Entrepreneurs Use Social Media to Catapult Success

Ultimately, entrepreneurs will be successful only if their business provides a needed service to customers.

Middletown-based InstallHDTV, owned by Higganum native David Aimi, 27, (owner and creative director) and Middletown’s Ben Richey, 29, it controls the business of television installation like no other company.

In only five years, InstallHDTV, found by Richey, has gone from being a local television installation business to, as its website notes, the “Nation’s #1 Source for TV Installation & Home Theater Installation.” The quick rise of InstallHDTV, given a boost when Aimi joined Richey as a partner four years ago after they were introduced through a mutual friend, has been undeniably impressive.

While based in Middletown, InstallHDTV has a foothold in every U.S. state.

The success of Richey and Aimi’s business venture can be attributed to the control InstallHDTV has over the different facets of television and home theater installation, as well as that of computer repair and networking. The business provides customers with all the needed elements of standard or advanced TV installation, such as the mounting and wiring of a television and its subsequent warranty, for a reasonable price.

It will install virtually any type of television; from a traditional tabletop TV to LCD, plasma and even 3D televisions. InstallHDTV will engage in any type of home theater or universal remote setup, and the computer repair and networking InstallHDTV provides encompasses everything from computer diagnose and repair to game console setup.

As popular as InstallHDTV has been, its economic success is understandable. Richey and later Aimi were the ideal owners for a business wanting to grow quickly and competitively. Richey’s experiences partnering with venders and credit card companies from the beginning of InstallHDTV permitted its growth to generally occur smoothly, but also made clear to its leaders that the business would have to rely on partners to be fully successful.

InstallHDTV lacks significant office space, and yet its ability to leverage the work of third-party service providers and gain access to over 500 installers per state has made InstallHDTV the nation’s top source for TV and home theater installation.

At the same time Aimi, who had the creative and technical expertise that Richey generally lacks, has been able to grow InstallHDTV through outlets like Groupon, Facebook and the business’s own website.

With InstallHDTV’s owners and operators effectively complementing one another, “business has skyrocketed lately,” says Ami. According to Ami, InstallHDTV now provides service to 2,000 unique customers.

"We feel small business is the backbone of America, especially coming from two young entrepreneurs who do what it takes to be successful in this economy," Aimi says.

In this day and age, a huge step in a company experiencing skyrocketing growth is by it embracing social media outlets. InstallHDTV has access to third-party installation providers in every state, but consumers would not necessarily be aware of what InstallHDTV offers if it did not have such an inviting and informative website, or had not been advertised on Groupon.com in a number of major U.S. cities.

Never mind the popular Facebook page and Twitter feed for InstallHDTV that are regularly updated, and even the YouTube page for the business that serves as an introduction to its mission. InstallHDTV has reached out to every corner of the social media universe and as a result Richey and Aimi have made their business available to more eyes and ears than they ever could have previously.

InstallHDTV has relied heavily on Groupon to get its name out to consumers in major cities. It recently advertised a deal for advanced flat-screen TV installation, costing only $189, in New York City, San Francisco and Dallas, a venture that Richey and Aimi painted as an unqualified success.

In New York, 92 customers took advantage of the Groupon offer. At the same time, the same exact offer in these cities were placed on the website SocialDealMap.com through Groupon,  attracting even more national exposure and customers to InstallHDTV.

The business advertised these deals on its Facebook and Twitter pages, allowing consumers in these cities to have yet another platform from which to be aware of what they were missing out on. When InstallHDTV moves on to advertising in further major cities such as Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks and months, it will be done through these same sites and in offering the same types of deals.

And of course, Richey and Aimi expect InstallHDTV to find the same type of popularity with the more cities it moves into. It is the swift success InstallHDTV has experienced with social media platforms that have allowed it to branch out into and be recognized in other forms of online and print media.

For example, InstallHDTV has become so prominent with certain groups of wealthier cliental its installation deals appeal to that the business was positively featured in a recent article in the business section of the New York Times.

The owners of InstallHDTV may be sitting pretty at the moment, but only a few years ago, they could not imagine themselves being in this position.

Richey graduated from Southern Connecticut State University with the goal of being a successful entrepreneur, but his first business venture was a failure. Ami, who says he recognized early “that I marched to my own beat and wasn’t going to make it with an employer,” was self-taught and constantly looking for opportunities as an entrepreneur after he dropped out of Central Connecticut State University.

If Richey and Aimi had not found one another and complemented each other perfectly, both men easily could have failed in the business world. They recognized an area of home entertainment in which consumers’ needs were ignored. Richey and Aimi’s contrasting business and technical skills allowed them to answer those needs and to put InstallHDTV at the top of the market for TV and home theater installation.

The owners only envision their business expanding even more as time goes on. Richey and Ami, who already have a call center handling most of the consumer volume that goes to InstallHDTV, want to outsource the majority of the work the two are doing. The duo has visions of InstallHDTV as a self-automated business and speaks of their desires to be “high-level architects.”

With the smaller but still successful diyHDTV as a second business that complements InstallHDTV, Richey and Aimi are on the way to fulfilling their goal of creating a mini business empire focused on home entertainment installation.

The skyrocketing success of InstallHDTV in the past few months has allowed its owners to begin realizing many of their most significant goals for the company. Even as Richey and Aimi are utterly confident about InstallHDTV and their own futures, they are still very surprised by the company’s success.

“InstallHDTV has completely exceeded expectations,” said Richey. “We’re still surprised with the volume of business the company is getting. It gets faster every day. This is more than we could have ever asked for.”

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