Saying "So Long", to my dealer....

[DexterDay]

I knew for the last 9 months that my dealer was trying to sell his Hearth & Leisure Store (Capell's). But I really thought someone would buy the store, barn (for pellets, corn, and rice coal) and inventory.

I drove by today and seen a "Selling Everything!! It ALL must go!" Sign..... I stopped in and............

Empty. The place had no pellet grills, no wood stoves, and no pellet stoves.... They had one Coal stoker (Harman, sold for $2,000 / originally $4,200!!) And one Insert, the Edge 60. Which is a Dressed up Mt. Vernon insert. That was the only stove he had left. Price tag..... $2,500 and it comes with 40 bags of pellets!

Now I am looking at my Ugly Pre-Fab fireplace and envisioning me ripping it out and building a nice zero clearance box. Oh and that $2,500 includes all the needed Pellet Vent Pro venting.....????

Hmmmmm...... I wonder how mad Mama would be if I put???? Nah.. I better not.

Anyone in Northeast Ohio can have the deal of the day though. An Edge 60 (Mt. Vernon) w/ 40 bags of pellets and venting? Thats like getting the stove for less than $2,000?????

Always a day late and a dollar short... The P-43 he had (whole reason I stopped) he basically gave away Ugh..

 

[Lousyweather]

story of my life, Dexter...day late, a dollar short! Why did he close the doors? Sounds like he just liquidated? I have a curiousity of why and how business owners close up......sometimes its just they want to retire and have no successors or cant sell the business in the market, sometimes they "just had enough", sometimes they are off to greener pastures....
In any event, Im sorry to see a dealer go.......

 

[DexterDay]

He was ready to retire and go boating..... He had the place up for sale. But no takers.

My Quads only warranty items, are the burnpot, heat exchange tubes, firebox, etc. So I'm not really worried about that..

Just sucks to hear how cheap he let all his stoves go for. He had a Lot of wood stoves, coal stoves, gas stoves, fireplaces, inserts, pellet grills, pellet stoves, and Fuel!! I would have Stocked UP on more pellets...

He saved the last open ton to go with the Edge... Oh and it comes with the Marble surround that it sits in.. And the track system and the log kit...... Yeah, a lot for that price... He is giving it away. Someone is gonna get a fantastic deal.

There is such a small market for that unit though. That and most perspective buyers prob dont realize that its just the Vernon in different clothes (Fancy Stainless clothes w/ bkack and grey marble)

 

[smoke show]

He had the place up for sale. But no takers.

Aren't you up for a challenge???

 

[Defiant]

He was ready to retire and go boating.....

Me tooo

 

[Lousyweather]

Aren't you up for a challenge???

well, if anyone could give it a run, it'd be Dexter! I dont know how large a dealer he was, but the commitment to make a GOOD hearth store work is fairly formidable, and given this economy, I am guessing alot of folks have figured out that there are easier ways to make a living. Cant blame the guy for being ready to retire, go boating, and enjoy life a little though!

 

[DexterDay]

well, if anyone could give it a run, it'd be Dexter! I dont know how large a dealer he was, but the commitment to make a GOOD hearth store work is fairly formidable, and given this economy, I am guessing alot of folks have figured out that there are easier ways to make a living. Cant blame the guy for being ready to retire, go boating, and enjoy life a little though!

Thanks. That means a lot. Especially coming from someone in the business.

I thought about it, and often still do ( have a 30 x 40 building thats empty). I have spoke with Scott Williamson about the PFI cert and general things about the Hearth industry. I would love to just service and sell used/refurb'd units and do it part time, keeping my day job. Until the need/demand/desire to go Full time came.....

But for now, I am young and will take baby steps... I have a good job and a family that loves me (Crazy, right ). .

He wasnt a Huge dealer, but he was one of the only one around for miles, that sold Hearthstone, Heatilator, Quad and Harman.
If you wanted one of them, you came here or drove almost 1.5 hrs.. Wasn't till after I bought the Quad, that I found out about Kinsman/Brookfield Stoves... Damn good dude there

 

[smoke show]

But for now, I am young and will take baby steps... I have a good job...

No sense of adventure... Don't be skeeered...

 

[MCPO]

Two major stove dealers in my area that had been well established for many years both recently gone by the wayside too.
They carried a lot of different brands and types of stoves , and one also carried hot tubs. I think there`s no question that the big box stores and the internet has made things quite difficult for the brick and mortars.
However , that said , I saw more than a few wood stove companies come and go before the internet became the shopping mecca that it is today. It`s gotta be tough having to maintain the stock and expenses of a storefront especially for a seasonal item .

 

[Lousyweather]

Thanks. That means a lot. Especially coming from someone in the business.

I thought about it, and often still do ( have a 30 x 40 building thats empty). I have spoke with Scott Williamson about the PFI cert and general things about the Hearth industry. I would love to just service and sell used/refurb'd units and do it part time, keeping my day job. Until the need/demand/desire to go Full time came.....

But for now, I am young and will take baby steps... I have a good job and a family that loves me (Crazy, right ). .

He wasnt a Huge dealer, but he was one of the only one around for miles, that sold Hearthstone, Heatilator, Quad and Harman.
If you wanted one of them, you came here or drove almost 1.5 hrs.. Wasn't till after I bought the Quad, that I found out about Kinsman/Brookfield Stoves... Damn good dude there

Its one of those things that you get into, but dont really realize how much it takes until you get into it. Out here, theres a fair amount of hearth competition......dealers in the same brand 25-30 mins away in all directions, so. pretty quickly you find yourself having to be open weekends, maybe an evening or two....heck, theres literally only 8 days per year we are closed. Servicing is another animal altogether. Money can be made doing so, but in any volume, it gets "busy". And if you arent "in the store", you better have good folks there! Or stay in the store and get some good techs you can rely on.....and then they figure they can make more money on their own, and quit, after you trained them.
We dont sell used/refurbs because of the liability aspect of it.......we'd have to buy the units very cheap, clean, paint, replace parts, warrantee them for a time, in order to make any money. We will work on stoves though that folks buy thru Craig's list, etc....often all they need is a bit of TLC.
As for PFI.....you could take an 8 hour class, take a test, and if you pass, presto! youre PFI certified! which is why Im not thrilled with the system as it is. Give me a tech with NO certification who has worked in the field for a couple years, he will outperform the wet-behind-the-ears recently PFI certified "tech" every time......I wonder if Scott's friend Carl is PFI certified?

youre family loves you? what else could you want?!

 

[Eatonpcat]

I bought a White riding mower at Capell's in 1995 when my house was finished...Good guys to deal with back then, but they stopped selling mowers a while ago. Last year sent the wife in when we were stove shopping and they were not willing to deal even though they said they were closing (retiring). To me that equalled no service, so no sale! I only hope Mad Dog buys a stove shop, with his OCD he could be a millionaire...I only hope he can deal with the pay cut!

 

[DexterDay]

I bought a White riding mower at Capell's in 1995 when my house was finished...Good guys to deal with back then, but they stopped selling mowers a while ago. Last year sent the wife in when we were stove shopping and they were not willing to deal even though they said they were closing (retiring). To me that equalled no service, so no sale! I only hope Mad Dog buys a stove shop, with his OCD he could be a millionaire...I only hope he can deal with the pay cut!

Until about 10 yrs ago (maybe sooner) they were a Mower, Trimmer, and Chainsaw Dealer..

My Grandfather bought a mower from them too... He always was nice, but when it comes to a Deal, he ran a tight Ship (pun intended ) But now, he is Giving it away. Lots of Patio furniture left and Food grade pellets, seasonings, and Hearth pads/Mantles....

I hope to do something someday..... I may need a Good employee or two? My cousins above cant count past 12 (no more fingers! )

 

[save$]

Too bad to see an established dealer close the doors, but I am glad that he has done it because he wanted to and was not shoved out on the sidewalk. My parents kept a store for a long time. You have to jump in with both feet and hope to heck you can swim! There is seldom ever a "safe time" to start a bussiness. Your head and heart have to be in the right place if you have any hope of making a go of it.

 

[FyreBug]

Thanks. That means a lot. Especially coming from someone in the business.

I thought about it, and often still do ( have a 30 x 40 building thats empty). I have spoke with Scott Williamson about the PFI cert and general things about the Hearth industry. I would love to just service and sell used/refurb'd units and do it part time, keeping my day job. Until the need/demand/desire to go Full time came.....

But for now, I am young and will take baby steps... I have a good job and a family that loves me (Crazy, right ). .

He wasnt a Huge dealer, but he was one of the only one around for miles, that sold Hearthstone, Heatilator, Quad and Harman.
If you wanted one of them, you came here or drove almost 1.5 hrs.. Wasn't till after I bought the Quad, that I found out about Kinsman/Brookfield Stoves... Damn good dude there

I know a guy in Central NY who started about 3-4 years ago fixing pellet stove on his spare time as a side line. He is now one of the biggest pellet retailer in Central NY.

There is a way to do it without burning yourself out. Sorry to dealers that are reading this since I'm about to commit a gross generalization... My personal experience is that many hearth dealers while committed and passionate about what they do are somewhat lacking in business savvy. (there i've said it). Please dont start flaming me since this is not every dealers but enough... The ones that seem to do better have a good accounting/sales/marketing background, make cool headed decisions about the brands they carry etc.. and as you said take it one step at a time.

If its something you're interested in talk to as many dealers you can (not necessarily those close to your area), take courses if you need them and read all about the industry. There is room and opportunities for good dealers out there.

I know where about you live, so if you shoot me a PM I can ask around to see which area is under serviced. I can also put you in touch with the dealer I mentioned although I know he lurks around once in a while (PPB my ribs are better...)

 

[DexterDay]

I know a guy in Central NY who started about 3-4 years ago fixing pellet stove on his spare time as a side line. He is now one of the biggest pellet retailer in Central NY.

There is a way to do it without burning yourself out. Sorry to dealers that are reading this since I'm about to commit a gross generalization... My personal experience is that many hearth dealers while committed and passionate about what they do are somewhat lacking in business savvy. (there i've said it). Please dont start flaming me since this is not every dealers but enough... The ones that seem to do better have a good accounting/sales/marketing background, make cool headed decisions about the brands they carry etc.. and as you said take it one step at a time.

If its something you're interested in talk to as many dealers you can (not necessarily those close to your area), take courses if you need them and read all about the industry. There is room and opportunities for good dealers out there.

I know where about you live, so if you shoot me a PM I can ask around to see which area is under serviced. I can also put you in touch with the dealer I mentioned although I know he lurks around once in a while (PPB my ribs are better...)

Thanks Burt, with the help and backing of many friends, family, and members here (cant forget about my Interweb Family ), I could probably start up a semi successful business. And like I said, I really just want to install and service to begin with...

If you dont buy a pellet stove (or wood, gas, etc) from the Hearth shops, you CANT find an installer. And if you own a Englander, Drolet, Pel Pro, Big Box Store stoves, you cant get a qualified service/chimney sweep either...

Couple that, with the dealers installers and service people are mainly sub-contracting anyways. I can only speak for my dealers that are local to me... By local, I mean within an hours drive.....

It would be nice to have a person to call to install ANY stove or clean ANY stove. More like a Scott W from here.. No hard feelings to the Good dealers out there. I know there out there. Eric from Kinsman is the Man!! But he is almost 2 hrs away from me..

Fyrebug. I am located near Wellington Ohio. There is "The Place" in Medina that sells stoves, Country Hearth and Patio in North Royalton, Hearth Shop in North Olmsted, and one in Norwalk (name slipped me). There are some around.... Just no "Super" dealers that give you that Warm and Fuzzy feeling

 

[FyreBug]

Two major stove dealers in my area that had been well established for many years both recently gone by the wayside too.
They carried a lot of different brands and types of stoves , and one also carried hot tubs. I think there`s no question that the big box stores and the internet has made things quite difficult for the brick and mortars.
However , that said , I saw more than a few wood stove companies come and go before the internet became the shopping mecca that it is today. It`s gotta be tough having to maintain the stock and expenses of a storefront especially for a seasonal item .

Yes and No... I see some dealers thriving while 5 miles down the road someone else is about to close doors. Often time the difference is not the outside pressure but the business sense required to run any business. Hearth & home magazine published an article about this and yes this is generalizing but for the most part its true. Thriving dealers find ways to differentiate themselves and have the "I refuse to participate in the recession" mentality. They do not compete against big box stores and neither do they want to.

Big box stores have always been around selling all sorts of stuff. The specialty dealers for any industries are still here. Why? Because they service a different customer base. Listen, I bought Wal-Mart Fiesta BBQ's at $150 a piece when I was first married. I eventually wised up and bought from a dealer a $1,000 BBQ. Analysis of customers (we do them) show the big box store customers are highly incented by flyers and discounts. Products found at Big Box Stores are typically not at par with 'professional grade' or specialty dealer offerings. Some value a deal others value quality, service, personal touch etc... There's room for both.

As far as internet retailing it has proven to be a boon to brick and mortar retailers. They just dont know it yet! Studies after studies shows that a successful etailer has a closing rate of about 1%. That is for every 100 customer that makes it to the shopping cart only 1 will click 'Buy'. Why? Because about 93% of consumers will use the internet (forums such as these, etail site with review etc...) to educate themselves. Where do you think the other 99 customers go to? To their local dealer! So what does it tell when a customer walks in your shop shows you a printout from an etailer and says "Can you match the price"? It means they never intended to buy from the internet in the first place! They researched for hours, got a feel for what it was worth, looked up where their local dealers are, got into the pick-up, drove 1/2 hour to buy from you. You dont have to drop your pants on the price. They just told you they were not going to buy from the internet! Just throw in a pair of glove or discount the install, whatever so they feel they've had a deal. You're happy, they're happy. Good times...

Finally, Internet retailers provide a level of marketing/advertising that a local dealer or manufacturers can only dream of doing. Yet it drives more traffic to the local dealers. This is my personal experience and also many studies have proven this. Finally, while we may lament the Brick and mortar dealers needing to pay staff, storefront etc... an average hearth Internet retailer pays thousands if not hundreds of thousands a month in order to drive traffic to their site. Many of them have NFI certified staff to answer calls. Most of them have monthly recurring expenses far higher than a typical brick & mortar hearth store.

So overall there's room for everybody. For Brick & Mortar dealers we just need to know our customers profile, not compete on price and know how to sell the personal touch/service.

 

[smwilliamson]

Its one of those things that you get into, but dont really realize how much it takes until you get into it. Out here, theres a fair amount of hearth competition......dealers in the same brand 25-30 mins away in all directions, so. pretty quickly you find yourself having to be open weekends, maybe an evening or two....heck, theres literally only 8 days per year we are closed. Servicing is another animal altogether. Money can be made doing so, but in any volume, it gets "busy". And if you arent "in the store", you better have good folks there! Or stay in the store and get some good techs you can rely on.....and then they figure they can make more money on their own, and quit, after you trained them.
We dont sell used/refurbs because of the liability aspect of it.......we'd have to buy the units very cheap, clean, paint, replace parts, warrantee them for a time, in order to make any money. We will work on stoves though that folks buy thru Craig's list, etc....often all they need is a bit of TLC.
As for PFI.....you could take an 8 hour class, take a test, and if you pass, presto! youre PFI certified! which is why Im not thrilled with the system as it is. Give me a tech with NO certification who has worked in the field for a couple years, he will outperform the wet-behind-the-ears recently PFI certified "tech" every time......I wonder if Scott's friend Carl is PFI certified?

youre family loves you? what else could you want?!

It's NFI...not PFI

 

[smwilliamson]

... an average hearth Internet retailer pays thousands if not hundreds of thousands a month in order to drive traffic to their site.

I think you meant hundreds...if not thousands...hundreds of thousands in marketing costs...now that would be a HUGE etailer.

Speaking to that...I spend less than $20 a month and receive thousands of visitors each month. It's somewhat of a myth that you have to spend a lot of money on marketing to drive traffic. You need to spend money on creating interent friendly content and it will market itself...SEO baby!

 

[save$]

I think you meant hundreds...if not thousands...hundreds of thousands in marketing costs...now that would be a HUGE etailer.

Speaking to that...I spend less than $20 a month and receive thousands of visitors each month. It's somewhat of a myth that you have to spend a lot of money on marketing to drive traffic. You need to spend money on creating interent friendly content and it will market itself...SEO baby!

And keep the site current. Can't stand looking something up, only to find the site is outdated. Big turnoff. Another one is "page underconstruction" what's with that?

 

[FyreBug]

I think you meant hundreds...if not thousands...hundreds of thousands in marketing costs...now that would be a HUGE etailer.

Speaking to that...I spend less than $20 a month and receive thousands of visitors each month. It's somewhat of a myth that you have to spend a lot of money on marketing to drive traffic. You need to spend money on creating interent friendly content and it will market itself...SEO baby!

Keep in mind some of them have warehouses and sell throughout Canada and the US. So their adclick cost goes into the thousands. Some placement clicks can cost up to a dollar each. So yes their marketing budget to come up first in any search is quite high. I've been at some of these locations and they are quite sophisticated businesses in their own right. They have a lot invested in their busines.

Geeks in a basement apartment, they ain't...

 

[smwilliamson]

Geeks in a basement apartment, they ain't...

Geeks in a basement apartment they may not be....but they ought to employ one, it will save them thousands if not millions over the life of a business. Applications such as fetchback offer a great tool for recovering conversions (albeit in a somewhat evil way) that can effectively dwindle down the need to be found in any search and cost less.

I run a complete analytic marketing platform myself and use to do adwords. During peak season I use to have a bill up around $700 a month Sept through December. While it was great for generating traffic, they key for me was actually having less people visit the site or rather ONLY people actually looking for exactly what I offer. Whereas I only offer three sought out services to SEO, I couldn't imagine having to monitor tens of thousands of product code. Yeah, you have everything...but if only 15% of what you have is what people are looking for...the other 85% of dead product is competing with your bottom line. Especially when there are less key words than product.

For example: You carry a full line of venting with adapters for many name brand applainces. You would rather sell the applainces if there is a larger profit margin but your SEO doesn't place importance of any one product over another. That shot gun approach to full SEO actually drains your marketing budget pretty quick.

If you run a etailer with 20,00 SKUS or more with complete SEO, it is imperative to create and monitor conversions to try and slim down the bounce traffic...or weed out those visitors that are are performing click happy browsing. Coming up "first" is a HUGE waste unless you are coming up first to the right people. It is far better to come up second, third or fourth in an organic search. It yields the same amount or more of targeted traffic and costs nothing. While many may have sophisticated methods for garnering traffic flow and market segment reporting...what you do with that info is key.

I say the internet is a blessing

 

[FyreBug]

Well, as I said many of them are very sophisticated and their IT & marketing dept are impressive. They watch analytics like hawks and performs some of their own. I dont know enough about the IT side of it to comment but since they are successful i'll assume they know what they are doing.