Will, a contractor from Lebanon, Ohio, sold his family's HVAC business in 2012 and built one of the nation's largest online filter retailers instead, now operating five warehouses and shipping thousands of units daily. The insight: homeowners want transparent pricing and direct online purchases, not contractor middlemen.
Chapters
His idea was, hey, everyone shops online for just about everything. Why don't we make it so that contractors can have an online store? And so, you know, Will's from just north of Cincinnati in Lebanon, Ohio, and he grew up as a contractor and he sold his family, his family's contracting business in 2011 or '12 and went all in on e-commerce. So from 2012 through really today, we've become one of the largest direct-to-consumer filter companies in the country. And we have got 5 warehouses and they're stocked ceiling, you know, floor to ceiling with filters that we're shipping. Thousands of units a day all over the country with next-day delivery and so on. We tested a lot of different things, but the number one thing we learned from HVAC.com was the demand for pricing information in transactions directly online without a contractor. So like the number one pages on the website, which happened to be the most visited website in the HVAC industry, more than manufacturers, believe it or not, just by nature of the name alone. Yeah, what a great—
What a great domain. My goodness.
And so you've got Will here who has sold his family business and basically opened online stores for air filters. And you've got him also owning HVAC.com where homeowners are just by the millions coming there to buy stuff.
