Jennifer Gannon Owner, BonaVista Leisurescapes Toronto, Ontario, Canada After 10 years on a busy city street in the heart of Toronto — near the neighborhoods we’ve been serving for decades, with metered street parking out front of our store — we moved a half mile away, one street south of the main road to a…
By Clearwater Pool & Spa To pull off a successful tent sale, evaluate the associated costs, examine the importance of coworker buy-in and earn community participation. Recognize the connection between these vital components and you’ll potentially sell an average of one spa per day over a one-month period. Costs Investing in the success of a…
Rene Huston Patio Pleasures Pools & Spas owner/vice president of finance, sales and marketing Sun Prairie and Madison, Wisconsin Finding employees keeps me up most at night. It’s also what sometimes holds me back from growth ideas: not knowing if I’ll have the staff to support the idea(s). Over the past month, we have spent…
Rene Huston Patio Pleasures Pools & Spas owner/vice president of finance, sales and marketing Sun Prairie and Madison, Wisconsin Huston was always drawn to entrepreneurship. Her background is in sales and marketing, where she built her professional career in the print and digital communications industry. In 2006, her family was approached with the opportunity to…
JOE PRIVETT In 2004, our hot tub supplier was encouraging us to open a location in a market about 45 minutes from our main store. After a couple of months, we found the perfect building. It had a great showroom, office space, incredible warehouse facilities, and outside space for a pool display. To top it…
We setup our e-store approximately five years ago. With the rapid shift toward shopping online, it was an absolute must. UPS does an annual survey where it interviews 5,000 consumers. In June 2016, 51 percent of those surveyed said they made more of their purchases online than in brick-and-mortar stores. This trend is up from…
Attending classes at the 2016 IPSPE show reaffirmed that numbers should be very important to all owners and managers if we want to be informed, competitive and successful. Sometimes small-business owners don’t allow department managers to see how their accountant logs information to prepare reports and taxes for them. Department managers need to know more…