The Firebird – such a lovely name for a hearth shop. The store was started way back in 1977, when the Arab Oil Embargoes triggered a resurgence in the use of wood stoves. Gene and Sharon Tyson, residents of Santa Fe, saw the upsurge in sales of wood stoves occurring throughout the country and capitalized on it.

In 1988, they sold the store to Gene and Mary Blake-Butler. Both were transplants, he from Texas, she from New England, and both were attracted to mountain living and the southern Rockies.

L to R: Mary Blake-Butler and Gene.

These first-time business owners thought that, given the demand, selling wood stove black boxes would be a simple task. But in 1988 (if you recall) EPA regulations were just taking effect; that required a learning curve on everyone’s part.

Santa Fe is at 7,199 feet in the beautiful Sangre de Christo mountains; it’s known far and wide for its art scene, gorgeous weather and as a place to get away from it all. That’s why celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Gene Hackman and many others have (or had) homes there.

Wikipedia tells us that the average annual high temperature is 65 degrees F., the average low is 35 F. and the average snowfall is 23 in. for a year. It only snows there an average of eight days a year, but take a short drive and you can be skiing at Taos.

Sounds a bit like Paradise, doesn’t it?

The population in Santa Fe is approximately 70,000, but the market area for The Firebird is close to 170,000 people who live within an hour or so from the store.

“It’s a good size market,” says Butler. “Unfortunately, New Mexico is lacking a lot of industry that would bring in middle-income wages; Santa Fe and parts of the state tend to be somewhat stratified. You have a healthy high-end and you have a good size low-end and not much in between. So it makes it kind of difficult.”

Albuquerque, with a population of about half a million, is only about an hour away, but Butler sells little down there, opting instead to concentrate on the northern area of the state which has fewer hearth dealers. In his backyard there is little direct hearth competition.

Across from a HearthStone stove, bagged fatwood fire starters are slung over railings; the store sells a huge amount of fatwood.

“There are a couple of stove stores,” he says, “but not like there used to be. We’re pretty much the largest hearth dealer in Santa Fe.”

Box stores exist in Santa Fe, but apparently present few problems for The Firebird. “They’re really not a problem,” he says. “There’s some segments that we’ve ceded to them, such as low-priced pellet stoves, but we’re fortunate in that we’ve branded ourselves and developed enough of a good reputation that consumers come to us.

“I have actually experienced standing in a Big Box store and listening to a salesperson tell the customer, ‘If you really want to know about these kind of things, you should go down and see The Firebird.’

So if you’re in Santa Fe and in need of a hearth product, you go to see Gene Butler and his team. That’s true as well for another main product category at The Firebird – drip irrigation systems.

“We’ve worked very hard at cultivating that market and developing those long-term relationships with our customers,” he says, “so I don’t really get much competition from the Big Boxes on the irrigation side. There is a large regional supply house here, but I think we out-sell them substantially.”

The Firebird acts as a supplier to those who actually do the landscaping, and that category represents close to half of the store’s annual business.

The Firebird carries a manageable number of top hearth brands and, according to Butler, he has done particularly well with Regency stoves and fireplaces over the years. “They make good wood products,” he says, “and their contemporary gas fireplaces have been very, very popular.

Butler is proud to have been only the 13th dealer of Vermont Castings stoves.

“Our Vermont Castings sales figures have varied a bit over the years, but we are a long-time Vermont Castings dealer. As a matter of fact, back in the day when Vermont Castings assigned all their dealer numbers sequentially, we used to take pride in the fact that we were VC dealer number 13. We were actually their first retailer west of the Mississippi. It pains me that they gave up on that sequential numbering system.

“But Vermont Castings is an old line brand that has done very well for us. In recent years we’ve also done quite well with contemporary gas fireplaces such as Ortal and European Home. Just in terms of a shout-out for how essential the HPBExpo is, I had some builders pushing me to find a particular contemporary gas fireplace that had minimal framing and metal edging around it. I found it at the Expo. That’s how essential the Expo is.

“I can walk through my showroom and point to a whole raft of products that I have found at the show. Sometimes you have to dig, but you can find those things at the show.”

Santa Fe is adjacent to huge forested areas and huge areas of national forests, so a ready supply of firewood is close by. The area also has a long cultural tradition of burning wood. So even though gas fireplaces have increased in popularity over the years, wood still represents 40 percent of sales.

The situation is far different for pellet stoves.

“I used to sell a lot of pellet stoves,” says Butler, “but that market has gone down, price-point wise, so I ceded some of the pellet market to the Big Boxes. In Santa Fe, most of our market for pellet stoves, most of the interest, has come from rural wood-burners, people in small rural communities an hour or two away from Santa Fe or more who are getting older and retired, so they see pellet stoves as an alternative, which is fine and good.

“But from a retailer’s standpoint, that means you have a pellet product that is more complicated and requires more service, but is being bought by people who are very far away from you – two or three hours. That has been difficult for us because it’s hard to service those areas. So we wound up giving that market to the Big Boxes, which is kind of a shame because they don’t back those products with service.”

The Firebird sells grills and, according to Butler, he’s done well with the Primo product. He used to be big in Vermont Castings grills, until they decided to get out of that business.

“On the gas side,” he says, “our best-selling grill is the Saber. It’s an outstanding grill. It’s an infrared grill, so the food tastes better. It’s also an excellent grill for the price.

“In my market, there are the cheap grills at the Big Boxes and then the high-end of the market is pretty much controlled by the high-end kitchen appliance companies, Viking and those kind of guys.”

There’s a decent demand for grills in Santa Fe, but not for outdoor kitchens and Outdoor Rooms.

Surprisingly, there seems to be little market for outdoor kitchens or Outdoor Rooms in Santa Fe. “There is a lot of do-it-yourself market, so a lot of people do those kinds of things themselves,” says Butler. “I sell a lot of wood fireplaces, manufactured units that go outside onto porches and portals. I sell a fair amount of built-in grills that go outside.

“I see that as a growth market for us and we’ve been pushing it for a number of years. I have some prefab countertop systems that we sell that have been a little slow to take off, but I think eventually are going to do well.

“I’ve toyed with prefab islands, but in Santa Fe there is a great desire for authenticity, and prefab stuff doesn’t do well for us at all. The same thing applies to the fire pits. We tried selling manufactured gas fire tables and fire pits and everybody just looked at them and said, ‘That’s not real stone. I want real stone.’ But I will say that whole trend has really boosted up our sales of outdoor fire components, pans, burners, rings, outdoor gas valves. We sell lots of those.

“Santa Fe is a market that likes authenticity so we do well with components and people doing real stone. But it helps that you have a lot of stone nearby and a lot of experienced people with skill sets in stone, masonry, flagstone, rock, stucco.”

Given the physical beauty of the area, the pleasant weather and interesting culture, it’s no surprise that Santa Fe is a strong second-home market. That undoubtedly contributes to the disparity in income levels; there’s the poor and then the very rich.

“The average household income in Santa Fe is higher than the state average,” says Butler, “although the state probably ranks in the lowest quarter nationally. We have a large number of million dollar-plus homes that are only seasonally occupied. We also have Los Alamos nearby; it’s one of the top 10 income communities in the country. So we have both ends of the market.

“As a retailer, I’ve always tried to address both segments of the market. I have a lot of value-priced, mobile home-approved wood stoves for that segment of the market, and then I have more expensive products for the other end of the market. At the high end, about 75 percent of our gas fireplace sales are contemporary in style, and that has been climbing for the last couple of years.”

The new home market has always been an important segment for The Firebird, but since the recession, mid-range homebuilding has pretty much collapsed in Santa Fe. Now there are the entry-level homes and the high-end custom homes. In fact, says Butler, “We used to offer optional packages that consumers could buy for their new tract home, but some of the builders have just given up on offering them. That’s been a little tough to take.

A display of parts for irrigation systems, which is a category that represents half of the store’s business.

“We did well with those packages. Before the recession, when there were a number of large-scale – for Santa Fe – middle-income homebuilders, we would have option packages for all the companies’ home designs. We had huge penetration rates of 75 or 80 percent when it was an option for the home. That was great business, but it has pretty much all evaporated.

“But the high end has been good because we have long-term relationships with those builders who build in that segment of the market. We work closely with them in terms of designs and the kind of products that their customers are looking for.”

Butler has put effort into making his store as sustainable as he can and, in doing so, has been pleasantly surprised at the support he’s received from employees.

“I believe that making our store sustainable really resonates with customers,” he says, “and it makes all of us feel better about being good corporate citizens. We are not driving hybrid delivery trucks yet, but we’ve dramatically reduced the amount of waste and trash that we have, and we’ve put in plastic and paper recycling campaigns, steel and metal recycling.

“I’ve always purchased wind-generated electricity from our electrical utility company, but now we are seriously looking at putting solar panels on the roof of the store this year. We’ve worked at recycling water, recycling all of our waste and reusing materials, and the employees have gotten invested in that. I was shocked at how easy it was to get all the employees on board. The whole effort has been personally rewarding.”

SNAPSHOT

Store Name: The Firebird Address: 1808 Espinacitas St., Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 Owners: Gene Butler (President) & Mary Blake-Butler (Vice-President) Key Executive: Kelley Nace, Retail Manager Year Established: 1977 Web Site: www.thefirebird.com E-mail: sales@thefirebird.com Phone: (505) 983-5264 Number of Stores: One Number of Employees: Full-Time: 8 Part-Time: 2 Gross Annual Sales: N/A Av. Sq. Ft. of Building Space: Showroom: 4,000 Warehouse: 3,400 Outside Area: 7,000 Brands Carried: Hearth: Stûv, Ortal, Valor, European Home, RSF, FPX, Majestic, Jøtul, Regency, Vermont Castings, Avalon, Amantii, Morsø, Rais, Outdoor GreatRoom Co., R H Peterson Co. Barbecue: Saber, Napoleon, TEC, Primo, Fire Magic Other: HPC, Beam Central Vacuums, Focus & Kichler Landscape Lighting, 60+ irrigation vendors Advertising: Radio 14%; Newspaper 24%; Magazine 6%; TV 32%; Social Media/Internet 15%; Other 9% Advertising % of Gross Revenues: 3.5%