Earlier this year, Homecrest Outdoor Living announced that Mark Bottemiller — grandson of company founder Mert “M.M.” Bottemiller — would take on the role of vice president of sales.
With the Casual Market coming up, we checked in with Bottemiller to see what his goals are for the future of the company as well as what’s new with Homecrest at the upcoming show.
Bottemiller was born into the casual furniture industry. As a child, he walked the Homecrest shop floor with his father, Don — who later took over Homecrest — and went to his first Casual Market in 1979 at the age of 10 where he worked in the Homecrest showroom.
He would later take on retail positions at Seasonal Concepts in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Fruehauf’s in Boulder, Colorado, and held several positions at Homecrest before transitioning to work as an independent sales representative. For the past 14 years, Bottemiller has been national sales manager at Ebel Inc., growing the company into one of the most recognized brands in the industry.
When asked what drew him back to Homecrest, he says he was always interested in the idea of returning, but he wanted to be hired for his skills, not his name.
“When the owner Mike Bullinger called me up to have the conversation, it wasn’t about my last name being Bottemiller, it was about finding the right person for the job,” Bottemiller says. “It was very gratifying to have things come full circle.”
He also says the idea of domestic manufacturing was appealing to him, as the company can ship custom orders in just four weeks.
Despite a significant increase in year-over-year sales, Bottemiller says he hopes to follow CEO Randy Shorts’ vision of making Homecrest a predominant player in the industry again and expanding its national reach.
“There was a time when you weren’t in the business if you didn’t have Homecrest on your floor, and I’d like to see us get back there,” he says. “To do that, I think we need to broaden our aesthetic a little bit, and we have a team working on how to move the design aspects forward.”
He adds that Homecrest is looking at diversifying outside of its 100%-made-in-Medina, Minnesota, product, and the company will work on sourcing new domestic products and materials, like HDPE, cast concrete and more.
“I’m excited for the industry to see what we’re kicking off in July in terms of product line expansion,” he says. “We are also looking at how we can address more of the middle price points, and not just the middle-upper price points. There are a lot of conversations going on over here about what we can do to diversify not only the product but price points as well.”
