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Wisconsin Retailer Local Source for Winterizing

When tourists in Siren, Wis., need to get their cabins ready for the winter or opened up in the spring, they know Jenneman’s Hardware Hank will lend a hand.

“We’re in a tourist area with a lot of lakes,” manager Mike Swanson says. “We’ve been offering these services for the 40 years we’ve had our store here.”

In the fall, one of the store’s employees, handyman Joe Kouba, visits seasonal cabins to blow out water lines and check that all drain traps are protected. “We’ll shut off the gas and main connections for the electric,” Swanson says. “We just shut everything down for winter.

“Come spring, it’s the reverse: We get everything up and running by flushing out water lines and making sure the water heater is in good working order,” he says.

In addition to tourists and cabin owners, clients include real estate companies with vacation listings that need winterizing.

Right now, the store serves about 200 clients each winter and spring. While Kouba stays busy year-round—he also cleans furnaces and repairs appliances—most of his time in the fall and spring is devoted to preparing the cabins.

“He has a lot of knowledge on how to do these things,” Swanson says. “You see a lot of fly-by-night companies offering these services, so we like having someone reliable and trustworthy.”

He advises retailers to be patient as they build their client lists. “We have a pretty big clientele right now, but we’ve built that up over the past 40 years,” Swanson says. “There was a time that list was a lot smaller. It takes time as we’ve built up our reputation.”

About Liz Lichtenberger

Liz is the special projects editor for Hardware Retailing magazine. She reports on news and trends, visits retailers, and attends industry events. She graduated from Xavier University, where she earned a degree in English and Spanish and was a member of the swim team. Liz is a Louisville, Kentucky, native who lives in Indianapolis with her husband and two children. She enjoys swimming, reading, doing home improvement projects around her house and cheering on her two favorite basketball teams, the Kentucky Wildcats and the Xavier Musketeers.

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