents in her shop.
“I employ a few locals to come through and clean up the parking lot. We pick up trash along the streets surrounding the shopping center, and load the container, among other things.” Ellsworth employs a handful of part-time and full-time employees. “Raphael is my driver, Cindy is my cleaner, and Junior is my parts guy. And we’re working on getting a new tech, which will help with in-home repairs, in-shop repairs, and testing the appliances.”
Finding good people is important to Ellsworth. “To have good people on staff, and pay people fairly is paramount. You know, I would rather grow slowly and in a healthy way than to push for sheer numbers. For example, Junior is a Sun Valley staple, and he knows what every single part is in any home appliance. He’s good—his knowledge is absolutely priceless!”
Appliance Sales, Repairs, and Mobile Service
Sun Valley Appliance Center offers quality, used home appliances at discount prices. They source new and used parts, as well as service customers’ existing appliances. In addition to on-site sales and repairs, Sun Valley Appliance Center also offers a mobile service. According to Ellsworth, “We go into people’s houses and repair their appliances at home. We diagnose first over the phone, and we order the parts ahead of time and schedule the in-home repair visit after the parts become available, then try to take care of it all in one stop.”
Ellsworth and her team also do appliance resales and trade-ins. “Our main business is the reselling of used appliances. We also sell some new, some ‘scratch & dents.’ We can do special orders for pretty much any name brand, but we also do a good amount of parts sales because we have so many in our yard, that while they’re not worth it to repair them, there’s still a ton of good parts on them. So we pull those parts and resell them to the public, especially because a lot of parts get discontinued so you can’t even find them online. So, we have a lot of that stuff onsite that is not widely available.”
Sun Valley Appliance Center can order parts for people, as well, since a lot of people want to do the repairs themselves. “You can bring any major home appliance here and drop it off, and we’ll work on it.”
On any given day, Ellsworth has more than a couple hundred appliances in stock. In fact, they have almost 200 dryers, alone, on the floor. But that’s just what is ready to be sold at any given moment. All told, they have 500-700 appliances at any given time that are moving through the process of being tested, repaired, cleaned, on the floor in inventory, being displayed on the floor waiting for someone to pick it up or to be delivered.
Sun Valley Appliance Center’s location has 10,000 square feet inside, with another 10,000 square feet outside. The yard outdoors is for transitional appliances (machines that are either going to be scrapped, or being parted out, or they’re going to be tested at a later date).
U-Haul Services
Sun Valley Appliance Center also handles U-Haul rentals and returns. U-Haul services are a new addition for Ellsworth and team, however. She explains, “U-Haul used to be over at the Pawn Shop, but they parted ways about two years ago. We added U-Haul in October 2024, and it’s been a great addition. People are moving, people need appliances. We’re here with both appliances and U-Hauls. Other people are trying to get rid of old appliances, so they can drop them off here. And if somebody wants to do the delivery themselves, they could also rent a U-Haul truck to do it.”
“Having a bunch of U-Haul trucks in your parking lot is great, as they are their own advertising. They’re a big giant billboard. We get a lot of people that come in off Sun Valley Boulevard and ask about renting them. People can also find U-Haul online, too, but we do get a lot of walk-in traffic, as well,” Ellsworth continues.
“I try to keep my trucks out in front and my trailers on the side of the building. It makes it simpler to direct traffic that way, and also helps people see where they’re supposed to park when they do an after-hours drop off.”
Positive Feedback from the Community
“I’ve received a very warm welcome from Sun Valley, and that feels really good because I didn’t grow up here. While I don’t live in Sun Valley, I care about Sun Valley very much, and I think that it shows. I think people can tell that I care, and so it always feels nice when I have customers that notice that sort of thing and see that we’re trying to offer a valuable service at a price that people can afford, and that we’re we’re trying to sustain a good quality of life here in Sun Valley. It’s important to me to offer fair wages and fair prices.”
“Customers tell me that we are easy to work with and very knowledgeable,” said Ellsworth, “and that’s the greatest compliment.”
Jerry Duke’s Legacy
“The idea of Jerry retiring and his legacy just disappearing, and this place shutting down, that was a big pull for me. Once I started talking to him, just knowing how much history he had in this town moving mobile homes, restoring mobile homes, doing rehabs, and then the appliance store—everybody knows Jerry! And when he left, it could have just been over… That broke my heart to think about. So, I love the idea of continuing on this business and to keep offering it in Sun Valley,” explained Ellsworth.
“So, basically, Jerry was buying and moving a lot of mobile homes back in the day. During that process, he would come across these old appliances because people just throw these things away. People just dump them sometimes on the side of the building, and sometimes they’re worth fixing, and sometimes they’re not—but there’s still value to them. We recycle the metals, whatever we don’t sell in parts or reuse, and we also recycle parts.”
“He just sort of collected these things and was storing them in a building, just down the way and the story that he gave me was that he had a buddy that was helping him with the business and he said, ‘You know, we should start selling these things. We’ve got such a collection. You’re fixing them up, and they’re just sitting here collecting dust.’ So, they put up an open sign and started selling them. And then, it just started moving so quickly that they got into this bigger building,” Ellsworth recollected.
Local and Regional Business
“We get a good amount of organic, local business. I’m super stoked for that, and that was a part of taking over a business that was already in operation. We have a ton of visibility on Sun Valley Boulevard, obviously. We get a lot of people that just pop in because they see it, and they’re curious, or they have a renovation project coming up.”
“For advertising, we do a couple of commercials on several TV stations we’re on, and six different radio stations. We’ve also done some golf course scorecards with our name on it and things like that, but it’s pretty grassroots. A lot of word of mouth, and this community definitely supports that kind of thing—people communicate with each other, they tell their family members.”
Regionally, we also have people that come in from Susanville and other places to buy appliances. No joke. We’ve delivered to Susanville, Yerington, Silver Springs. We get calls from Hawthorne, Fernley, Fallon, and Truckee.
“Our store is great, especially for somebody that’s looking, but on a budget. They’re going to shop around, and they end up finding us,” continued Ellsworth.
“Obviously, Sun Valley is our main customer base. I sell to somebody in Sun Valley pretty much every single day, and then the North Valleys are sort of an extension of this, and Reno/Sparks, obviously. But yeah, we’re all over. We work with a lot of property managers and landlords because they want something nice in the house, but they don’t want to pay full price because they’re renting, and they know that it’s gonna have different people coming and going—a lot of wear and tear, so they’ll come in here and buy good, used appliances. That’s a part of our business that I really appreciate.”
A Piece of Sun Valley History
From a historical perspective, this particular building was built in 1971, and it started as a grocery store. So, before Scolari’s was in the next parking lot over, this building was the grocery store in Sun Valley. It was named Warehouse Market, and opened for business in 1971. You get long-time residents in here all the time saying, ‘I remember when this place was built’ or ‘I remember when this place was just a field.’
Sun Valley, Nevada was founded in the late-1930s because of the homestead-era Small Tract Act. They were giving away five-acre parcels, and people were just rolling in with trailers and setting up shop. And they got to keep it if they remained permanent residents. If they didn’t, they moved their trailer out, and another guy moved in. They just basically traded hands.
After the grocery store, which was here for 15 or so years, it changed a bunch. It became two different hardware stores, then It was like a consignment/thrift store, then a dollar store.
Fun Fact: They used to do Zumba in here, as well. “One of my clients grew up here in Sun Valley—and still lives here, and he used to come here with his mom and she used to do Zumba in the back of this building, and he’d have to sit here and wait, and watch all the ladies doing their Zumba. It’s really cute,” said Ellsworth. Definitely a lot of local history to be had in this particular building.
Sun Valley Mountain Biking
According to Ellsworth, the sport of mountain biking is definitely her favorite, non-work passion. “I love mountain biking. It’s my very favorite thing to do. I do lots of other outdoor activities as well, but it’s my absolute favorite.”
Sun Valley is home to the Biggest Little Bike Park, that is currently being rebuilt. This bike park is super special to Sun Valley residents because it was a total community effort. Ellsworth explains, “It’s so respectable that they created that, it’s a super sick bike park. And what they’re doing to it now, I think, is completely respectful of what was there to begin with. I think they’re buffing it out, so I’m really excited for the project.”
“People in Sun Valley really do care about their community, it’s very important to them. Historically, at one point, some of the community wanted to integrate Sun Valley into Reno as a city because they wanted some of the same amenities available there, but then a large portion of the population was like, ‘Heck no, we want to be on our own. We want to be left alone. We like it country, let us do our own thing,’ and I feel like that culture has really stayed in this community. It’s a wonderful thing.”
