hi everyone thank you for joining us on managing your world of your holes democrat frazier welcome to our program the goal of our program is to bring timely and relevant information on wealth management topics to you  audience and to interview guests who can help impart knowledge that will help you make better and more informed decisions around managing your well our interview topic for today is how to compete and win as they tales small business owner and here to tell was how to really be a winner is the lovely debbie shaver and debbie is the owner of mrs g t v appliances and sleep center which is located in lawrence township right here in new jersey and debbie is the third generation owner of mrs g her grandmother started a business and her mother vald and now is that debbie capable hands she is also a w e b and c n w b e certified moment business owner she's won many awards and i'll just mention a few recent ones the new jersey new jersey business business of the year award in two thousand and fourteen and two thousand and fifteen the jewish family an intruder and services corporate honoree also the smartest c e o family business the war and the you here i've been trying to get david to be a guest of my film for a long time so it's really thrilled i'm pleased that he's here and we have a lot of things to cover because debbie has done so much in the community he's done so much plumbing an appliance but plumbing it was the plumbing first and then as more appliances washers and driers and refrigerators came on the market changed in new jersey plumbing and appliances and my grandmother was really the face of the business she was the one that was out and on the floor creating customers she was very kind to everyone she was really part of the community and so was the business grow the name changed to everybody knew her and my grandfather's mr and mrs tate and so when it changed to this is jean t v in appliances and you know eighty years later we just opened up a brand new show room  she shared keep the labels and i know hugh walk into your store your house your desk is right there in the front to say hello to your customers and welcome them in and so it's all about relationships with for with your customers even with your vendors with your certainly with your employees it's all about having great employees as well and and she she really started the legacy  of being more of like a community hub not just an appliance store and you have a three part philosophy that you follow right you know and i'm referring to your focus up taking care of the brands absolutely in the new show room has that you know everybody really feels like they need to touch and feel what they're looking for there's so much out there to help so much to choose from and i'm having knowledgeable sales associates  and good service you know just really making sure and yes service is very important but people call us that they've had appliances three five years down the road we still will help them be an advocate for them and make sure that they get taken care of and then your community aspect over these things we'll talk about there so let's talk about the wal mart effect because as a small business owner i think this information will be so helpful to many small business owners so tell us about the wal mart effect you survived that recession the well many people ask us all the time and i think we have a slight that  e can we yeah there were go so i've seen this look around the internet a lot called the wal mart effect and it's not basically just wal mart but it's not what it's the it's the growth of the big box retailer between friendly competitors around the new jersey and pennsylvania area and now it's called appliance dealer cooperative in our warehouse through the cooperate of buying group is not too far from the from our store and they heard a member of a even larger cooperative buying group all up and down the east coast called the northeast cooperative organization necco and then  o is a member of even a larger buying group called nationwide marketing group and that aren't exactly the kind that includes three thousand independence from all over the country businesses do that as well there's not a corporate in outside of you know what it was about your grandmother made her such a busy area i mean so many things you describe your grandmother was a four thinking person and she was independent and she was out there were what and but what i love she's been gone for about five years now around five years and decided to take us by that somebody has walked in the store and one of the first things they say is she was so kind that's what people remember my journey on how i can compete against the big box stores and to help and to also see you know what's going on with retail especially seeing a lot of empty stores but the internet sales and all of this over the last like i would say six six years or so i discovered this organization called the american independent business alliance this is a nonprofit organization based out of the midwest and they help cities with the tools to really let people know what's going on with independent businesses and by not shopping local how it's affecting the communities so it's more about what are the benefits of shopping locally and i found that the tools that they were offering were so important a strong independent organization within your community and alliance of different different whether it's business to business or business to community if there was a  an organization together that we can share this information and businesses actually grow from this organization because we support each other we bring that information to our own being ok but just on supporting local businesses if we just shift our shopping ten percent that brings everybody in our community it's been through the me about and another organization  two hundred two hundred thousand dollars a year back into our communities that people don't realize when they shop online nothing comes back to the community when we shop from a local independent business for every hundred dollars sixty dollars comes back to a local business if you shop at a big box store within your local community forty dollars comes back in your business but when you shop online so for every ten million dollars that you spend with independent businesses across the country ten million dollars that actually creates forty seven jobs if you spend ten million dollars country listen to your show so whether you're in florida and california want york city or anywhere if you think local first and support those local businesses then those businesses can saw many of his members i think over fifty percent are our independent and local and so he thought as a community as a subcommittee that this would be a great manama from mcmanaman marketing so the four of us got together for like a year we got together for bragg for lunch like every other month to try to craft an outline of what are the we tell of course has been very affected about with in the internet so that when you have an hour when you are buying something online from out of state and that particular company does not have a presence and new jersey they do not charge the sales tax to the consumer in new jersey however and with all of all states that consumer  is is it has to pay the use tax which is on your income tax no there's a line item that says if you bought anything on line but most people do not put down what they  online so rutgers did as did a study a few years ago and it was their study came up with new jersey lost three distribution center they now have to collect in new jersey sales tax now you would think that that would shrink that three hundred million but what's happened is since that study even more people are feeling much more comfortable purchasing big ticket items online and this jewelry not just appliance stores i mean i cannot believe i just i can't believe that someone would buy a refrigerator from chicago when the radar is sitting in somebodies warehouse in new jersey and have that refrigerator be delivered all the way down to new jersey to save the sales tax because because price remember it's not about the price  we're we can compete successfully on price but when we lose that sale because someone perceives that they don't have to pay seven percent sales tax on a thousand dollar item that's a lot of money and i i understand you know so it's important to make the states you know really have more of a say now and just bring the rules up to date on a fairness that there should there should be some compromise to so that the states can get that money and make it more of a level playing field for businesses like my deputy and went  and then inside and it's you know again in retail today price we always have to be very competitive price but you have to have a wonderful cost more experience in the store so as  mentioned early in the beginning my grandmother always sat in front so i made sure that my desk sits in front too so i greet the customers as well as they walk him and but it's a very open very bright  soft lighting not hard lighting at all and so very easy you know to really walk around nothing's really jammed together and spread out and it's really the way i designed  to post chamber events and we have cooking classes we have a lie i think i have a picture of all our live kitchen that that picture right there of the next slide that this kitchen is a typical kitchen in new jersey that was built thirteen years ago that was during the height of the appliance boom which coordinated to the height of the housing boom ok so  thirteen years old and so i love this that this customer kept their cabinets change their counter develops and changed their appliances and it turned into a fabulous like up to date kitchen without a lot like major expense i mean ripping out cabinets putting back comments and this customer tells me that she she loves her kitchen so much she wants to sleep in it as well as it does look at the major housing and appliance boom twelve years ago right and now we're looking at another new housing boom that may follow appliances were very popular back in the day not as popular you know stainless steel is now so yeah just you know take a good look at this kitchen and then we're going to go to the very it is now fantastic so beautiful so a lot of the a lot of the things in the original kitchen is what where you see him and he is like a desk where they had him and so get rid of the desk because everybody has  laptops of them and so big kitchen islands are very big today and and and integrated appliances what i mean by integrated appliances that they have panels on them so you don't even it's a dishwasher you don't even know so they change their or their desk to actually refrigerator drawers so there's panels on the on the doors and you don't even know that debbie we have run out of time and it just goes so quickly and we'll show the last line so that people know how to contact mrs g at twenty seven twenty u s one business cards township new great that's a great legacy and so if you're a small business we would love for you to be a member of the independent business alliance of the chamber but if you can everyone no matter what