To put a reverse, business-oriented spin on a familiar sports clich, the best defense sometimes is a good offense.


Thats what longtime Spokane retailer Huppins Hi-Fi Photo & Video Inc. has discovered with a mail-order division, dubbed One Call, that it started about six years ago. Launched in response to a feared influx of storefront competitors here, the division expanded onto the Internet a few months later and since then has helped Huppins quietly become a major national player in mail-order and on-line consumer electronics sales.


Its led to substantial growth in the company, says Murray Huppin, president of Huppins. It also has made the 92-year-old, family-owned enterprise what he believes is one of Federal Express largest Spokane-area customers.


With nary a hint of publicity, the division has built up a busy call center, located behind unmarked doors in the U.S. Bank Building downtown, that employs 17 full-time salespeople, who have an average of 8 years of consumer-electronics sales experience. In addition to the marketing it does through its web site, at www.onecall.com, the division advertises extensively in Stereo Reviews Sound & Vision magazine, which claims to be the worlds largest home-entertainment publication.


Huppins declines to divulge the divisions annual revenue, but its believed to be well into the millions of dollars and to far exceed the revenue of Huppins nonetheless prosperous downtown retail store. The company disclosed back in the fall of 1994, when its mail-order division barely was getting under way, that it expected to have total sales that year of more than $10 million. It now employs a total of about 70 people, counting those who work in the mail-order division.


While he declines to make employment or financial projections, Huppin says, Were very bullish on the growth prospects for that division, as well as the retail store, which is located at 419 W. Main.


He says the idea for the mail-order division first came up in 1993, when a number of national and regional consumer-electronics chains were looking at entering the Spokane market.


We really saw a lot of competition coming, so we realized we needed to do something to grow the business and remain viable for our vendors, he says. We presumed we were going to get bombarded with new stores. We decided if they can come to Spokane, we can go to their town. We just did it without building storefronts.


Huppins launched the division with just a couple of people back in 1994. The name of the mail-order division is a variation of the phone number, 1-800-ONEKALL, that the company used in its first magazine advertisement, Huppin says.


What we wanted to do was figure out how to do more business out of a single location, he says. So, he says, We took our philosophy and moved it to the telephone. That philosophy, Huppin asserts, is to sell quality consumer-electronics gear and to provide the knowledgeable salespeople and detailed information necessary for consumers to make informed purchasing decisions.


The company launched its web site three months after starting the mail-order division, which Huppin contends makes it the longest-tenured consumer-electronics retailer on the Internet.


He says, I think theres no substitute for being first. No question, were a major player on the national scene, and it comes from being one of the first out there. Weve really established an excellent reputation.


One Calls web site, which Huppins developed and maintains in-house, was a pioneer in the use of dynamic page creation, which allows the company to make multiple changes to the site with a single keystroke, Huppin claims. The company currently is in the process of enhancing the site, he adds.


Customers can buy products directly through the web site. Huppins studies have shown, however, that 85 percent of the people who buy products through its mail-order division use the site to check out products theyre interested in, then place their orders over the telephone, Huppin says.


Its our belief that at some point the customer needs to have a human contact, and most customers seem to prefer that when buying bigger-ticket items, as in the case of many consumer-electronics products, he says.


Customers with Internet access who order items through One Call are e-mailed FedEx tracking numbers, within 15 minutes of placing their orders, that allow them to monitor the delivery process, Huppin says. He says the Spokane company enjoys an incredible fulfillment advantage for filling orders quickly because of its location in the Pacific time zone. What that means is, a customer elsewhere in the country can place an order after getting home from work, say, at 7 p.m, and receive the order by 10 a.m. the next morning, he says.


Another factor making Huppin feel bullish about the Spokane companys future is that the U.S. consumer-electronics industry overall is growing at a healthy pace. Thats expected to continue for the foreseeable future, he says, particularly given the anticipated replacement in coming years of several hundred million TV sets across the country with new high-definition models, spurred by federal regulatory changes.


Huppin cites one other reason for the companys longevity and his confidence in its future. We always changed with the times and diversified and tried to do new things, he says.


Huppins was a second-hand store and pawn shop when Murray Huppins great-grandfather, Sam Huppin, a Russian immigrant, opened it in 1908. He died 14 years later, leaving his 16-year-old son, Abe, to run the store, but the entire family worked there and did whatever was required to survive. Over the decades that followed, the store sold everything from military-related items during World War II to luggage and stylish mens clothing before turning to cameras, radios, and stereo equipment in the 1950s. The store got out of clothing altogether in about the mid-1970s and ceased pawnbroking about five years later.


Sam I. Big Sam Huppin and Sam M. Little Sam Huppin, who are the founders son and grandson, respectively, took over the business following Abe Huppins death in the late 1980s. They now are easing toward retirement and turning over the reins of the business gradually to Murray Huppin, who is Sam M. Huppins son, and Joel Huppin, who is Spokane attorney C. Eugene Huppins son and Murrays cousin. Joel now is vice president and a stockholder in the company, Murray says.