Dealerscope

Contacts, CEDIA ‘08 Edition: Gary, Jacquie and Jason Kukuk, WOW Electronics (Yuma, AZ)
September 04, 2008
You may know Yuma, Arizona, as the lettuce capital of America. No? Well, it most certainly is. In fact, for four months of every year, 90 percent of all the lettuce in the U.S. comes directly from the fields surrounding Yuma. For the owners/founders...

Contacts: Ray and Becky Schritter, co-owners of Quality Appliance (Farmington, NM)
August 28, 2008
Though not exactly a hamlet, Farmington, New Mexico, is a small enough town that it stayed well off the radar of most national retail chains for decades. Those decades were very good to Ray and Becky Schritter, partners in both marriage and business,...

Contacts: Sid & Vicki Stevens, co-owners of Stevens Furniture Rental (Bryan, TX)
August 21, 2008
When the economy turned soft last year, Sid and Vicki Stevens refused to panic. In business for 23 years, the owners of Steven Furniture Rental in Bryan, TX, have lived through downturns before. They know that when consumers are hesitating on big purchases,...

Contacts: Jacques Raycrow, B&H Photo Video (New York, NY)
August 14, 2008
With 2008 D-SLR sales figures now close to 700,000 (that’s YTD June, according to the NPD Group) and 10 percent of U.S. homes now housing at least one “prosumer”-level fancy cam, the opinion of Jacques Raycrow is more in demand today...

Contacts: Martino Corto, Store Manager at Adorama, Inc. (New York, NY)
July 31, 2008
You might wait 30 minutes or so for a table at a favorite restaurant, but would you stand and wait for camera advice? At Adorama, a Manhattan camera store that’s developed an uber-loyal following over its three decades in business, customers daily...

Contacts: Ron Brewster, Home Audio Buyer at Amazon.com
July 17, 2008
What young man wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work for a company called “Car Toys”? Ron Brewster’s first position at that Seattle-based mobile electronics retailer was in their finance department, but his enthusiasm for the...

Contacts: Tony Rossini, President of Digital Lifestyles (Louisville, KY)
July 10, 2008
Twenty-five years ago, Tony Rossini was a Kentucky school kid with an Atari 800xl and a few of those games you’d load with a cassette tape. “Nothing more sophisticated than Pong and stuff like that. I actually tried writing some programs,...

Contacts: Tom Fitzpatrick, System Designer for Stereo Advantage (Buffalo, NY)
July 03, 2008
When his boss suggested opening a cafe in the store, Tom Fitzpatrick, a long-time salesperson and system designer at Stereo Advantage in Buffalo, NY, was skeptical. “I was like, are you kidding me? All I could picture was people spilling coffee...

Contacts: Haig Vartivarian, Imaging Buyer Sixth Avenue Electronics
June 19, 2008
Growing up in New York City means a kid spends a lot of time around storefronts and a lot of time on the bus. For Haig Vartivarian, that time was perfect for nurturing an interest in electronics. “I’d walk through all those little mom &...

Contacts: Ed Moreau, President, Creative Sound and Integration (Scottsdale, Ari.)
June 05, 2008
Straight out of high school, and a few years before the link between “geek” and “cool” had been widely acknowledged, a techie named Ed Moreau took a part-time job at “a start-up company” in Northern Illinois...a little...