We’ve heard from a number of patio and hearth retailers over the past few years that, while tickets are up, traffic is down. Not a good sign, but no one ever said that driving traffic was easy, or inexpensive.
From product design, to tracking trends, choosing fabrics and managing a sales team, Danny Jelley can do it all – well.
Specialty retailers agree it’s their employees, but finding the right ones is quite a challenge.
Hearth & Home interviewed 48 specialty retailers of hearth, patio and barbecue products throughout the U.S. to determine how well they fared in 2017. For some it was a great year, for some it was a bad year, and for most it was an acceptable year.
It has been a surprisingly good year for hearth products, as well as a break-out year for sales of electric fireplaces through the specialty channel.
It’s a family affair at Hearth & Home in Mount Prospect, Illinois, a business that began in 1971 with a mission of taking care of its customers.
Economic indicators were pointing in the right direction, and for many patio dealers, the season was good, but not great.
There’s some genius involved at Jacksons Home & Garden in Dallas, and his name is Bob.
In general, it was a good year for barbecue sales through the specialty retail channel; the major problem was with the negative impact of Internet sales.
All Things Barbecue is a superbly run operation, and a role model for all specialty retailers in the barbecue business.
Thirty miles from Phoenix, north on the 101, you will find Taliesin West, previously the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright, who died in 1959, and now home to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the School of Architecture at Taliesin.