By The Business Times Staff

Copyright thebusinesstimes

Stove Depot nearly doubled its store size four months ago and already has outgrown it

Tim Harty, The Business Times

Four months ago, Stove Depot and Chimney Works left the 5,000-square-foot building it occupied at 330 North Ave. for a 9,000-square-foot space at 1915 Interstate 70 Business Loop.

It had to move. It had outgrown its home of the previous five years.

Today, Stove Depot and Chimney Works is about a month away from finishing renovations to its new location. Then, it will look to add 3,500 square feet to the existing building, because it has to. It’s already outgrown the space.

And owner Bryce Wynne already knows that addition won’t be enough, so in January or soon after he expects to break ground on a 15,000-square-foot warehouse building a couple lots to the east.

When that building is done, he will see how long that’s sufficient.

Life’s been good since Wynne bought Clean Sweep Chimney from his father, Steve Wynne, six years ago and immediately renamed it Stove Depot and Chimney Works. Where his father’s business had been strictly service work, Bryce Wynne added retail and wholesale sales to the business with the rationale of “there’s a need in the valley for just a hearth store.”

“We sell wood, gas, pellet and electric fireplaces and the stoves, and we’ve been growing every year since,” Bryce Wynne said.

He said the business outgrew his dad’s location within six months, so he moved Stove Depot and Chimney Works to 330 North Ave.

“It took us five years to grow out of that building,” Wynne said, necessitating the move to 1915 I-70 Business Loop.

There was no five-year wait to fill up the space this time.

“Now I need a full-fledged warehouse and a big showroom with offices,” Wynne said, “because now we’re up to 18 employees, so we just need room, room for everything.”

Wynne wants to hire three more employees.

“My dad had one part-time guy,” Wynne said. “And when I bought him out, we just kept growing, and we kept adding and adding, and we’re hiring three more guys.

“I want to get up to about 25 employees by the end of the year. That will be, I think, a good position, because we have a store in Montrose as well.”

Rather than move Stove Depot and Chimney Works to another location, Wynne is staying put and adding space to the existing building and the aforementioned lot that’s a stone’s throw away.

The large warehouse will allow Wynne to convert the warehouse space at 1915 I-70 Business Loop to more showroom. Specifically, an outdoor showroom “where then I can show big outdoor kitchens, outdoor furniture and all of that,” he said.

Also, he’ll be able to run four salespeople from that building instead of the current two.

Until then, Stove Depot and Chimney Works will do what it can with the space it has, which is a lot more than it could before.

“My warehouse has doubled in size, so we’re stocking a lot more,” Wynne said. “And we have a bigger showroom to show more things like grills. Before, we didn’t have room to show some outdoor stuff. Now we do. So now we’re going to show a little more fire pits, a little more grills and things like that.

“But I want to create a showroom that you come into, and it’s kind of worthy of the dollar worth that you’re spending. Because our industry, each of our customers spends quite a bit of money, and I appreciate that. I feel it’s in my best interest to give them a place that it feels like their money’s well in hand.”

More fireplaces will be displayed, and more importantly they’ll be spaced out.

“What we found is we used to have fireplaces doubled up all over our showroom, and it was packed full, and it was overwhelming,” Wynne said. “People would come in and would just get discouraged … just like, ‘This is too much.’

“So, really, we have our top sellers. We have, I think, 45 stoves on flue, gas fireplaces, so that’s still quite a bit. We have 30 freestanding stoves, so we’re not lacking. … We’ve been in business long enough that we can kind of through our own data see what sells the best in this market, so we concentrate on our best sellers.”

Wynne also is eyeing another type of growth: Stove Depot and Chimney Works’ geographic footprint.

“We’re going to eventually service Western Colorado,” he said. “My goal is to have five stores here in the next couple of years. I want to be a brand that’s recognized in western Colorado, that goes from Vail to Telluride.

“We already do a lot of business in Telluride, a lot of business in Aspen, a lot of business in the Roaring Fork Valley. I’ve been asked several times to have a store up there, because we have a lot of builders up there that really want us to have a store to bring their clients. So, hopefully next year we’ll expand up there as well.”

Serial Entrepreneur Settles Down – For Now

Bryce Wynne grew up helping his dad, Steve Wynne, at Clean Sweep Chimney, so he was well-acquainted with the business that he eventually bought from his dad and turned into Stove Depot and Chimney Works six years ago.

But upon getting his master of business administration from Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University), he decided to try his hand at something else. Well, a lot of something elses.

Bryce Wynne, who is 41 years old, said he has owned 11 different businesses.

“I’m a serial entrepreneur,” he said. “I buy and sell businesses, anything from crypto – I had a mining farm for crypto – to a window-washing company. It’s just if there’s opportunity, I’ll look at it and see.”

He admitted he gets bored easily, so “when things smooth out, I usually sell the business and start something new.”

He also admitted, “It drives my wife crazy.”

So, he promised her he’ll stay with Stove Depot and Chimney Works for a little longer, “and we’ll grow it out to be a pretty good-size business.”

He’s on his way to doing exactly that.

“We’ve grown every year, we haven’t had a down year, and we just keep on growing,”

Wynne said. “So, I feel we’re finally at the starting line of where I want to be. The next five years are going to be a lot of fun, a lot of great expansion. A lot of great things are going to happen.”