The 55,000-square-foot building will be Stepping Stone’s new home. The organization has been located in the former St. Thomas the Apostle school building on Colebrook Drive in Irondequoit. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The sale was made possible by the completion of phase one of Stepping Stones’ “Campaign for Kids.” Construction is expected to begin this fall with an opening slated for the start of the 2014-2015 school year, which coincides with the organization’s 20th anniversary.

Founded in 1994, Stepping Stones serves more than 500 children and youth. It provides services in special education, speech, occupational, physical and music therapies, as well as universal pre-kindergarten, autism, psychological, social work, respite, behavioral and Medicaid service coordination.

Chase-Pitkin Home & Garden is a $200 million 15-unit chain located in upstate New York, and it is actually thriving, even though both national chains have been entrenched in Chase-Pitkin territory for a number of years.

While Chase-Pitkin stores show kitchen and bath items, none of the in-store displays are as elaborate or inclusive as those found in the remodeling centre, located in a high-traffic shopping centre
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What is enabling Chase-Pitkin to survive when so many other small chains went out of business? In Chase’s case, in part, it was a decision to excel in serving the commercial market in addition to the DIY consumer market. Management committed itself to this market segment.

While both Lowe’s and Depot also go after commercial business, Chase-Pitkin, under the leadership of its CEO, Bill Strassburg, is providing commercial customers outstanding service through a proprietary software program in which its dozen outside salespeople use hand-held wireless devices to spend more time face-to-face with commercial customers with instant access to Chase-Pitkin’s database. This provides instantaneous ordering information and stock availability.

A typical Chase-Pitkin store front. Units are much smaller than the big-box competitors, being about 50,000 sq. ft. in size.

When they begin each day, salespeople with their PDAs and the software know inventory levels, current pricing, order-status and other aspects of serving the needs of their customers. The system means they spend more time face-to-face with customers, serving them, and less time bogged down in office paperwork.

Quick access to that database enables its salespeople to make more fully informed sales presentations, with an instant grasp of every item in the warehouse. They can access order history, preferred type of delivery, and offer information on inventory availability, special pricing and other pertinent information.

Customers can be told immediately that the company can supply the merchandise they want and know that those products will be available for pickup or delivery with no “outs”.