Business View Magazine - October 2016 45
hotel. I drove through Dallas, and happened to see a
Barbeques Galore store. There used to be about 150
Barbeques Galore stores in the U.S. and I absolutely
loved them. I walked in and said, ‘This is what I want
to do.’ So, I came back to Louisiana, looked up the de-
mographics for the best place to open a store and we
chose Baton Rouge. It took us about a month and we
opened up a store called ‘The Grill Store & More.’ And
then, we opened a second one, and then we opened a
third one. And that was in 1998.
“In about 2000, business got really bad because the
economy started to go in the tank. I had befriended a
guy named Paul Borge, who owned a company called
‘Ironworks Grills’ out of Shreveport, Louisiana. He built
grills and sold them on the internet, only. I helped him
come up with some different designs for grills and they
sold very well. As it got deeper into 2000, business got
worse, and I told Paul I was going to have to shut my
doors and go back into the hotel business. And Paul
said, ‘Go on the internet.’ My response was, ‘People
don’t buy anything on the internet,’ because it was rel-
atively new at that point. And so, he opened his books
to me and said, ‘Here are my books. There’s money to
be made, and you need to go internet.’
“I came home and within one week I found a program-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
ShoppersChoice.com
WHAT:
An online retailer of outdoor home and
entertainment products
WHERE:
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
WEBSITE
:
