Today we’d like to introduce you to Luke Peters.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Luke. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I earned a degree in Microbiology and after college, I got interviewed and took a position with a brand of the EPA as a Hazardous Waste Scientist. After I had been there for a year or two my younger brother had successfully started up an internet business with his friend. I started to research the industry and saw there was a high demand for Air Conditioner related searches online and from that point on I worked long days and nights to get this idea started.
By this time, my wife and I had our second child, I would get home from work around 6 or 7 pm, have dinner and hang out with the kids and then once they were asleep, I would work from about 8-11pm and repeat the process every day to roll out the site. My wife Mariella and I were living in a condo in Huntington Beach at the time.
Before I left my job, we ended up moving from the condo to a house. The only problem was that the escrows were off by about 6 months so we sold the condo first and moved into my mom’s house while we waited to close on the house. So at one point, we were shipping like 20-40 products a day from my mom’s house! Mariella was driving to Grainger daily to pick up the orders and then we would ship them from my mom’s house the same day.
As we got busier, several times we missed the early UPS pickup at the house and Mariella would load the van with products and drive around town looking for UPS trucks! She would track them down until they stopped and asked if she could drop off the shipment with them. Believe it or not, there are so many UPS trucks out on the street around 4 or 5 pm that every evening she was able to find one.
Once we moved into the new house at Euclid and Slater near our old building at Mt. Wynne Circle, we thought we had a huge warehouse – our 400 sq ft. garage! Right around 2004, we moved to a larger 4000 sq. ft. building on Harbor and Heil with a warehouse around 1800 sq. ft. Again we outgrew this warehouse and had to expand with a second warehouse in Westminster. It was at this second warehouse that we received in our first container shipment of NewAir AF-330 Swamp Coolers
In 2012, I completely changed the company to focus on selling our brands to large retailers instead of only selling direct to consumer on our websites. We started the Luma Comfort brand and soon after focused the Newair brand on B2B sales. In those 5 years, our company has grown 250% We now have a diverse set of sales channels and sell into large retailers like Home Depot, Target, Walmart, and Amazon.
And we still operate our websites and help customers find the right appliances for their unique needs. We are especially proud of our Newair facebook and Google reviews and it’s our goal to earn the trust of our customers.
The key to our recent success is due to the strong leadership team we have at the company. This can be hard to build when a company is under 20 employees but now at 60 employees it feels like a re-birth and this has created a lot of forward momentum and has made my job a lot more fun.
After all these years it seems like we found the right formula… what took me so long…?
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Our credit card processors stopping our ability to charge credit card accounts mid-month during the summer, we had so many orders come in that warehouse had to work until 9-10pm for weeks on end, so many events happened but we found a way.
As we grew fast it was hard to get credit from banks or big vendors. We are 100% self-financed and bootstrapped so this always is a hurdle that we need to find a way to get over. The faster we grow often the higher the hurdle
Newair Appliances – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in unique home appliances such as wine coolers, ice makers, evaporative coolers, misting fans, small kitchen appliances, and many more fun appliances for the home or work. We sell mainly under our NewAir brand and I am really proud of the team I have built.
We have an amazing group of people at the company and every day I enjoy coming to work. I am also proud of the fact that our NewAir brand is being trusted and sold by all the top retailers such as Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and Amazon.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Growing the team in 2016 and 2017 has been the most important step the company has taken. There comes a time as a company grows that the need for talented creative people becomes apparent. Every department now functions on their own and this allows for faster decision making and less errors. Adding great people and promoting some key long-term employees has been the key to our recent success.
Contact Info:
- Address: 6600 Katella ave
Cypress CA, 90630 - Website: www.Newair.com
- Phone: 7142414328
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newairusa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newairusa
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NewAirUSA
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