With humble and unconventional roots, Jim Fonner's outdoor furniture company, ParknPool, began in Florida selling patio furniture door to door to hotels. Fonner and his then-partner dressed as the Blues Brothers in order to attract attention and gain sales.Over the decade, the business has grown and is now an industry leader in outdoor furniture supplies. Almost all of the firm's selling is done over the internet. Revenues have grown year over year. Fonner bought out their original partner and have moved the firm to Virginia, reasoning that it can be based anywhere since its transactions are all done over the internet or the phone.Now, for two years running, revenues have been off. The sales staff seems lackluster. Something must be done—but Fonner is unsure what. Excerpt UVA-ENT-0176 Rev. May 14, 2019 From Blues Brother to Industry Leader: Growing Revenues at ParknPool Introduction “Business growth does not always follow a straight line.” Every time Jim Fonner thought about this—how his own business had zigged and zagged—he was prone to laugh. Once employed at Weyerhaeuser, the international paper- and wood-products company, Fonner had left the management ranks to transform himself into something very different: one-half of the Jake Brothers, the “Beach Blues Brothers,” a duo of singing, dancing, Hawaiian-shirt-clad salesmen selling pool furniture door to door to Florida hotels. Ten years later, in 2007, he was running a company in Lexington, Virginia, supplying commercial outdoor furniture nationally. It had not exactly been a linear progression to the Shenandoah Valley. With his wife, Brenda, he had built the small business they would later rename ParknPool, setting ambitious annual sales goals. They had missed their first-year target, falling short by about 50%. Luckily, that had been an exception. It hadn't been until the fourth year that revenues took the first big jump to exceed $ 1million in annual sales. Fonner realized that prior to 2002, they had not been setting good targets or paying close attention to what made up their revenue. When Fonner analyzed his sources of sales from 2002, he found that 60% had been generated through the company website and 40% from door-to-door sales. At this point, the company directed its efforts toward growing the internet business, and over the next three years, sales more than doubled. . . .