Businesses Fill The Need To Prepare For Disaster
By Kevin McKenzie, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
With underground models installed in garage floors leading the way, the company received 41 orders in the
In previous tornado seasons, he'd installed 17 shelters at most.
"With these bizarre weather patterns, extreme cold and so forth, people are kind of seeing that these bigger tornadoes can kind of hit anywhere," Pritchard said.
From tornado shelters to standby power generators for homes, to survival kits that can be stashed in closets or car trunks, businesses see demand growing as severe weather raises awareness and loosens purse strings.
The biggest drawback: Spikes in sales as the memory of tornadoes, floods and ice storms wanes with the seasons. "When it's 105 in August and there's no sign of storms, that's the time to get a shelter, so you're prepared, as opposed to now," Pritchard said.
At
The cost varies, but
"I think the need had kind of always been there," he said. "People haven't noticed that these products are affordable and more readily available."
Not only severe weather, but an aging power grid will aid growth in his industry, Richey said.
Still, the first-quarter earnings reported last week by a major generator manufacturer,
In
The TSW stands for "two scared wives" left at home when severe weather struck while their pilot husbands were on the job, Nix said.
TSW has installed almost 1,100 shelters, stretching from six on their own cove in
"Our first few years were just educating the public," he said. But weather patterns have definitely changed, he said, and people no longer think the business was a crazy idea.
Nix said that the firm's shelters, made by a company in
In
Stratton called the store a "practical preparation station," offering products ranging from long term-storage food to water filtration and alternative energy sources like solar panels. It also offers classes on preparedness, insurance and the like.
It's a new business model with a cleaner store and high-technology gear in a retail segment that's been dominated by stores with a military surplus feel and heavy offerings of guns and ammunition, he said.
"Our intentions are definitely to bring this tool and this resource to other markets," Stratton said.
Severe weather causing disasters helps raise awareness and spurs referrals, but entrepreneurs also are turning to the advertising and marketing tools of business to sell the products that help people prepare.
At Tornado Safe, Pritchard said he began ramping up for a television advertising campaign early last year and it had run only a few weeks before tornadoes struck in
The message is getting to the mainstream in cities, beyond farmers and rural areas: "Now it's anybody that's got a garage, anybody that's kind of scared of storms," he said.
"We don't want to profit off other people's misery ...," Pritchard said. "We want to be proactive as opposed to reactive when a storm rolls through."
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