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International Hot Tub Company

Rich Hiner, Owner

Q: After a few tough years for hot tub retailers, what advice would you give to them now that things are slowly turning around?
I think that you always want to be optimistic. I’d say we are cautiously optimistic. You have to keep moving forward even in a down economy. Sometimes moving forward means tightening the belt and making better decisions. I think our entire industry will be stronger once we come out of this because of the decisions we’ve had to make in this down time. But, I believe it’s going to be a long, slow climb out of this malaise that our industry has been in. There’s no quick fixes out there, that’s for sure. So, you had better have your operations side of your business in order to survive even as we come out of this economy.

Q: What are some of the challenges of being in the Denver market?
Every manufacturer wants a presence in Denver and there really are too many retailers at this point for the market size. We have seen some downsizing in the Denver market, but not as much as we thought we would see or that we probably should have seen from a scalable standpoint. The challenges are really that so many manufacturers see this as a great market that everybody wants to be here and every guy that’s ever worked in the spa business wants to open up his own little shop.