Gene and Mary Blake-Butler bought The Firebird hearth shop in 1988. At that point it had been around for about a decade.

“We got into the business just as the very first round of EPA regulations were coming into effect,” says Butler. “All of a sudden there was a huge amount of turmoil in the industry, with some new product lines appearing and others that didn’t meet standards being discontinued. It was a trial by fire, but we did manage to survive.”

Hearth & Home: When did you start bringing in other products such as irrigation systems and barbecues?

Gene Butler: “The previous owners had met a fellow who had retired back to Santa Fe. He formerly worked with the Park Service and had been on loan to the country of Jordan, advising them on protecting their natural resources. Over there he saw drip irrigation being widely used; it was developed in the Middle East after World War II.

“When I bought the store there was probably only 15 or 20 skus, but I recognized the opportunity in a dry climate such as Santa Fe. So we started beefing it up and it just grew exponentially from there. We spent a lot of time training landscapers and other installers on how to properly install the product.

“We don’t do any installation work ourselves; we wholesale the product to others. Today, we are probably the largest irrigation supplier in the northern half of the state, and it’s close to half of our overall business revenue.”

You are probably the first hearth retailer I’ve known to be selling and installing central vacuum systems.

Butler: “Actually, that has been a nice little niche market for us. We’ve got several employees who have built up expertise in that area, and it does real well in larger custom homes where they’ve got larger spaces to clean. It’s another product that gets us involved with larger custom homes, which oftentimes wind up having a number of fireplaces in them. So it is just another component of getting to that segment of the home market.”

How well did you do in 2015?

Butler: “We did pretty well. Our sales were up a few percent over the year before. New Mexico, unfortunately, has been one of those states that lacks for a lot of industry and, as a result, it’s relatively dependent on government monies, either at the state or federal level. A large portion of New Mexico is federal land and so our basic industry is government and tourism.

“Given the economic climate, we’ve tried pretty hard to beef up our marketing and merchandising and do all the things that retailers do to help boost sales in a soft market.

“We’re just down the road from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is a huge government facility where they originally developed the atomic bomb during World War II. That has always been a very high-income community.

“As a matter of fact, Los Alamos County is probably one of the top 10 counties in the country for income because of the plethora of PhD’s and scientists there. Santa Fe has historically had a lower unemployment rate than the national average, but it has been slow to recover since the recession, let me put it that way.”

The Firebird in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo: ©2016 Martin Christopher Perea Photography. www.martinchristopher.com.

What do you consider the biggest problems facing the HPBA right now?

Butler: “There are several issues that we need to work on. In recent years, with the new NSPS standards and the proposed regulations from the DOE, a lot of time and effort on the part of HPBA has been required. It’s a matter of working at various levels with the agencies to figure out what standards are reasonable and what kind of standards are achievable, whether the benefits are cost efficient given the expense to meet those standards.

“One of the issues that HPBA faces is getting the message out to all of our members that these efforts are crucial and without them we wouldn’t have an industry; retailers wouldn’t have product to sell. I don’t think all the retailers appreciate that. I think the HPBA needs to get that message out to everybody, where everybody actually grasps the significance of dealing with these regulations.”

You just pointed a finger at retailers who aren’t participating, but truth be told, there’s quite a number of manufacturers who aren’t participating as well. Isn’t that the case?

Butler: “That’s true, and it cuts across all levels. There are distributors who say, ‘We’re just a distributor so it’s not our fight. We’re just pushing product around.’ I find that real frustrating because it should be all of our industry that’s involved.”

What’s your opinion of the Net Zero program in California? Is it a good or bad thing?

Butler: “I’ve been following that with quite a bit of interest. In general, trying to go to a Net Zero strategy over the long term probably makes some sense in terms of sustainability of the environment and energy efficiency. However, I do have some concerns, particularly where they are proposing to restrict the infrastructure for some types of fuels from being put into subdivisions.

“In particular, there has been talk in some areas of California about not allowing
gas lines to be run into new housing developments. In essence that’s restricting one class of fuel from being used. I think that is a bit of a mistake, and I’ve actually seen that here in Santa Fe. But the larger problem with Net Zero is, particularly in tougher economic times, that consumers have to make decisions about, ‘Do I want this more efficient house that costs a whole lot more money, or do I need something more traditional that may be more energy expensive, but the house is more affordable?’

“I believe that, in the long run, efforts such as Net Zero will probably be beneficial, but we have to be careful in the short run. With a lot of emerging technologies such as solar panels and wind energy, you have to have economy of scale to get the prices down to where they become viable to use with housing and become a standard. I think we are in the process of getting to that point.”

Are you familiar enough with Net Zero to explain to our readers exactly what it will mandate by 2020?

Butler: “The bottom line is that your house has to produce as much energy as the house consumes. The essential idea is that the house must have a Net Zero load on the energy infrastructure.”

NSPS – we’ve had no problem thus far, but that’s going to change a bit in 2020 when it becomes more restrictive regarding particulate emissions. Does that bother you at all?

Butler: “No, having stricter standards doesn’t bother me as long as manufacturers feel they can develop the technologies they need to have in order to meet those standards and continue to sell product. I think one of the larger issues we’re struggling with regarding the NSPS is the issue of cordwood standards, which is kind of a phony issue because there are so many variables with cordwood from day to day, month to month, week to week, place to place. If you’re in one state, some wood may be the most plentiful type of wood, whereas in another part of the country the wood is different.

“We’ve been working with the EPA to come up with a cordwood standard that allows for a bit more variability in terms of the type of wood that is actually used, but it does make the testing methodology more difficult because you have a variable fuel. Eventually we’ll get there, but we’re just going to have to accept more variability in the fuel. I think that, in the end, it will be more beneficial because then we can all feel more comfortable knowing that real world performance of the products more closely mimics the test performance.”

We talked about EPA, DOE and Net Zero. Are there any other major issues that you see facing the industry right now?

Butler: “Yes. One of my concerns is that we in the industry have too narrow a focus, and are focusing on either one manufacturer making a better product than the next manufacturer, or a retailer offering a better deal than the retailer up the street. But we need to broaden our marketing viewpoint and our marketing focus because, when homeowners are considering a hearth product, they are balancing the benefit they will derive from that purchase against other options, such as a big game room, granite counters, window upgrades throughout their house, all those kind of things.

“Our industry’s products are actually competing against all those other types of products. Do we build a new deck out back? You can spend as much money on playground equipment for your kids as you can on a new fireplace. So consumers are balancing those kinds of issues; that’s how they are making their purchasing decisions, and that’s the marketing arena we have to play in. We need to think in terms of our marketing and advertising and how we appeal to customers in that kind of environment.

“When you look at consumer preference studies for home buyers, whether it’s a first-time home buyer or an upgrade home buyer, a fireplace or hearth product is always highly ranked as a desired amenity. The numbers vary, but maybe 60 or 70 percent will say they would love to have a new fireplace in their home. Yet when you look at the percentage of new homes that are built with a hearth product, it’s a much lower percentage than that.

Ed. Note: In 2014 that figure was 51 percent.

“Homebuilders are not building homes with an amenity that consumers say they would like to have. So, obviously, we have a problem in that we are not getting the kind of numbers of fireplaces installed in homes as consumers’ desire would indicate.

“I’m wondering if that’s an area that our industry and HPBA could help with. Maybe if we had some marketing campaigns or marketing themes or materials that retailers could use to help get that message out, it might be beneficial.

The Outdoor Burn area – cold and windy during the HPBExpo in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We don’t have the kind of resources needed to fund a national marketing campaign, for example. But I don’t think that’s necessarily what we need to have. If we could develop some kind of message that would resonate with consumers, if we could develop the creative content and then let everybody use it as they choose, that might be a beneficial approach.”

That’s a logical approach. You’re right. We can’t go back and do another $2 million national campaign. That was just a waste of $2 million.

Butler: “It was. But with the knowledge of how that experiment went, and with the changing marketing environment – now we have so much social media and Internet marketing going on – maybe the industry could develop the creative material and then let manufacturers and retailers run with it and use it. That might be an approach.”

I think that’s a good approach. Just provide industry members with the tools to get the message across.

Butler: “Yes. That’s something I’m working on; I’m going to explore that during my term as chairman.”

I hope you do. It’s a very good idea. Now let’s talk about the Expo a little bit. From top numbers of over 12,000, we’re down to about 8,300 or so last year, and it’s probably going to be just about that, or maybe a bit better, this year. That was a big step up in Nashville. We increased by about 3,000 attendees and that’s wonderful. But how do we get back to where we were, or is that impossible because we’ve lost a lot of retailers and industry members along the way?

Butler: “Well, we have lost members along the way. I’m on the Expo committee so I see those numbers pretty much weekly from HPBA staff, and we are running ahead of last year. I think we may in the next six weeks see the numbers kick upwards for New Orleans. The outlook over the next several years is attractive, because this year the show is going to be in New Orleans; next year it’s going to be in Atlanta. Those are both good markets, close to population centers. Hopefully they are not going to have weather events like we had in Nashville, which was horrid.”

What a surprise that was.

Butler: “So I think the show is scheduled to be in attractive markets for the next couple of years, but the larger issue for long-term growth of the show is to make it an essential part of the industry so that all the players in the industry feel they have to attend. It’s a chicken and egg thing. I think all the manufacturers need to be at the show; that’s where they need to show and display new products. That becomes the carrot that attracts all the retailers.”

Now how do we convince manufacturers that they really have to be at the show? What could HPBA do to convince them?

Butler: “That is the big dilemma that the HPBA is struggling with, but this is a free country. You cannot make people attend the show, but sometimes you would love to. I personally feel that any major player in our industry needs to be at the show every year. That’s the best opportunity for manufacturers to show their new products. That’s the best opportunity for retailers to see those new products.”

Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you would like to get out?

Butler: “I just want to say that, in general, I feel optimistic for the long term. I think we’ve got a good staff at HPBA. Of course we have some issues to contend with, but I think that HPBA has a good track record on dealing with those issues and protecting the industry. We make good products, and there is always going to be an elemental appeal to fire and the hearth. I feel good about the industry as a whole.”

The hearth is still the heart of the home, isn’t it?

Butler: “It is.”