This document tells the story of the history of our company in regards to our e-commerce operations.  Since our business is constantly evolving, this story will be changed and updated as needed.  The latest revision of this story is shown below:

Last Revision: January 23, 2002

Title: The Future of Foodservice is Here Today - by Bradley Pierce, Restaurant Equipment World™ CIO

Foodservice operators often feel that searching the internet for equipment is about as effective as chasing around a rainbow looking for a pot of gold.  Restaurant Equipment World™, a Pierce Sales Company, Inc., felt this way and came up with a way for foodservice professionals to find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Their formula for success was the idea that if they mixed their 25 years of foodservice experience with technology, value, service, and providing each customer personal attention, the internet would be a time and money saving medium for the foodservice industry. Their risky bet paid off and that rainbow now shines down into their headquarters in Orlando, Florida as their internet operations are a significant part of their business.

The journey to becoming the leading dealer on the internet did not come overnight. It all started back in 1997 when Restaurant Equipment World™ decided it was time to "get on the internet". With an America Online internet account, Restaurant Equipment World™ entered the game and developed the "typical" web presence as did their competitors. The web site address was filled with so many dots and digits that even employees couldn’t remember it. After all though, it was free with the America Online membership, so no one could complain too much. The site told a little bit about the company and not much more. The highpoint of the web site was a small globe in the center of the screen which spun to look like it was rotating. The site was very slow to load and not of much use to anyone looking for equipment. Essentially, the site was useless only generating a handful or so visitors each day. That saddest part of the story is that this is what many restaurant equipment sites still look like this today. Many sites have a lot of nice images and animated objects but are really just a waste of time to foodservice professionals who are looking for pictures, descriptions, spec sheets, and accurate prices of equipment.

Restaurant Equipment World™ wasn’t very pleased with how their internet venture was going. With no customers and no sales it looked as though the venture onto the internet was just a waste of time. At this point, it was decision time. Pull the plug or sink countless more hours into the venture with no promises of results. They decided to look at their competitors to see what they were doing and hopefully gain some pointers as to how to make this concept work. To their surprise, they found that everyone else in the business was just doing the same thing they were... establish a web presence with no real value or information and let it sit there without results. Instead of continuing this trend, Restaurant Equipment World™ decided that what lay before them was a golden opportunity to build the largest restaurant equipment site on the internet and to position themselves as the leader in the market, much the same as Amazon.Com did with the internet book business.

On November 13^th, 1997 the plan for a new internet site began when Restaurant Equipment World™ registered the domain name www.restaurantequipment.net. Now, they finally had a real name but still didn’t have any useful content. Even the web site name was a problem. They soon found that customers couldn’t spell the word "restaurant" or "equipment" and often typed in .COM instead of .NET, bringing them to a competitors site. Each of these problems were solved by registering the very simple and straightforward domain name www.foodservicestore.com. There still however was issue of not having any content on the site.

Restaurant Equipment World™ slowly began putting their entire catalog online which consisted of more than 5,400 line items each with its own black-and-white picture. Each needed descriptions and accurate prices along with a database link to the appropriate catalog picture and online ordering system. This was the first time in history that anyone in the foodservice industry has taken on such a task. Pricing the catalog items and scanning 5,400 pictures took months even with a team of several employees working on the project. One major problem still existed. With so many products online no one would ever be able to find what they were looking for just scrolling through a list. Originally, Restaurant Equipment World™ looked towards commercial software applications to handle the task of database searching and the shopping functions of the site. They found however that these programs were inadequate to handle the needed functions. Restaurant Equipment World™ decided that rather than settle for a lesser functional commercial program that they would design a custom program of their own from the ground up. REX™ - The Restaurant Equipment Search Engine™ was born. The name of REX™ was conceived as a spur of the moment idea and refers to the Latin term for "King", since this piece of software is the king of search engines targeting only restaurant equipment.  With more than 20,000 lines of code it is quite an impressive piece of software. Besides handling normal searches and delivering search results based on relevancy, REX™ also handles all of the secure online ordering for the entire network of 120 restaurant equipment sites. Once a user places an order one time with REX™, it will remember who they are so that future orders just take a few clicks to complete. This saves the user even more valuable time. The Restaurant Equipment World™ service philosophies are even tied into the software. Each time an event pertaining to a customer’s order occurs such as payment receipt or shipping, an e-mail is automatically sent to the user. This e-mail contains personalized comments from a sales staff member as well as useful information such as freight tracking numbers. Customers can also instantly check the status of their order by accessing REX™ at any time they choose.  REX™ was written and developed over many months of long days and nights powered by the adrenaline of Bradley Pierce.  It is constantly being updated to reflect new useful features the company feels their customers desire.

It was clear to the industry that the Microsoft of the foodservice was born and growing on a daily basis in front of everyone’s eyes. The next logical step was to take things to an even greater height. While on a family ski trip, an impromptu meeting between Bradley and Jerry Pierce was held at 35,000 feet on an airplane heading to Colorado. It was soon determined that to secure their position as a long-term leader, Restaurant Equipment World™ would need to provide even more value to the restaurateurs and foodservice professionals who visited their site. They decided to create 35 additional web sites which would each showcase a particular type of product and would features full-color spec sheets. Each site such as Oven World (www.ovenworld.com) and Freezer World (www.freezerworld.com) contains the most popular pieces of equipment in the particular category. Every site is linked with every other site on the network via a pull-down network at the top of each screen. Users can even browse from site to site and their electronic shopping carts will stay with them so that they can check out and purchase products in their electronic basket at any time.  All of the pictures on their main internet site were upgraded from the original grainy black and white images to full color high resolution images.  The descriptions of individual products were expanded to give users even more detailed information.

Soon after the additions began, Restaurant Equipment World™ received two interesting orders. The first was from a company in Seattle which needed to keep their 700 employees happy. Restaurant Equipment World™ shipped them popcorn poppers to help. The company was Amazon.Com. Their people said that they were impressed with the web sites and that is what drove them to choose Restaurant Equipment World™. Another interesting order came just a few days later from a company in Redmond, Washington looking for some beverage equipment. That company was Microsoft Corporation. These two purchases from established leaders in e-commerce opened the eyes of the Restaurant Equipment World™ staff. They knew that it was time to expand their operations even further. An additional 50 web site names were determined which were then registered and developed. Once completed, Restaurant Equipment World™ owned and operated 85 foodservice equipment web sites.

As their domestic sales continued to grow, their international sales began to develop as well.  Restaurant Equipment World™ has always handled sales from far away places, but the internet has brought the international sales market to a new level for the company.  Time zone differences soon became a constant problem with customers across the nation and around the globe.  The sales staff had to stop and think for a moment before returning a customers call to ensure that they weren't waking the person at 2am to tell them that their refrigerator is shipping and to thank them for their order.  One resourceful employee came up with the idea of putting multiple clocks on the wall in the internet sales division.  These clocks show the current time of major cities around the globe and serve as an instant reminder of the local time in the customers home territories.   While the speed of the company's operations has always been extremely fast domestically, providing this same type of expedited service internationally entailed some additional challenges including learning how to get items around the globe and through customs with minimal delays.  This speed and agility was tested one Wednesday afternoon when a customer in Hong Kong called with a huge problem.  His restaurant was opening on Saturday and he had no shelving.  It was almost Thursday already in his part of the world and he would need the shelving within a day in order to assemble in time for his grand opening.  Within minutes, the resourceful Restaurant Equipment World™ associate handling the order was coordinating the shipment and ensuring that the shelving would arrive on time.  Almost immediately, the shelving was airborne on it's way to Hong Kong.  This situation was a "crisis" for the restaurant operator until they call Restaurant Equipment World™, where their "crisis" was instantly eliminated.  The restaurant opened in Hong Kong on Saturday as planned, complete with new shelving units in place.

While not wanting to take a break and rest for very long, Restaurant Equipment World™ soon decided that they needed even more sites and registered additional domain names bringing the total count to 120 internet sites.  Due to problems with the www.FoodServiceStore.com name being considered too generic by the trademark office, the main web site domain name soon changed to www.REWonline.com, which was a perfect fit for the business using the initials from the companies name.  It was both easy to spell and easy to remember, a critical element in any domain name.

In early October of 2000, Restaurant Equipment World™ publicly announced that it was the first company in the foodservice industry to offer its customers completely wireless access to its entire internet site network via the Palm VII wireless internet organizer.  The wireless version of REWonline.com features the same ability to search and browse all of the products in the catalog as the traditional internet sites.  It even allows customers to instantly track their online orders.  The wireless version of REWonline.com is powered by REXjr.™, a smaller mobile version of the REX™ - Restaurant Equipment Search Engine found on the traditional REWonline.com internet site.  The company feels that the next generation of internet use will be in the wireless arena.  Restaurant Equipment World™ constantly strives to develop products and systems before most users even have a need for them.  They were the first to develop the online catalog in the restaurant industry, and now are the first with the wireless catalog in the restaurant industry.  When the users are ready and wireless is the norm, Restaurant Equipment World™  will already be in a position to serve them while at the same time working on the next technological advances to better the customer experience.

Restaurant Equipment World™ estimates the total cost for their online venture to be more than $1 million.  This is relatively small compared with the multi-millions of dollars typically sunk into online ventures by investors, but a very sizable amount for a small family owned business.   Many small things add up quickly which are to some degree not though of when creating an online enterprise.  Items like a new phone system to handle increased call volume and the addition of knowledgeable sales people are just the beginning.  The company soon found that they were even having to hire people to simply update prices and spec sheets on individual internet sites all day, every day.   In an effort to protect their intellectual property, Restaurant Equipment World™ began hiring patent and trademark attorneys.  There is currently a patent pending on the overall business method and linking system.  Each of the 135 internet sites and domain names are also federally trademarked.  The expense of patents and trademarks is enormous, but the company feels that it is a very necessary expense to ensure protection of their ideas as they continue to grow.  After beginning to run out of office and warehouse space, the company began working on plans to expand the physical size of their operation.  In September of 2001, Restaurant Equipment World™ doubled the size of their current warehouse which will allow them to have even more products in-stock and ready for immediately shipment.  New offices were also added in the e-commerce area of the company to allow for future growth and new employees joining the company. 

It is a common practice on the internet that many commercial web sites are hosted on computers owned by someone else.  The problem with this is that a company’s service is only as good as their internet provider. To address and eliminate this problem, Restaurant Equipment World™ has taken a very different approach. They have each of their sites housed on their own servers with fully redundant multiple connections directly to the internet backbone which ensures fast speed and reliable service. Two things which are critical to running a successful internet venture. The server is located at a secure facility complete with battery backups, diesel generators, and even on-site full-time security which helps to protect the integrity of customer data and payment information. Internally, Restaurant Equipment World™ has installed high speed data lines and internet / e-mail servers at their Orlando, Florida headquarters. These servers handle internet access for each employee’s desktop as well as internal and external mail flow and order processing. When a customer sends an e-mail message to anyone within the organization, it is automatically captured from the internet server and routed through the internal network to the appropriate person or department. Each individual’s e-mail address is in the format username@REWonline.com which makes it easy for customers to remember. This e-mail system eliminates costly time delays by delivering messages instantly to their intended recipient.

While an enormous amount of technology has been utilized by Restaurant Equipment World™ to make equipment buying more efficient, they still do some things the old fashioned way. They are convinced that the winners and losers in the restaurant equipment sales industry will depend on personal service, value, and a lot of long nights of hard work. That is precisely why each e-mail and each phone call is handled by a specific employee assigned to the particular customer.  This feeling towards high quality customer service can be summarized in our company slogan, "We are in the love business."  This term came to life when one member of our company heard a speech where the speaker made the comment, "we’re not in the love business, we’re in the money business." He was referring to cutting beyond the personal items and making business decisions based upon the economics of the situation. His comment got us thinking.  The more that we thought about it, the more that we disagreed with his theory. It was at that time that we decided that unlike his company, our company was in fact in the love business. After all, if we didn’t love the our jobs and if we didn’t love our customers, then what motivation would we ever have to do a good job? We determined that employees who know that they are cared about and are part of the team transfer that positive energy and good feelings to the customers. By being in the love business, the money business tends to take care of itself many times over.

After more than four years of development and fine-tuning, Restaurant Equipment World™ has become the world’s largest web site with more than 12,000 products online. The World Network of Restaurant Equipment sites now spans 135 product-specific web sites each backed by a knowledgeable team of sales professionals dedicated to providing value and prompt personal attention to each and every customer who enters the site. Each month millions of visitors browse their pages and view their monthly sale item information. Their sites were developed and are managed by Bradley Pierce who serves as CIO and Webmaster of the organization. Their home page can be visited at www.REWonline.com which contains links to each of the product specific sites. They can be e-mailed at sales@REWonline.com.

General History of Company / Personnel:  Pierce Sales Company, Inc., the parent company to Restaurant Equipment World™,  was founded more than 25 years ago by Jerry Pierce.  The company has completed major projects around the globe including more than 300 Denny's, Perkins, Applebee's and Bennigan's Restaurants.  They have also completed specialty project such as the NASA Space Center employee cafeteria and Sea World of Texas.  The company is still privately owned and operated by the Pierce Family, with Jerry Pierce leading the charge as President of the organization.  Jerry has become nationally recognized in the foodservice industry over the years due to his heavy industry involvement and development of products such as the heat saving Trans-Fast™ unit for restaurants.  He also has many other accomplishments including being the inventor of snow making equipment to keep the penguins at Sea World happy.  Jerry is married to Carol Pierce who is also very active in the business.  They enjoy spending time playing golf and relaxing at the beach when they are able to get away from the office.  Together, they have four children.  One of the children, Linda Pierce, works in the family business as well.  Linda heads up the internet sales division of the company and has been with the organization for more than seven years.  Jerry's son, Bradley Pierce, has worked with the company for many years now as Chief Information Officer.  His job functions include the development and implementation of the internet and e-commerce operations as well as overseeing the daily operations of the company.  Bradley graduated from Florida State University with a degree in Marketing and also enjoys flying airplanes in his spare time (which is rare).  Bradley's piloting skills were tested a year ago when he experienced an engine failure over the swamps of Louisiana and was forced to land on a two lane highway.  Very good flight training and a lot of help from people in high places enabled Bradley to land the plane safely without injury or damage to the aircraft.  Bradley is also President and CEO of Pierce Aviation, Inc. (First Class Airways®), an aircraft acquisition and leasing company also based in Orlando, Florida.  Bradley was recently married to his wife Lori (who refuses to fly in small planes) after many years of dating.  They both enjoy spending time on the lake and spend their vacation time hitting the slopes of Colorado.  They currently live in a northern suburb of Orlando.

For more information about Restaurant Equipment World™, please contact Bradley Pierce.  He can be reached via e-mail at brad@REWonline.com.  He can also be reached via phone at (800) 821-9153 or (407) 679-9004.

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