Kurt Rumens: Here we are in beautiful downtown New Orleans—and it's been great. These shows are like a family reunion to us. We've been doing this a long time.

KR: It’s really easy: Treat people the way you want to be treated. At Travis, we never say, “We've never heard of that” or “That's not our problem.” We say, “How can we help?” It made an impression on me early on, talking to other people in business, that you’re here to serve the customer—the customer isn't here to serve you. In our industry, that means that it's not the manufacturer who's in charge. It's the dealer. They’re the people on the street selling the product, so I really feel like I work for them. And if you're authentic about that—if you mean it and you follow through on it, and you actually serve your customers—then people want to be part of something like that, rather than being told what to do.

KR: I'll give you the Reader's Digest version because it's a fairly long story. I started out as a truck driver for El Fuego in Connecticut and Massachusetts. I was in a rock and roll band, so I had a big truck, and the truck sat during the day. A guy who was a Fuego dealer and distributor would drive by and see this big truck sitting in the barnyard. He stopped there one day and said, "Hey, you long-hairs want to make some money?" So I started delivering El Fuegos around New England to the dealers. And some of those dealers, to this day, are still our customers, but they remember me as the truck driver.

Those guys have moved on now. It's a whole new generation. And that's one of the coolest things I'd like to mention: We've got a new generation of people at these trade shows. They’re the next generation, and they're excited. They're smart; they're educated; they know their way around computers. And we're going, “Man, this thing is in safe hands.” You mentioned legacy, and you wonder—do you build something up and it disappears, or do you build it up and it keeps growing? With the people I'm dealing with, both employees and customers, I have no qualms about the future. It’s a bright future.

KR: I moved from the East Coast to Seattle and gave my Fuego guy a call. He sent me some of the Fuegos. After about six months of selling these part-time—I was selling to stores in Seattle and working construction during the day—I sent him a picture of an arch. I sent him a fire brick I got out of a Glacier Bay stove. I said, “These are things we need to incorporate because these units we’re selling now aren't going to last. I’ve only been out here six months, and I'm already having to fix them. I'm getting to know my customers too well.” He sent that stuff back to me and said, “No thanks. You're not an engineer. You're not even a draftsman. You're an out-of-work rock and roll drummer.”

I said, “Well, you got a point there.” So I went to a show in Portland, Oregon—this was in the early '70s—and there was a company out of New Hampshire called the Nashua Stove Company. They were heavy-built, thick steel stoves, like a Fisher or a Glacier Bay. No glass doors, but they were well-made stoves. I started talking to one of the salespeople in the booth, and I told him I was selling the Fuegos, and he goes, “I think these are the three to start with.” I said, “Okay, what do I owe you?” He said, “Well, let's go over and meet the owner.” So I went over, and the owner looked at me and said, “How old are you?" I said, “Twenty-one." He said, "Twenty-one. How many dealers you got?” I said, “Nine.” He said, “Nine.” And he turned to the salesman and goes, “Hey, this guy's gotta grow up. Have him come back when he's got 109 dealers.”

That was the moment I realized that I was going to be a stove manufacturer. I can't get one guy to listen to me. I can't get another guy to sell to me. So I'm going to figure this out. I'm not a welder—I'm a wood guy, a carpenter—but somehow I'm going to figure out how this works, and we'll do a better job. I got started in this business because I got treated like I would never treat somebody. That was the impetus to start building stoves—right there. It all crystallized in that moment.

KR: Always. I've been fortunate in my life to meet people who did kind of magical stuff—guys I knew before they were somebody. They played rock and roll and became rock stars. They loved cross-country skiing and became silver medalists in the Olympics. So I've run into people in my life who were focused, who had talent, and who stayed relentless in pursuing their goals. So I've had lots of great examples around me.

I love hearing the stories of how things just started. Kirk Newby, AES Distribution—they used to be a dealer. His dad, Ben Newby, had a retail store and then a small distribution company. And through Kirk focusing and getting the right people to join him, he's built a fabulous business. It's fun seeing that story repeated. And it really is open to all of us as Americans. That's the thing I like to impress upon young people: You can be in this country who you want to be. You can set your mark as high as you want to set it. And if it ain't working, don't blame anyone else. Look to yourself and figure out what you're not doing right. It's not hard if you're willing to be truthful about it. It’s here for us. So that’s my story.

KR: No, it's very intentional. I've been treated poorly at different times in my life. I get over it, but you never go back to it. The same is true of the opposite: If you're treated well, you want more of that. If people respect you and give you an opportunity, why wouldn't you stay with them?

I've always surrounded myself with a certain type of personality, and I didn't even have a name for it. Years ago, I went to a business seminar that our bank put on, and the chairman of Nordstrom at the time was asked, “How is it that you have such consistently helpful, positive people, whether it's in Denver or New York City or Southern California or Washington State? How do you get these wonderful people to work at Nordstrom?” He said, “In our interviewing process, we look for people with a servant's heart.” I thought, “What the hell is he talking about? I'm not a servant. What’s he talking about?”

But what he went on to explain was that they asked questions during the interview like, “Do you get personal satisfaction out of helping people?” And it hit me: That's what I've been doing all my life. That's the way I think. That's the kind of person I've hired in sales and in manufacturing—just people who like helping people. When you take a plant tour, I'll see guys step off their machines and say, “Thanks for my job” to the person I'm bringing through, whether it's a prospective dealer or an architect. They'll stop for a second and say, “Hey, thanks for stopping by. Thank you for my job.” If you hire the right kind of people and surround yourself with positive people, it just keeps going—and that’s very intentional.

KR: Everyone can see Travis Industries today and see that we're successful. So I want to encourage you in this business and in your own endeavors—the first guy I walked into, he goes, "Hey, give me an invoice. I'll buy one." I said, "What the hell is an invoice?" I started out dead green. And that's the other thing: If you're willing to listen and willing to learn, it doesn't matter how green you are or how small you are.

I started with a little 10-by-14 storefront in Ballard, Washington. That was the home of Lopi International. It was a word I made up: it sounded wolfish, and it was just something we coined. Over the years, people mispronounced it a lot, and I'd say, "Yeah, we have the Loopies—right over here." We've had fun with it, but we've been realistic about it. What's our role? And how can we keep making it better?

That's what keeps driving me. People ask me what my motivating factor is—what pushes me. One word: fear. I fear I haven't done enough. Maybe I didn't hit it this time. Maybe the proportions aren't right. Maybe it doesn't feel right. When we come to a show like this, I'm watching body language, I'm watching people's faces. And when I see someone grab their buddy and go, “Come here, look at this,” then I say, “Okay, we got it.”

I was asked one time by some college students, "What marketing studies do you do? What analysis do you do?" I said, “We talk to people. We listen. We've got good radar, and we read the room really well.” When something's not working—a project, a program—we don't look for someone else to blame. We ask, “What didn't we do? How can we make it better?” That's a realistic way to keep things moving and keep developing personally. The fear that I haven't done enough is what keeps me up at night. It's not any particular competitor or designer. It's just—how do I keep pushing?

I've been fortunate to be around people who've done extraordinary things. I met the family that started Cargill, which is the world's largest privately owned company. A hundred and fifty years ago, they started a grain company, and they built it into a phenomenally large global interest. And you meet these people and think, That guy puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like me. If he can do it, I can do it. It's our country; it's our freedom. Take advantage of it.

KR: My brother has worked for me since he was 10 and a half years old. We did a concert one time at this arena we rented, and I said to him and his cousin Chris (who's one of our reps now), “You two guys are security. Stand right here at the door. Don't let anyone in. Ticket sales are out front.” He said, “No sooner did you leave than someone opened the door.” So Kip's been involved in my life from the very beginning.

I was fortunate to grow up in a big family, and what's interesting is that many of those family members work with me now. We've got cousins, uncles, nephews, brothers-in-law, and sisters-in-law. And it's not because they're related—it's because they're really good. I'll see someone in the restaurant industry and think, "I want that guy over here because he has the right nature to help people. I want him working with my dealers."

KR: I get to hug my kids almost every day. I've got a son and a daughter directly in the business. They're sales reps now, but they've worked everything: the machines in the factory, the kitchen, and customer service. Shelby helped me launch the DaVinci line. He'd done so well in the training and the technical stuff that I said, “All right, you're good at talking to people. I've got an idea here that we want to launch, and I want to put you in charge of it.”

So it’s fun if your kids are up for it—if they can chew the leather, so to speak—give them a challenge. And you've got children now, Tim. You want to think about how to prepare these young people for the world around us. Because I firmly believe the world ain't fair all the time. And when it's not fair, you've got to keep going. You've got to push through it. You can't let the unfairness shape your values. You’ve got to get over it as quickly as you can, move on, and stay positive.

It's been fun working with Cheyenne and Shelby. They've become rock stars in their own right, and I use that term just to say they're making things happen. People love to see them.

KR: Absolutely. I'm working with the Garske family in Spokane. They've got six generations in the foundry business, which Travis Garske's grandfather started. You look at that and go, “Now that's a legacy. It's generational. The business is still viable, and it's growing.” So I don't think I've got a legacy. I think I've just done a good job doing what I'm doing. I've been so fortunate to find something I was really good at, and it’s been rewarding to be a part of it.

KR: I don't. I don't think about that word at all. I just stay busy. I fear that I haven't done enough, and that's the thing I want to impart to everybody. You can do more. Don't blame the other guy. Take responsibility for it. There's so much that can be done. Just keep pushing and never give up. Never let someone else control your dreams. Pursue your dreams.

Tim, you've done a great job getting independent. We tried to hire you years ago, and you had this dream, and you've done a great job with it. You're building something unique that's got your print on it, and it helps the industry.

KR: I think scars tell a story about life. Tattoos are one thing; I think scars tell a much more interesting story. If you get beat up in life, you get some scars, but you don't let that be your determining feature. It's there. It's part of the journey.

KR: I think it's true of this industry and any industry: It's really the quality of the people. If you love the people, you want to be around the people. And I do happen to love fire. I think I'm the luckiest guy on the planet that I get paid to play with fire. I mean, say we were making paint, and we were at a paint conference right now. It'd be kind of boring. Fire is just one of those things where we can reach out to each other as humans. Everyone feels something sitting in front of a fire.

We happen to be sitting in front of our new electric fireplaces right now. I used to hate electric fireplaces; they were fire-ish. But you look at what's going on with these fireplaces with holographics in them, and it's a whole new ballgame. We've got gas, wood, pellet, and now electric—indoors and outdoors. There's a love of fire and a love of people. Two simple things.

KR: Man, there's a bunch of them. We retire a product because we didn't do something well enough for the dealers to make a living on it. They sold one here, one there, and it's hard as a manufacturer to make money unless you're making lots of something. In our view, a product has to look custom, it has to look handmade, it has to be exotic. But sometimes you don't hit the balance correctly, and you don't sell enough to make it viable for the dealer or for us. That's why we retire them.

Of those, a couple stand out. But if I had to pick one, it'd be the Bed and Breakfast.

The Bed and Breakfast was a vertical fireplace, tapered so it would go in a corner. It came about when I was on a horseback ride in the Sierra Nevadas. We stayed in a bed and breakfast when we came back into town, and the proprietor was sitting there, and he goes, “You're in the fireplace business? I need a compact fireplace that'll sit in the corner for these bedrooms. They're not big spaces.” And I'm thinking, “I want one of those too.” I'm sitting up in Seattle on a rainy day, looking at the covered porch of my modest house, and there's a corner, and I’m going, “Man, if I had one of those units, I could put it right there and be cozy.” So now there were two of us who wanted it, so I started designing vertically.

But the story gets even better. I've always been intrigued by antiquities. I've looked at a lot of old buildings and old fireplaces. My first crack at the design was inspired by a brick beehive oven—the kind of masonry oven used all over the world for cooking, where bricks are placed overlapping each other, changing in length until you get this beehive shape. If you slice into one, that cross-section is what I used for the first interior of the Bed and Breakfast. I worked with a couple of talented designers, Vance Smith and Al Wilker, who used to design for Vermont Castings. I said, “Guys, we need your help. We need to make a rough pattern.” They were instrumental in getting the proportions right. They were masters in that—if you look at the old VCs, the moldings, the plated windows—they did a fabulous job executing those designs. And they would fight with the foundries: “Yes, you can do a 2% radius. Yes, you can get it out of the machine.” They were masters at fighting for detail, and they helped me with that interior.

From there, I was in Rome. I was in the Sistine Chapel. If you look around the ceiling, right below that magnificent fresco, there are 21 or 23 busts of different popes set in niches. It was much like what I'd done with the beehive oven, and I said, “Wouldn't that be cool?" So I made a shell interior, much like the stucco shells that were all over Italy.

If you take the world around you as a designer and look at what's been done, you go, “Let's borrow this idea and make it interesting enough that people in this century would want it in their house.” I've got to admit: I've never done an original thing in my life. I've just observed the things around me and asked, “How do I take that idea and bring it forward? How do I modernize it?” That's my creativity: putting things back in play that may have been done a hundred or two hundred years ago.

Now, with the modern stuff—linear fireplaces—I was in a P.F. Chang's with my staff about 30 years ago, heading to a trade show. There's one major wall with these alcoves—some squares, some rectangles. There was a five-foot by 20-inch rectangle, about 20 inches deep, with pottery in it. I'm sitting there eating a lettuce wrap, thinking, Man, that would be a cool fireplace. That's where the Extreme fireplace came from.

KR: There are 12 new things in this booth. About a month and a half ago, we were at the Builder Show, and we brought all the stuff that was completed. I was proud of it, excited about it—but I wasn't talking about anything new here. It was stuff we'd been working on for the last year. I left there a little depressed, thinking, We need some new stuff.

Over the next 35 days, we took a lot of the ideas that our President's Club members had given us, looked at those notes, and said, “Okay, we can do this, this, and this.” And the guys who are called upon to make this stuff started getting into it and saying, “Oh, I can do that one too.” Everybody in the company got psyched. They worked weekends, they worked evenings. I said, “All right, let's take the cast iron stoves, make a steel body, a whole new jacket—make a new tuxedo for it. Make it contemporary-looking.” And one guy goes, “Hey, I can do that in the medium-sized one too.”

It's really about getting people excited—because enthusiasm is the one thing we can't measure. We can measure strength, we can measure all sorts of financial markers, but you can't measure enthusiasm. You just know when it's there and when it's not. And when it's there, you want to be part of it. So, man, the last 45 days have been the most enthusiastic days of my career in the last decade.

KR: It's not just because that's who we took to the dance. It's because we really believe that's where the future is. We've got what we call an online shopping center—we're still working the bugs out—but when you hit the shopping cart button, it goes to the dealer's website. We're going to try to turn every dealer we've got into an Amazon. We need more door turns. We've gotten some giant jobs from builders and architects, and where does it go? We get it back to a dealer—every time.

KR: I think that's the future of our industry. What we make is very specialized, and to be safe, to get it installed correctly, to get that beautiful flame dialed in, we need those specialists. There's nothing more convincing to a potential buyer than a burning model. We can do so much online, but when you're in front of it, and you're experiencing it—you feel the heat, you see the flames, you hear it burning—that’s what creates the “I've gotta have it” feeling.

So we think the physical store is important, and we think the specialists in the store are equally critical: from the salesperson to the installation crew. You have to pick the right model, and that's done by listening carefully to what the customer would be happiest with. I love the guys who go out and visit the home and look at the installation. There's so much power in that. That's why I don't think we'll ever be an Amazon supplier. And I think the world of Amazon; they've got a great business model. But we're asking, “How do we help our dealers become online sellers?” That's the next rabbit out of the hat.

KR: Thanks for sitting down and taking the time, Tim.