When you ask the general manager of a store that’s been in business for 83 years how they’ve managed to have that longevity, they probably haven’t lived long enough to tell you. But the evolution of Falco’s Home Resort speaks for itself.
“I think part of that is being able to, number one, add product and be versatile with the changing of the times as well as [number two] customer service,” Eric Figler, spa manager at Falco’s, says about their staying power.
The company certainly is not afraid of change. It started off as a fruit stand and evolved into a nursery and fireplace shop. Then the nursery was shut down and a new facility was built on top of it to house an array of outdoor products, including hot tubs. However, the biggest surprise when you walk into the store might be the espresso shop (complete with drive-thru) that greets customers with a homey coffee-scent and a nice place to sit and chat.
Spokane gives Falco’s three advantages: excellent hot tubbing weather, insulation from economic highs and lows, and a slower pace of life that encourages family time.
But with those advantages comes the relative disadvantage of competition. “For the number of people we have in [Spokane] how many opposing dealers we have and how many manufacturers are represented, I think that’s [our biggest challenge]. We’ve got tons of other dealers in this market, which I don’t think is as many as even the big cities have,” Figler says.
He says they are looking forward to growing the spa category even more over the next few years.
“You can never stop growing, that’s not a good thing if you stop growing,” he says. “There’s always opportunities and always things going on. For us, being in the fireplace side for many, many, many years, we have an established customer base and we get a lot of referrals from there. Where hot tubs, even though we’ve come leaps and bounds, we’d like to see our spa side grow even more as well as our service side.”