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HENDEL’S HISTORY BOOK, cont.

Hendel’s Again Needs More Space

By now we had met our challenges and everything was rolling along smoothly except for one thing, we needed more space. One day I was driving through an industrial area I noticed a flooring company had just moved into a new building. Next door was an auto repair shop that owned their building. I also noticed that a paint supplier had its own building too. I thought, ‘If these companies can afford their own buildings, why can’t we?’

Linda and I set out to look for land. I remembered the type of location that worked well for gas stations. We wanted a place on a busy street so that we would enjoy a great amount of exposure. One day, on our way to our accountant’s office, we noticed a for sale sign on Arizona Avenue right on the Chandler-Mesa border. The location was centrally located in our service area and on one of the busiest streets. I inquired and learned the seller was asking $370,000 for the property. We negotiated the price and purchased the land for $300,000. We then began making plans to construct our own building.

Linda and I had never designed a building before so we drove around until we found a building that we liked. We also looked at various interior designs. We copied ideas from car dealerships and other ideas from commercial buildings. We requested bids from various contractors but were not satisfied with the proposals that we received.

One day we received a proposal in the mail from JCI Construction that was professionally prepared. We were so impressed we hired the company to construct the building. The contractor was good to work with but we experienced many problems with our architect. He insisted the building we wanted would be too tall, didn’t like the rounded corners that we wanted, and had many other conflicts with our ideas. The architect wanted to design it his way and only his way.

We applied for a City of Chandler building permit. It took a full year to get the plans approved by the city’s planning department. At times I would sit outside the planning and zoning offices and wait for hours to get the approval that I needed. However, once the building was under construction it took only 5 months to complete. Once we had our new 13,000 square foot building we now had the capacity to expand our showroom concept.

HendelsHendels
Hendel’s New Location | Hendel’s New Showroom

Hendel’s One of a Kind Beautiful New Showroom

Now we are able to display every brand of air conditioner. A lot of time was spent designing and decorating the showroom with the many antique collections including a tool collection, old fans, historic bicycles, and several operating toy trains.

Again we dedicated a portion of our floor space to gain our customers’ attention. We combined a new building with a highly efficient operation and the result was that the business blossomed. Although the building was expensive it has proven to be one of the best investments Linda and I have ever made.

In conjunction with the new building the employees of Hendel’s developed a new approach to receiving and preparing new air conditioning units for installation. Instead of uncrating them at the customer’s home Hendel’s employees set up an area within the warehouse they called the "prep" station. Units are removed from their crate and inspected to make sure they’re properly assembled and not damaged. Then all necessary electrical components--high voltage, low voltage wiring, and disconnect--are pre-installed to save time during installation. Everything possible is done in the warehouse and this substantially shortens the installation time.

After seeing the movie "Top Gun" we dedicated a portion of our warehouse as our "ready Reserve Flight Deck." A substantial stock of fully prepped units is ready for immediate installation. If a customer needs a new air conditioner as late as 3:00 p.m., our crews can install it and be finished in a couple of hours. To the best of my knowledge no other competitor can compete at this level.

Our son Robert has worked hard developing and constantly upgrading our computer systems. We have a network of ten computer stations and are able to communicate efficiently between offices. Our daughter Laurie came to work at Hendel’s as well. Laurie caught on very quickly and then she became the number one sales person, outselling all others. After a little over a year at Hendel’s Laurie has taken charge of the office staff. She sets the work schedule, is responsible for payroll and handles the business accounting. Laurie has become one of three managers who direct the company.

With a beautiful new building, a bulging warehouse, a new crane, the prep station, our exclusive ready reserve flight deck, a second-to-none computer system, an all-star cast of conscientious employees, Hendel’s is poised to greatly increase its level of business. With this goal in mind I began to explore new ways to advertise and market the business.
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