In some regards, it has been a long strange trip for Greg Glover at Airguns of Arizona. “In 1995, when I was in junior high, my stepfather had an interest in airguns. He had heard about this airgun shop near us in Arizona and set out to find it. That’s how I met Robert,” Greg says.
At the time, the Buchanan brothers – Robert and Steve – owned a tire and car repair shop. The airgun “shop” was a sideline within the business consisting of a gun safe with perhaps a dozen guns in it behind the counter in the tire store and a few more boxes of guns stored in the shop.
“I got involved in the fledgling field target club, started chatting with Robert,” Greg says, “and he offered me a part time job at the tire shop, cleaning up and sweeping floors. We took a liking to each other and became friends.”
He adds, “The airgun side was interesting to me. Guys would find us. Robert was trying to keep on top of the phones, and it wasn’t unusual to see him under a car doing an alignment while talking airguns to a potential customer on the phone.”
As the phone was ringing more, Robert had outsourced his web work for the airgun shop. It was a really awkward process involving faxing whatever changes needed to be made to the web guy who would respond, and the response would always be accompanied by a bill.
“I came on fulltime in 1999,” Greg says. “I knew basic web, so I told Robert that I could take care of that, so he gave me the responsibility.”
As the business was growing, Greg had more and more to do. “I was heavy into sales for several years, answering the phone, talking to people, doing web work. I packed guns, repaired FX guns when we first got them.”
He says, “I have always gravitated toward doing whatever needs to be done, and I enjoy new challenges when they come along. For example, if a piece of equipment plugs in, it seems to be my job to manage it. A few years ago, we decided we needed to do videos. A friend who runs a video business and I took on the challenge, and it was a pretty big one, but our results speak for themselves.”
Today, Greg is general manager of Airguns of Arizona. That means, in part, that he looks at the overall flow of the business, sees where the needs and bottlenecks are, and tries to make some improvements. “For example, back in the day, we wrote UPS labels by hand. Now we can generate them out of our computerized order system with just a few keystrokes.”
Some of the other challenges Greg has taken on over the years include most of the photography for the www.airgunsofarizona.com website and heavy involvement in the annual Extreme Benchrest competition.
As I was interviewing him for this blog, he was in the throes of preparing two booths for the upcoming SHOT show while at the same time, keeping an ear on the sales floor. “I am responsible for the guys who answer the phone. I try not to micromanage but to make sure all the sales guys are on track and correct. Customers are number one, and we focus on keeping them happy. That starts with making sure they have correct information.”
He concludes: “I like being in the background, helping to do the things that need to be done, and I love our crew and our workfloor attitude. We’re definitely a family, and we support each other. That makes it a really nice place to come to work.”
Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.
- Jock Elliott