This episode of the Independent Thinking Podcast was recorded at the Nationwide Marketing Group (NMG) PrimeTime event and expo in Nashville (August 2025).

On this episode, NMG’s Director of Marketing Communications, Julie Manson, interviews PJ Orsini, owner of Orsini’s in West Virginia. Highlights of the conversation include:

• How attending PrimeTime helps Orsini’s stay competitive
• Networking with peers in the industry to learn and grow
• Utilizing OneShop digital services to attract new customers
• Tapping into data to inform decisions
• Social media content creation strategy

 

WATCH this episode on YouTube.

 

Read the full transcript below.

Julie Manson (JM): Hi, welcome to PrimeTime. We’ve got PJ from Orsini’s here with us. PJ, can you introduce yourself? 

PJ Orsini (PJ): Sure. PJ Orsini from Orsini’s. We’re in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Third generation family business. We’ve been in business since ‘48, so over 77 years. I’ve been in the industry for around 24, so been doing it a long time. 

JM: What is your favorite thing about being part of the family business? 

PJ: Well, keeping the business going, continuing to grow in it, and getting the more verticals and expanding the business from when we started. My grandpa started doing service in his garage on ringer washers, and then we turned into retail and everything else. So continuing to see where we can take it and expand it and grow it and build a bigger team and a bigger market. 

JM: So I have a feeling you’ve been to a lot of PrimeTimes, is that…? 

PJ: We’ve been coming for a long time. I want to say at least 10 years, maybe longer. 

JM: So how many have you attended personally then? 

PJ: Two a… every one. Twice a year since we’ve been coming. 

JM: What keeps you coming back? 

PJ: The people. There’s so many opportunities here with the vendors, with the services that are offered, but some of the best stuff we get out of this is in the evening, sitting down at dinner or sitting down having a drink with people come all over the country and hearing what they’re doing and then sharing ideas. Some of them are great. Some of them are okay, but we’re able to take something back every time to the show and talk to everybody. 

And then today will be the work day, but tomorrow we walk around the show and try to find something new to take back to the store with us and introduce to our sales team and our install team and see what we can find new. 

JM: What’s kind of been on your top five list of things that you’ve been able to take back from PrimeTime and apply to your business? 

PJ: Last year we started… last show… I’m sorry, we started introducing a new POS system. So we’re working with Althea to get that going. We use a lot of the service here, Synchrony, for all the financing they do. We do a lot of Whirlpool, a GE business, so we’ll meet with those guys today. 

Right now we’re focused on the website, the OneShop. We met with James yesterday and really got some things going there. Some stuff we’re going to work on today. This trip is really focused on seeing what’s new, of course, in the products, but working with the OneShop team to make sure we’re ready for Q4, the busy time of year with the Black November and all that. And then working with Synchrony to make sure all of our financing stuff is ready to go so we’re competitive. 

JM: Awesome. Awesome. And there’s a lot going on, you know, obviously in the world of digital. Did you attend the AI session yesterday? 

PJ: We missed the AI session. We were actually with the OneShop in their open house for a while before that, and then a work call, so we had to go back to the office to stamp some emails. We did miss that, but I’m sure it was recorded, so we’ll catch you back in the office. 

JM: So obviously there’s a lot going on in the world of digital. What are you most excited about when you kind of look at the trends that are happening and what do you think is going to be most impactful for your business? 

PJ: As you said, AI, where that rolls into our business when it comes to our digital online presence for shopping, how people find us and where they’re going to find us.  

Content creation is going to be a big one for us. We want our voice and our story to be heard from us rather than, you know, the ads and stuff everyone has are great, but that’s for the manufacturer. We want our flavor on it and we do that, so we’re working on that. 

And then just the data we get from OneShop, like where we’re being found, how we’re getting things, where customers can find us, all the new stuff that’s coming with payments and everything. 

We’re really, like I say, dialed in on this show to get that locked down, going into Q4 and make sure we’re ready to roll with that and then see, come the spring show, you know, what’s new in the next six months. 

JM: So what has been your approach to content creation? That’s been kind of a big talking point across, I’ve heard it across the whole show. People, some are infusing a little bit more humor or, you know, kind of putting themselves out there in ways that, you know, might’ve felt a little uncomfortable a few years ago. So what was it like in your strategy as you look at content creation and putting your own flavor, your own spin on things? 

PJ: So we do a lot of outdoor live cooking demos at our store and we have a local guy, he does that, he does, he’s a videographer, so we have him do the events to make the stuff for us and shoots a ton of B and C rolls so we can use it whenever we need. 

We’ve worked with PrimeMedia before. They’ve done some stuff in our space. They’ve done some filming of our installers, just trying to, you know, let everyone know that we’re… in our company, the people you see are who we are. It’s my installers. It’s our team. I’m usually there about 60 hours a week, so we’re not hard to find in the store and, you know, giving it more of a, the reason we’ve been around 77 years is because we’re all there. We work the business, so that’s going on. We’ve got some stuff we want to get into. Hopefully, when Q4 slows down into next year, more streaming stuff, maybe some live stuff in the store. 

JM: Yup. 

PJ: We have another event coming up next month, so we’ll have the videographer there for that, so just trying to do a lot of that and then same thing here, we’re filming and taking pictures here. We’ll roll that back into what we’re doing, so a number of things, our customers will see that we’re not just here for a vacation and it’s great to be in Nashville, but we are working. We’re trying to find, you know, get the best deals we can take back, get the best services, try to roll that in so they can see what we do when we’re not in the office. 

JM: Absolutely. And I’m assuming, you know, that sets you apart from Big Box, of course, in terms of like putting a face in the name. Is that personal one-on-one kind of support, recognizing, you know, people’s faces and knowing that you’re part of a family that’s building a legacy in your community, has that been the key to success for all these years? 

PJ: It’s been great for a long time. Our dynamic and our markets change. There’s so much new construction that people are coming in from all over the Northern Virginia, D.C. area. They don’t know who we are. 

JM: Okay. 

PJ: They’re, you know, trained to know a Lowe’s, a Home Depot, a Best Buy. They’re trained to go to a box store. Our job is to let them know we can do what they do and do it better. 

JM: Yep. 

PJ: So we’ve really worked on trying to gain that customer. So a lot of our focus in marketing has been going after customers that don’t know us. The ones that do know us, the generational customers, we’re pretty secure we’ve got their business.  

JM: Yes. 

PJ: We take good care of them. But now it’s acquiring the new ones and getting on their radar to let them realize, you know, we can outperform all the box stores and they just need to give us a shot and come in the door. 

JM: And that’s a new learning curve or, I mean, I’m sure that you’ve been on that journey for the past several years, but yeah, it’s certainly a shift in strategy. 

PJ: It’s an always-on marketing strategy. You always have to be marketing. You always have to go where the people are. 

JM: Yep. 

PJ: We do on-site stuff. We do off-site demos. We do whatever we can to get in front of people. And then just little things like selling consumable products for the outdoor space, like barbecue seasonings, rubs, sauces. Somebody might come in just to buy something that’s $10, but they have to walk past everything else and see what we have. And we’ve gotten a lot of customers like that over the years. 

JM: During the opening session, we talked a lot about leaning in, even when things are a little bit uncertain, maybe not waiting for the waters to all calm down. It sounds like there’s been a lot of change in your market over the years. Was everybody fully on board as part of this transformation, or was there a little bit of culture shift that had to happen within the company to really lean in on the digital front to scale up to reach these new customers? 

PJ: All of the above. I mean, if you go back in time, we were in the high-growth market during the first home boom, right? 

JM: Yeah. 

PJ: Then the recession hit, and everything changed in our market. Foreclosures everywhere. So it was a rollercoaster. How do we go up? 

Back then, the advertising was different. Then we had to let people know we could help them. So now it’s a lot more of the flyers are going, the newspaper stuff is all going. It’s more focused on the digital edge. My wife and I, we do a lot of that work internally. 

Nationwide, the team, handles all of the stuff through the OneShop platform for us. So we don’t have to do the day-to-day stuff, but anything we do, like on the social medias and stuff we want done, we generate all that in-house. That way we’ve got a double team here. 

We’ve got Nationwide doing their thing with all of the actual manufacturers, and we’re consistent with the branding they’re doing. Then we’re also doing our stuff, so we can hit it both ways. 

The sales team typically gets to see everything. We try to include a lot of them in some of the stuff. Same thing with our installers. We do a lot of content with whether they’re unloading trucks, they’re at homes, the before and after with installs. We do a lot of that type of work to make sure you can kind of meet the whole team. 

JM: We talked about the data and analytics. You’ve got the OneShop team working on the background, making sure that you’re always on advertising programs are running smoothly. What does that, the visibility to the performance of those ads and how those dollars are working for you, how have you leaned into that in terms of getting deep within the analytics? Is that just person-to-person updates on how things are going? 

PJ: It kind of works, I guess, across the board with it. We’ll get the information and see where we’re going. We’ll make adjustments to where we need to be.  

I challenged the Nationwide team at, I guess, two shows ago, the winter show, how we wanted 2025 to go. We wanted a new website. We wanted to change our marketing. I was going after a specific competitor in my market. I wanted to overlay everything they did. The Nationwide team had about 45 days to pull it together. We sat down for two hours at the show and they said, this is what you need to spend. Here’s where it’s going to be. Here’s where your co-op will roll in. We were able to put all that together and it’s been a pretty successful campaign so far this year. 

What we’re working to do is in every show, tweak it, see what we have. As new stuff comes out, like the products around us, what do we need to add on? Then, we always look at the dealers that are bigger than us. Some are in the group, some are not in the group, figure out what are they doing that we like and then how can we kind of take that and roll that into what we do and backing that up with our sales numbers. 

We come here and get our PriMetrix numbers done. We get all that and then I can go back next week to the store and I’ll audit our showroom and look at what the group is selling. What my market is selling. 

Do we have it? Are we not? Are there opportunities or pockets? We try to find all that. Once we have that, we shift the advertising around where we want to go. We have a bunch of big deals coming off this time of year. We’re getting lined up for those. 

JM: What do you see, as a look ahead, you certainly have a pulse on everything that’s going on. How do you stay informed to make sure that you’re ready for the next wave of technology? 

PJ: A lot of other businesses and markets outside of just the appliance industry, look at trends from anything to the luxury council does a really good job here, but looking at trends with the luxury spaces outside of this, like brands, manufacturers, watching that, watching a lot of data from the economy, where things are going. 

And then I’ll reach out to Doug Wrede probably once a month and we just have a conversation. I’m like, I’m seeing this, what do you say? And the whole leadership team here, Christopher, all the guys, I’ll kick with those guys and see what I’m seeing and where they’re at. 

And then other big dealers in the market, we’re all friends within this industry. We do a lot of that to see how things will work out, where we go. So we try to look nationally and look regionally to see what information we can get back and forth. 

So a lot of that, follow what my teenager does, the things like TikTok, where their attention span and their trends are going, we really follow what they do. 

JM: Yes. 

PJ: They’ll be a customer at some point, right? And their parents are now, if they’re not. So how do we stay in front of all that and then lump that in so that we can continue to be somewhat relevant in the space? It’s so ever-changing. 

JM: It’s very dynamic. Yeah. So when you think about kind of each generation leaving the company better than they found it, what do you see as your legacy? 

PJ: I hope my kid’s smarter than staying in this business. I hope people get something that’s a lot easier. I mean, it’s great. I’m fortunate. My family worked as hard as they did to do it. 

My wife is now in the business with me. She’s been in for years. Helps me take a lot of the work off me. Handles a lot of stuff that we can kind of double team, but just continue to grow the business a little more. Continue to take care. Make sure our quality level doesn’t drop as we scale and get bigger. And then look for new opportunities for expansion, for growth. 

You add more sales team to… we moved to our new location in 2019. We added a cabinet kitchen and design team. So that’s a new vertical for us in this store. And that’s been a good addition. 

And we’ve leveraged in the group here, the FEI group, TNBA, Brian and Graham. Those guys have been great. They’ve opened up another portfolio of brands and manufacturers and opportunities for us to take advantage of in the space we were already in. So we’re just trying to wrap everything into one lump sum here and see where we can maximize spending and our time.  

JM: And probably that balance of working smarter, trying to drive some efficiencies when you’ve got so many irons in the fire. 

PJ: Yeah. And we have other businesses outside of this one. So this is our primary, but everything’s ever changing. Everything is, nothing’s consistent in the business. You’re always watching. 

And then balancing those other things out, like the time at home, which we don’t get much of. It’s mainly work. Then the other businesses, keeping those things afloat as well. But the store is our main priority. It takes care of, I think between our 30 employees, when you add up husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends and kids, we’re at about 115 people now that we’re responsible for. 

JM: Yeah. 

PJ: So her and I take that very seriously when we’re out every day making the decisions and who we partner with at shows like this. 

JM: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Was there any questions that you wish I would ask that I didn’t? 

PJ: No. Well, we’re just excited to get out on the floor and spend some money. 

JM: Yeah. I won’t hold you back. Get on out there. Thank you so much. 

PJ: Thank you. 

JM: Really appreciate it. 

PJ: Thank you for the time.