Robert Hurd, Owner
Q: Why have you had longevity in an industry where retailers come and go fairly quickly?
There are some great [employees] here who have been willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Sometimes we’ve had to diversify. We have a sales guy on the floor who, for example, this week was doing deliveries and putting pool tables up and doing some service. So we all had to do whatever it took the last few years just to get the job done. I think longevity-wise in this community, we’re fairly fortunate in this area. I think Midwestern people have a value system still that makes them easy to work with. They’re good people. You can still shake hands on something, and if I say I’m going to do this or that, they know it’s going to get done and vice versa. Obviously, longevity is based on paying attention to a lot of different things. It’s not one thing. I mean, the last few years have been more challenging, but when it comes to customers you have to take care of them. You take care of your customers in an area like this and you’re going to be fine.
Q: Where would you like to see your business grow or improve in the next few years?
I think really the key to any business, especially in what we’re doing, is if you don’t continue to get better in every process, you won’t stay in business. Things change and you have to be somewhat flexible to change with it. But I think ongoing it really all comes down to service. Continue to improve the services that you provide. But you talk about improvements, in the last few years that’s one of the things that’s been a blessing in disguise. With all the ups and downs we’ve become very good at watching every penny that we spend, which mixes things up quite a bit because you don’t realize how much waste that you have. Servicing in this area, one of the key things is making sure that we’re routing trucks and minimizing road time because if you get out of whack you’re wasting a lot of gas and a lot of time.