Photos: ©2015 Andy Duback Photography. www.andyduback.com.

The year is 2004. The place is Williston, Vermont. Sarah Kelley has just lost her job. She thinks, “I’m 20-something, and now what am I going to do?” Her dad says, “Just come to work here (in his hearth shop, Green Mountain Fireplaces) and we’ll figure it out. If you don’t like it, well, you don’t like it.”

Eleven years later, Sarah says, “I enjoy this job very much. It’s a passion for me; I’m dedicated.” It seems her dad – James Kelley – knew his daughter, perhaps better than she knew herself at that young age.

James Kelley and his wife Sally started in the hearth industry back in 1990 when they bought a small business (the owner was selling product out of his living room) in East Montpelier, Vermont. In 1994, they moved to Essex Junction, Vermont (about five miles east of the company’s present location), and opened “a really big retail showroom.

“At that time, Williston was just an up and coming area,” says Sarah. “Where the store is now was just a field. Then they started building up Marshall Avenue – where we are now – with a lot of industrial stuff. It became the place to be. So in 2001 we moved here and it’s been a much better location.

“There’s a lot of traffic, and we’re on the same road as Home Depot, Walmart and all the Big Box stores. There’s also a lot of home improvement stores.”

Williston is a suburb of Burlington, Vermont, the largest city in the state; it sits on the banks of Lake Champlain, and is home to UVM – the University of Vermont. (Confused by the abbreviation? It stands for Universitas Viridis Montis – University of the Green Mountains.) “There’s a lot of traffic, and we’re on the same road as Home Depot, Walmart and all the Big Box stores. There’s also a lot of home improvement stores.”

From June 2014 until September 2015, nine Stûv display models have been installed, resulting in 29 sales.

Williston has developed into a major retail center for the Burlington area, as well as for much of central and northern Vermont. Go north for an hour and a half or so, and you’ll be in Montreal.

Actually, Williston is prime terrain for a hearth shop. It’s a wealthy area with wealthy locals, and second-home owners from New York and Massachusetts; it also gets an average of seven feet of snow a year, and you know how well a fireplace fits in a cold, snowy climate.

Back in the early days, says Sarah, “both my mom and dad worked retail. There was really no installation work because people were putting the stoves in themselves. When customers began wanting installation work, my mom did the installs. Then the store got busy and they hired more people, including installers.”

Like her Mom, Sarah has done installations as well. Now, however, the store has installation crews and Sarah mostly handles the retail traffic. That, and occasional visits to job sites. “I also do all the home site visits,” she says.

“My dad still works full time and he’s very active,” says Sarah. “He’s a salesperson, and also does a tremendous amount of what we call ‘Build to Suit’ work, meaning we do everything. If a customer already with a home wanted to put a Stûv fireplace in, construct a wall, stone it to the cathedral ceiling, put a chimney in and build a bump-out, we do all of that in-house with our own crew. Dad is the lead on that. We don’t sub out anything.

“We can do stone, sheetrock, woodwork, flooring, tiling, everything. We’ll do everything that involves the product we are installing, such as bookcases.” Including Sarah and James, there are six people working for the company. The four guys have been with the company for a number of years and come from diverse backgrounds, which makes the variety of work they perform possible.“My dad still works full time and he’s very active,” says Sarah. “He’s a salesperson, and also does a tremendous amount of what we call ‘Build to Suit’ work, meaning we do everything. If a customer already with a home wanted to put a Stûv fireplace in, construct a wall, stone it to the cathedral ceiling, put a chimney in and build a bump-out, we do all of that in-house with our own crew. Dad is the lead on that. We don’t sub out anything.

Although located far up in northern Vermont, only 20 percent of Green Mountain’s hearth sales are traditional in style.

Sarah considers herself to be forward – not pushy, mind you. “I have tremendous follow-through,” she says. “If someone is indecisive and, for example, doesn’t know how to fix something because they don’t know how to decorate around it, I will go to a tile store with them. I’ll go to someone’s house and make them feel comfortable with their decision.”Green Mountain Fireplaces’ product mix is 65–70 percent gas, 25 percent wood and only five percent pellets. That’s because, until now, Sarah didn’t really like pellet stoves. “Well, I like the new Stûv pellet stove,” she says. “It’s really amazing. No noise, no fans, conductive heat. I’ll put that in our shop.”

Green Mountain has but one supplier of grills (Saber), one supplier of spas (Caldera) and, right now, only two of pellet stoves (St. Croix and Enviro). Yet it carries at least 16 brands of hearth appliances.

“We don’t really need more than one brand of gas grills,” says Sarah. “We don’t find that our customers need more than one. However, they do need to see more than one spa, so we’ll be expanding that category.” 

The breakdown of product styles is as follows: 40 percent are contemporary, 40 percent are transitional, and 20 percent are traditional. “But our showroom is a perfect mix of products and styles,” she says. “We might do a cultured stone wall, but then we’ll put a rustic barn beam above it; or we might have a piece of driftwood above a mantel, but with some black crows on it. We’ll show a television above a traditional fireplace.”

Green Mountain works a lot with new construction, and “it’s really hopping right now,” according to Sarah. “We do a lot of custom homes, a lot of high-end carriage homes and townhouses. They’re huge here. We also do a lot of old folks’ homes, lobby fireplaces, dining room fireplaces.”

For many retailers in the hearth industry, 2014 was one of, if not the best year in their history. “It wasn’t our best,” says Sarah, “but it was striking. This year is one of the very best we’ve had, because there has been no summer lull. Usually we carry into spring, but then something happens between spring and summer. You’re selling grills, but you’re not going crazy. Right now, we’re booked into August (interview was conducted the first week of June).”

Saber is the only brand of grills carried by Green Mountain.

The company relies on a lot of radio for its advertising, as well as Channel 3 for TV, but it’s also a lot of word of mouth. “We have a big following,” she says. “We try to stay current with everybody. We tell them to come in and see our products. We have a lot of builders who have been with us for a decade or more.

“We also have a big sale in April. There is a big Home Show at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds here, so we base our sales around that and the whole month.”

When James Kelley offered his daughter a job 11 years ago, he must have known that he was really getting a smart, high-energy business partner who would aggressively move the business forward – but not in a pushy way.

SNAPSHOT

Green Mountain Fireplaces, Williston, Vermont. Store Name: Green Mountain Fireplaces Location: 800 Marshall Avenue, Williston, Vermont 05495 Owners: James Kelley Key Executive: Sarah Kelley, James Kelley Year Established: 1994 Web Site: www.greenmountainfireplaces.com E-mail: sarah_kelley@yahoo.com Phone: (802) 862-8311 Number of Stores: 1 Number of Employees: Full-Time: 4 Part-Time: 1 Gross Annual Sales: N/A Av. Sq. Ft. of Building Space: Showroom: 2,000 Warehouse: 2,000 Brands Carried: Barbecue: Saber Hearth: Stûv, Mendota, Kozy Heat, Valor, Element 4, Enviro, Hwam, Fireplace Fronts, Marquis, Rais, Stoll, Supreme Other: Caldera Spas