50 Business View Magazine - October 2016
And they didn’t have the pressure of a sales guy say-
ing, ‘Hey, you need this, and you need this, and this is
the best, and this is not.’ We did practical videos ex-
plaining the product and showing how it worked. And I
was amazed at how many people would watch five or
ten of our videos and go straight to the buy button.
“And the other thing is gas logs. Think about this and
technology: So, you go to buy a set of gas logs. You
go into a fireplace store. At the most, they’re going to
have five displays. But there are, literally, hundreds of
different logs out there that they don’t get to see. And
they never get to see them burning. And so, way early
in this process, we had our vendors send us all of their
logs, we installed them in a fireplace, videoed them
burning, took them out, installed the next one, and lit-
erally did a couple of hundred sets of gas logs, so that
people could see them burning. A brick and mortar
guy couldn’t afford to do 200 fireplaces. It’s where the
technology of the internet kicked in.
“And we keep advancing in technology; we keep get-
ting ahead. Back then, we didn’t have as much com-
petition, so it was cheaper to do this stuff. Now, when
a new internet guy starts up, it’s tough. It’s tough to
get the best shipping rates; it’s tough to find somebody
that will come in and video or take pictures of all your
grills. Back then, we got ‘em a dime a dozen. Now, be-
cause everybody’s trying to do it, it’s very expensive.
But we had a vision way before anybody else. There
are people starting to do it, but they’re not to the point
that we are.”
While ShoppersChoice continues to flourish in the on-
line world, Hackley’s brick and mortar store has like-
wise flourished as a place where local customers can
“kick the tires” of its various products and company
employees can expand their skills and knowledge:
“When we built that store, we had about an acre of
land behind us and we have 31 outdoor kitchens
built. And they’re all live, so a customer can come to
my store and say, ‘What’s the difference between the
Blaze and the Lynx?’ ‘Well, let’s get some hamburgers
and go cook and you can tell for yourself.’ So the brick
and mortar facility is a huge hit with our manufactur-
ers and our customers. You can bring your whole fam-
ily there in the evening and get on one of our displays
and relax on our patio furniture and cook your whole
meal on a grill.
“And now, it’s a training center for all of my 33 cus-
