TRANSCRIPT
Steve Henry, CEO: “We’re here in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Speedway of Savings fall market for House-Hasson Hardware. It’s a brand-new venue, and we’ve been real excited about coming to Charlotte. We have never been here before; there are many advantages including this enormous show floor. It’s the largest floor we’ve ever had an opportunity to fill with vendors. You never know when you change venues how that’s going to work, but we’re fortunate that everything has worked out in our favor this time. We actually started the show on Thursday afternoon this year, which is new to us. We wanted to give everybody a preview and an opportunity to get here. It made it a challenge for all the vendors to get set up in time so we could let people in on Thursday, but that part of the change and the show has been well-received, and people have been very pleased with both the venue and the ability to come in here a half a day early. We’ve had a great crowd. We are very pleased with the turnout, both by vendors and dealers, and our salesmen are all here and there are great deals. We do this for our benefit but mainly for the benefit of our dealers. Profitability for our dealers is our number one goal. When our dealers are profitable, then we’re profitable, and our vendor community’s profitable, also. So, the more deals that we are able to put together on this floor everybody benefits.”
Dealer Attendee: “Say I love House-Hasson. (inaudible)”
Jason Rasmussen, VP Merchandising: This is the largest market that we’ve had here at House-Hasson. It’s over 145,000 square feet, and we have over 600 vendors participating in this market in categories ranging from sporting goods, appliances, farm and agriculture, pet supplies, housewares, cleaning, paint and paint sundries, lawn and garden, hand and power tools, plumbing, electrical, and impulse. In our outdoor power equipment category, we’re launching a new pricing strategy, helping you stay competitive at retail and compete against the big boxes. We’ve put a lot of effort into expanding our wholesale commodity-type product lines in plumbing and electrical, so we’ve got a significantly larger presence here this Market. We have a lot of different products in our pallet and impulse area to help you keep the front of the store stocked up to capture that last-minute sale. Our vendor partners have stepped up, and they have offered a lot of great promotions this market giving you opportunities to fill your end caps items to put into your circulars to help drive additional footsteps into your store.
Chase Petrunak, Petrunak’s Kitchens, Doors, & More!, Dealer: “Wait, should I start? (laughter) Hi, my name is Chase. We’re from Windber, Pennsylvania, Petrunak’s Kitchens, Doors, and More. This is my sister, my two sisters Courtney and Taylor, my nephew Wilder, and my mom and dad. And yeah, here we are… at the show. (laughter). We’ve been to several House-Hasson shows across the country, but I think this is our first one in Charlotte, and it’s a lot bigger than the other ones we’ve noticed. So far there’s been it’s been a good experience. We have gotten some deals. We’ve been buying some things. There are new vendors here that we haven’t seen before, a lot of cool demonstrations we’ve got to see, and yeah, the NASCAR Hall of Fame for dinner last night was really cool to check out. That was we appreciate that, and yeah we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to cut out a lot of uh cut out a lot of this. (laughter).”
Steve Gannon, VP & GM, House-Hasson, Pritchard, WV: We enjoy being here, meeting all of our customers, and it’s a great place to bring your family, very family-oriented, and the girls love to come and have fun and just run around.
Gannon daughter: I’ve been to about six shows, and I love coming here ’cause we can just run around. Most of the time kid-friendly hotels usually have pools, and I love pools; they’re really fun. And I love all my family.
Atkinson Family (dealer): “Hey you’re going to say we love House-Hasson Okay? Say it. Um, we love ason. We love love. We love a we love Hasson. (laughter)”
Steve Henry, CEO: “On Thursday night we gave everybody an opportunity to go to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. There were videos, there were opportunities to look at old cars, and cars that had won a lot of races and relive some of the history of NASCAR. On Friday night, people enjoyed the hospitality, the meal, the band that we had play, the opportunity to get to know each other, to network and just to visit and sit down and relax a little bit, because it’s been such a hectic week. We try to entertain and visit and make our relationships a little bit stronger than they were when we first got here. We like to know our customers, find out what’s going on, and it’s easier to do over a meal and it’s easier to do when we’ve in a casual environment which is what we try to provide at the end of each day. So this has been a great year, it’s been a great October market, and we’re very happy to be here and look forward to maybe another visit, maybe next fall. We’ll have to pay attention to what our dealer community says, because it’s all about getting them here to buy. And it’s very important to us that they’re pleased and happy. So we owe a debt of gratitude to our buyers, our dealers, and our vendors for making all this happen. It’s not something that happens overnight. A lot of work goes into planning it, and who knows when we’ll come back, but we look forward to being back in Charlotte sometime.”