When Erik Kleiva founded his business in 1992, he went one step beyond the traditional home-based business or even the concept of tele-commuting from a “bricks and mortar” workspace.

Kleiva based his entire business, The Radio Guy, out of his van.

“I was the original version of the ‘one-man shop’ except that my shop was a cargo van,” Kleiva laughs. “I basically ran my business with just me, my van, a cellular telephone and a Day-Timer for my appointments calendar.”

By taking his business on the road – literally – Kleiva felt he could better serve his customers, Kitsap County car dealers who needed to purchase after-market car electronics and installation for their customers who had purchased automobiles.

“In the beginning,” explains Kleiva, “I carried only three models of car stereo, the related accessories likes antennas and stuff, and did installations. That wasn’t a whole lot of product to be selling but I had what a lot of (my) competitors didn’t and that was the ability to service my customers in a timely manner. Plus, they knew that I stood behind my work and my products.”

Although Kleiva, 39, and his wife Carol, 31 and now a full-time partner in The Radio Guy, Inc., lived at the time in Tacoma, Kleiva chose to concentrate on Kitsap County car dealers because of his knowledge of the community.

Having worked for an electronics retail store in the area had given him, he felt, a solid sense of what the community wanted and needed. By 1994, he and Carol felt that what the community wanted was a permanent retail and installation location that could still service wholesale accounts.

They opened their 2,500 square foot facility in Poulsbo, devoted approximately twenty-five percent of the space to retail sales, and expanded their product offerings from there.

Today, four full-time employees plus the two owners handle the sales and service of everything from car and home audio to cellular telephone and two-way radios, from car security systems to navigational systems.

Their most unusual area of product growth? Mobile multi-media.

“Some people call them ‘backseat baby-sitters’ but basically we’re talking about DVD, VHS and VCR media systems for the car,” explains Kleiva. “There are backseat systems that mostly moms with kids purchase for use while the car’s in motion and then there are in-dash, front-of-the-car systems that only work when the car’s parked and the emergency brake’s on. We’re talking about a whole new area of product sales here.”

With retail price tags for on-board media systems running from $399 to $1999, it would seem like an unlikely area of super-growth for a company like Kleiva’s but he disagrees.

“People aren’t just talking about the systems, they’re buying them. We only sold and installed one (system) in 1999 but installed seventeen of them last year, including some top-of-the-line models. I expect we’ll see the same percentage of growth this year.”

Since Kleiva estimates that he and Carol have quadrupled their company’s sales since they began, it’s obvious that he’s been paying attention to what matters to customers and what doesn’t.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s retail or wholesale, our customers in both areas want the same thing…service. Sure, product mix matters but what they’re really looking for is customer satisfaction. They want someone who delivers when they say they will, are efficient and stand behind the products and service they offer.”

That’s one of the main reasons that Kleiva thinks customers come to a single location, owner-operated store rather than a national retail chain. Keeping their prices competitive with chains like The Good Guys or Car Toys is important, he says, but even more so is the fact that his company offers free pick-up and delivery of a vehicle scheduled for installation or, if needed, the use of a loaner car.

To keep an eye on industry and national retail trends, The Radio Guy joined the Mobile Electronic Retailers Association (MERA), a trade organization, and hired a consultant to come in and assess their business model and daily operations.

From those efforts, both Carol and Erik made the decision to not only expand their sales efforts with their initial customer base, car dealers within Kitsap County, but to also offer business-to-business communication products such as two-way radios. Since expanding into that market, The Radio Guy has outfitted company fleets for Kitsap businesses such as Peninsula Concrete Pumping, Fred Hill Materials, Gateway Towing and Hard Rock Concrete.

Although The Radio Guy operates a small satellite store at the Bay Ford dealership, Kleiva says that they want to continue their expansion in the areas of service and installation as opposed to opening additional retail stores. With that strategy – and the big-ticket sales additions of products like the mobile multi-media units - Kleiva estimates a sales growth of twenty percent for 2001.