Photos: ©2013 Taylor Studios. www.taylorstudios.ca.

The Vesta Excellence in Retailing Awards were established in 2013 to honor those on the frontlines who are instrumental in moving the industry forward. Two awards were to be presented: Hearth Retailer of the Year, and Outdoor Room Retailer of the Year.

That was the case last year. This year only retailers in the Hearth category received enough nominations to fulfill initial requirements. All nominations must come from HPBA members; all nominees must be members of the HPBA.

We regret there is no Outdoor Room Retailer of the Year award this year.

As part of the requirements for being in the Vesta Excellence in Retailing program, we asked the five finalists for Hearth Retailer of the Year to provide us with Store Images and a Store Profile.

What follows is the Store Profile document prepared by Brad Leonard and Alex Soubliere of Friendly Fires. It provides a good glimpse into the workings, and management, of the store.

Friendly Fires is co-owned by Brad Leonard and Alex Soubliere; it’s a three-store business, the result of a July, 2012 merger of Friendly Fires and Renewable Energy of Plum Hollow.

Many stores make the error of not leaving ample space for customers to walk, and to view the products; Friendly Fires doesn’t make that mistake.

Visual Merchandising & Store Design

For our store layouts, we have taken the following strategies into consideration:

1. All impulse or add-on products are at the front and down the main walking aisles, i.e., barbecues and accessories, so that customers have to walk past these products on the way in and on the way out.

2. Our destination products are at the back of our showrooms (the milk strategy in grocery stores) forcing customers to walk our entire showroom.

3. We have maximized showroom space while minimizing warehouse or office space.

4. Sales desks are in the showrooms. This allows a customer to sit at a sales desk for the close instead of having a customer wander around.

5. Our warehouses are clean, inventoried and organized. The most common products (venting) are close to the main door, whereas the smaller or less frequent movers are toward the rear of the ware-house, maximizing our efficiency.

Describe what you have tried to achieve with merchandising displays in your stores

For our store merchandising, we have taken the following strategies into consideration:

1. Our non-burning wood stoves have fire images inside the glass so they look nice even when cold.

2. Our name brand/logo is everywhere. We promote our brand, not the manufacturer’s brand (there are no manufacturer brands or signage in our stores).

3. No product is on the floor - all are elevated for easy access with custom bases.

4. Our gas fireplaces are showcased from cheap to expensive, and their finishing is also done that way (i.e., cheapest finishing on the cheapest fireplace). Our middle-of-the-road fireplace has our highest margin and it’s our top seller.

5. Our goal is not to have similar product on display. In other words, similar looking product can delay a purchase as it may confuse a customer. If product is radically different, then it’s easier for a customer to choose.

   For example, if you wanted to buy a Honda Accord and they had 10 different options, it could be tough. If you wanted a Honda Accord and it came in three options - that’s a much easier purchase decision.

   So, we will not display two medium steel stoves from different manufacturers - they are too similar. But we would put a medium soap stone stove next to a cast iron, next     to a steel.

6. The monthly purchase price is displayed larger than the unit price.

7. Our price tags have ranges instead of specific industry jargon (small heater, medium heater, large heater - instead of 10,000 Btus, 25,000 Btus).

8. Our stoves and fireplaces are fully loaded with options, as it’s easier to sell down than up.

9. We keep our showrooms clean and uncluttered.

10. We follow Tom Pugh’s suggestion in the “Blueprint for Success” book of having a discount corral for price shoppers.

Friendly Fires finds efficiencies in limiting its number of suppliers; the store has only four manufacturers of barbecues.

Marketing/Promotions

We provide fireplace and barbecue tips instead of regular TV ads; this brands us as the experts.

Our website is constantly updated and optimized for lead generation and search engine optimization. We keep it updated with Press Releases, Blogs, Customer Testimonials, as well as an employee directory because our people are why our customers buy from us.

Friendly Fires maintains up-to-date social media pages on Houzz, Pinterest, You Tube, Facebook, as well as Linkedin. These pages generate leads and help our website in search engine optimization rankings.

We also generate regular email blasts with tips and suggestions to our 4,000 email addresses. This is a very cost-effective marketing tool.

Describe all special promotions you have done in the past year

The Friendly Fires strategy is to promote our people as the experts. We do not promote or advertise sales or specials.

On Traditional media (Yellow Pages, TV, Print, etc.) we always maximize co-op dollars as this media is expensive and decreasing in importance. This is the only time we will ‘promote” a manufacturer.

On New Media, we promote ourselves as the experts in our field. We currently get over 1,000 website hits every day and we have never paid for any Google ad words.

Besides online and email blasts, our other marketing activities include:

1. Barbecue classes and barbecue competitions (over 500 attendees last year who paid to attend).

2. Follow-up phone calls to all our service and sales customers.

3. Two Home Shows.

On average, we spend significantly less on marketing and promotions than competing retailers.

Friendly Fires displays a multitude of products, both burning and non-burning.

Design Services

Customer consultation
Collaboration with designer
Jobsite
Professional 

Our design work primarily consists of solar design - not much hearth. We used to do full fireplace finishing, but it was not profitable enough considering the effort for us, so we closed it down. There are a lot of hidden costs with fireplace finishing (stock, health and safety, scheduling conflicts, unhappy customers once custom work is done, etc.) and it simply was not profitable enough for us in our rural markets.

Installation Services

Friendly Fires has licensed installers for the products that we sell. These installers are prominently profiled on our web page and our sales team actively promotes them during the sales process.

Most of our technicians are licensed for wood and gas (we are big believers in cross training) and we only use full-time employees. Our solar and barbecue business allows our technicians to be employed full-time with us year round. Friendly Fires does not engage in layoffs.

In addition, our people and processes allow our technicians to be very efficient during the workday. When the technicians show up for work in the morning, their route sheet, paperwork and product are ready to go. Our Service Coordinators download the pictures from the day before, attach them to the customer file, take their previous day’s paperwork, and then send them on their way.

Because of our efficient processes, our technicians complete 25 – 50 percent more jobs than comparable companies in our industry. The number of technicians Friendly Fires currently employs is the same number as five years ago, yet our revenue has almost doubled.

Employee Training

Installation
Customer Service
Warehouse

Training is very important for Friendly Fires. Great people want to be challenged and want to learn more. As such, Friendly Fires provides the following training:

1. Friendly Fires pays for wood technical training and subsidizes gas training certifications.

2. Friendly Fires organizes company-wide tech training sessions from our main manufacturers (often off-site).

3. Friendly Fires University has three tracks: Business Process, Product, and Sales Training for our in-house teams.

4. Technicians and sales teams have bi-weekly department meetings where various training items are discussed.

5. We create and release regular tech bulletins. Last week’s was the difference between grounding and bonding a gas line.

6. Sales Team under-performers have bi-weekly sales coaching sessions until their numbers improve.

Customer Services

At Friendly Fires we take customer service very seriously. In fact, positive customer reviews can easily be seen on Google reviews (Google our name), Home Stars, as well as our web page (real testimonials).

Our strategy for handling difficult or unreasonable customers is two fold:

1. We ask customers what they want.

2. All our staff is empowered to make it right and agree with them.

We no longer argue with customers - even if they are wrong. If they want to return product, we will take it back. If they want money off, we will often remove it. It seems wrong at times to do this, but arguing with customers often leads to staff stress and an unhappy customer, and this could potentially cost the business much, much more.

As for follow-up, Friendly Fires follows-up on all service and installations. Because we are completely automated, once the installation or service is complete, our Service Coordinators forward an electronic version of the service order to a salesperson’s queue (evenly divided throughout the company). The salesperson follows up with the customer and places a note on their file of their discussion (happy, not happy, etc.). Once the follow-up call is made, the salesperson forwards the electronic service order to Accounting for collections (if required).

These follow-up calls have been excellent for follow-on business, solving issues, as well as generating new sales opportunities. It also helps train salespeople to work the phones on a regular basis.

Financial Management

Gross Margin - Less than 40% Net Income (Profit) Before Taxes – 5%-10%

Friendly Fires, Kingston, Ontario.

Store Name: Friendly Fires

Locations:
Canada
70 King Street East, Cobourg, Ontario; 981 Hwy 7 East, Peterborough, Ontario; 271 Dalton Avenue, Kingston, Ontario

Owners:
Alex Soubliere & Brad Leonard

Key Executives:
Jason Lichter, Jason Wamboldt, Duane Barker

Year Established: 1989

Web Site: www.friendlyfires.ca

E-mail: alex@friendlyfires.ca

Phone: 1-800-267-1767

Number of Stores: Three

Number of Employees: 30
Full Time: 30

Av. Sq. Ft. of Building Space: 21,500
Showroom: 13,500
Warehouse: 8,000
Outside Area: 4,000

Brands Carried:
Hearth – EnerZone, Enviro, HearthStone, Kozy Heat, PacificEnergy, Piazzetta, RSF, Valcourt, Valor
Barbecue – Broil King, Napoleon, Primo, Weber

Advertising % of Gross Revenues: 0.5%

Advertising:
Radio - 0%,
Newspapers - 0%,
Magazines - 10%,
TV - 50%,
Direct Mail - 40%,
Other - 2%