A Fair Deal

Along with their funnel cakes and cotton candy, fairs and expos can provide an ideal business-grooming venue — and an inventive way to reach a relatively untapped consumer base. Just look at Centralia, Wash.-based Hall's. With four branches in the state, the full-service DME and pharmacy is using state and county fairs as a way to expand its retail business, and its days at the fair are becoming lucrative.

Designating summer as “fair season,” Hall's hits up to seven state and county fairs and one home show throughout Washington and Oregon. The company stocks its booth with scooters, a power wheelchair or two for demonstration purposes and information on how to obtain lift chairs.

But it's the scooters that really move. Hall's sells up to 27 scooters at each fair. Compare that to the six to 12 scooters the company sells each week at all four locations combined. Booth set-up and personnel at one stop on the fair circuit costs around $8,000, but product sales at the venues now account for 5 percent of the company's annual revenue, which in 2003 reached just over $9 million.

Phil Hall, who opened Hall's Drug Center in 1959, sold the business to his son Ron Hall, nephew Warren Hall and partner Jon Wiley in 1987. Today, the four locations offer pharmacy products, home medical equipment including service and repair, and gifts. The company provides scooters, lift chairs, power wheelchairs, manual wheelchairs, orthotics, mastectomy and diabetic products as well as other HME items.

“We're kind of the hometown pharmacy,” says Jonathan Biggers, sales and rehab specialist with Hall's. “As far as I know, we're the only independent pharmacy in our area, and we're the only place customers can purchase HME and mobility equipment within at least a 30-mile drive. People know that not only do we have a pharmacy but they can get wheelchairs, bath aids [and crutches] here.”

Right Place, Right Time

For the past seven years, Hall's has set up booths at fairs large and small, from the Clark County Fair to the Oregon State Fair and the Puyallup Fair (also called the Western Washington Fair), which purports to be the largest fair in the nation. What makes fair-goers more ready to buy than customers lured into the stores by ads or sent in through referral? According to Hall's, it's largely a matter of impulse — and that's about being at the right place at the right time.