The “How’s Business Report” airs on KXLY AM 920 radio Friday mornings at 7:50 a.m. and on KXLY TV 4 on Sunday mornings at 7:45 a.m.

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Most people in Spokane know Huppin’s as the popular downtown electronics store that sells televisions, stereos and cameras, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of this 100-year-old, four-generation family business.

Sam Huppin, the great-grandfather of current Huppin’s President Murray Huppin, was an entrepreneurial tailor who came to Spokane in 1908 and set up shop within a block of the current store, located at 421 W. Main. The business soon evolved into a military-supply store selling clothing, musical instruments and other items. After serving in World War II, a younger Sam Huppin, Murray’s dad, came home to join his father and grandfather in the family business. In 1953, they moved the store to the current location, and by the early 1970s they were in the emerging TV, hi-fi and camera business.

Murray worked at the store during high school and then rejoined his grandfather, dad, and his uncle “Big Sam”—yes, Sam is a popular name in the Huppin family—at the store full time following graduation from the University of Washington and a year in sales with Procter & Gamble. Huppin’s grew to become Spokane’s foremost electronics retailer (even before they were called electronics), selling brands like Sony, Panasonic and Nikon.

As competition from big national stores began increasing in the 1990s, Murray came up with the idea of selling their merchandise by mail order; a new division, One Call, was born in 1994. They started with no catalog and no customers but began to run mail-order advertising in national magazines. After a year, Murray decided to “try this Internet thing,” and OneCall.com got its start just about the same time Amazon.com began. The early days were a challenge. Slow dial-up connections and relatively small numbers of people online didn’t make OneCall.com an overnight success by any means. But Huppin’s persevered and continued to build its online business. The company used the same philosophy it used in the store: Give the customer good selection and good value at a good price. As Internet shopping grew, so did OneCall.com.

It really grew.

Today, Huppin’s is still a bricks-and-mortar electronics store, but by far the major part of its business comes from its online store at OneCall.com. The site does more than $80 million in sales a year, shipping most merchandise out of a warehouse in Spokane Valley; the exception is East Coast television sales, which are shipped out of a warehouse in West Virginia. To remain competitive, shipping is included in the price of the merchandise.

OneCall.com has built an excellent reputation among online retailers, and its customer-service ratings are always high.

“In reality, we’re just running an old-fashioned retail business, taking care of our customers and giving them good value,” Murray says. “The only thing that’s different is the delivery system.”

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