Online TV parts supplier makes another acquisition

Fast-growing ShopJimmy.com, a Burnsville-based distributor of TV parts and accessories, has acquired Ness Electronics, a distributor of electronics components based in St. Paul.

ShopJimmy plans to merge all of Ness Electronics' inventory and employees into its new Burnsville headquarters, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Ness Electronics' two satellite locations in Milwaukee and Des Moines will remain in operation.

ShopJimmy is an online retailer of TV parts for a variety of manufacturers, and also sells refurbished TVs, scratch-and-dent TVs and other electronics parts and accessories. The company has 82 full-time employees and as many as 50 temporary employees who help harvest working parts from TVs damaged during shipping.

Ness Electronics was founded in 1964 by Don Ness and is operated by his son Mike Ness. The company is also a certified TV parts distributor and has branch locations in Des Moines and Milwaukee. Ness Electronics has 30 employees, 22 of them in St. Paul.

ShopJimmy was founded in 2007 by Jimmy Vosika, a onetime baggage handler for Delta Air Lines. The company has been named one of the 50 fastest-growing private companies in the Twin Cities by Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal and was named one of the Star Tribune's "Top Workplaces" in 2012.

"We couldn't be happier about this deal," said Vosika in a news release. "Mike Ness and Ness Electronics are so well respected in the industry and will bring decades of insight and experience to ShopJimmy."

According to a ShopJimmy spokesman, Ness has signed a three-year contract to join ShopJimmy.

This is the second acquisition for ShopJimmy in the last six months. On Aug. 21 ShopJimmy added more than 90,000 parts to its inventory by acquiring Naperville, Ill.-based Discount TV Parts, another online supplier of TV and electronics parts.