Canada and just a few days later he sent us an email telling us that he was on the top of a mountain, literally, where it was zero degrees and he was riding around in his t-shirt. He was so happy with his purchase. He could drive his machine around all winter and that was really, really good to hear. We get emails and phone calls all the time. They’ll call in and say, ‘let me speak with so and so who I worked with and they’ll just say, ‘Man, you really helped me out. I’m really happy with the product we got, you answered my questions.’ And so we get a lot of positive feedback. We love when people get excited about this hobby because it’s our hobby too. We know all about making a side-by-side look or drive the way you want it to because that’s what we’re out doing on the weekends.” Hands-on experience, Harper believes, is the best way to learn the alphabet soup of the side-by-side world. “Our staff is super knowledgeable. They need to be. Side-by-side customers ask super technical questions. We have fourteen staff members and each one them specializes in the various brands we carry. Between us, we cover all the bases. And of course that means we’re careful about who we hire. We want everybody to act as one unit. We’re customer ser- vice-oriented because we’re dedicated to our passion. It’s a team environment we’ve fostered here.” Harper also believes that his extended team is a major driving force in the continu- ing success of SideBySideStuff.com. The 106 different brand names that Harper and his team support and offer online represent large and small manufacturers alike. “Honestly, all our vendors are great,” he boasts. “We have a good relation- ship with all of them. Whether it’s shipping or pricing we want to make sure that it’s a good fit for everybody.” Harper has negotiated a drop shipping partner- ship with his suppliers. “We drop ship the majority of the items that we sell. Our vendors ship directly from their location to the customer,” he explains. Harper’s resilience is unquestionable – and it has to be. “Five years from now, the business won’t look anything like it does today. If we see an opportunity down the road, we’ll just switch gears like we have all along – but we’ll get there first and on top. You have to be willing to change your whole program,” he explains. This is not idle talk. After all, Harper has never been the sit still type. In early 2015, he began development on a separate online venture: Side-by-Side Guru. This app is his next leap. And while its official launch date is TBA, it is current-
ly available at the iTunes Store and Google Play Store – and doing quite well. “We’re moving forward with this project because it became clear early on that the social side of our industry has the largest impact. It’s a lifestyle so social media has always been a part of it,” Harper explains. The app gives side-by-side enthusiasts the inside scoop on events from around the US, a platform to share experiences, photos, videos and routes, an exclusive riding area database, news that impacts the industry as well as local news from vendors about events and riding areas within a 200 mile radius of the user’s location, two-way communication with national vendors, and a forum for swapping stories and parts “I’m not sure where we’ll be in five years, but I’m sure it will be in online retail. It’s exciting, that’s for sure.”
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS • DECEMBER 2016
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