Consolidated West Distributing Inc. in Los Angeles has created a new website that was expected to go live about the third week of June, according to Elvia Menendez, president of the company.

“It seems that a lot more business is being conducted online and by email,” Menendez told The Produce News. “So we wanted to modernize a little bit.”

The company started working on the new website several months ago, “and it is finally ready to go live here in a few days,” Menendez added. The website name is consolidatedwest.com.

Initially, the new website will be primarily informational in nature, she said. “Eventually, it will be a little more interactive.”

The site will contain information on “all the varieties of apples, pears and cherries that we sell” and will have links to various organization and resource sites such as the Pear Bureau and the Washington Apple Association “where people can get more detailed information.” Also, “we are going to try to update crop and market information as things change each season,” she said.

“We are going to have a company profile,” and there will be photos and brief bios of each employee as well as contact information, so customers can see the names and faces of people they talk to on the phone.

Consolidated West, which was founded in 2001, is a distributor specializing in apples, pears and cherries year-round, with a heavy focus on products out of the Pacific Northwest from fall through winter and into spring.

The company also sources California pears and apples during the summertime.

At various times of the year, Consolidated West handles imported fruit from Chile, Argentina and New Zealand. “We don’t import any ourselves, but we do have access to imported fruit,” Menendez said.

The company was also moving some imported product, but it was “a very small percentage of what we do,” she said.

“We are starting our Northwest cherry season at the moment,” Menendez said. The company also continued to market cold storage apples out of the Northwest from the 2013 harvest. “Usually at the end of August, we start new crop Northwest apples and pears.”

New crop California apples and pears should start around July, she said. “California has a small amount of apples and lots of pears that we deal with in the summertime.”

Consolidated West does about 90 percent of its business with customers in Southern California, according to Menendez. “We are here to serve them. We have established a good customer base, and we are looking to expand our customer base.”

Business is “stable,” she said, and “we are getting stronger. We are growing and would like to continue to grow and expand our presence in Southern California.”