1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?

Doug Ingram: This company has taken several turns over its history. I originally got into the HVAC industry as a refrigerant specialist many years ago. I scaled that specialty into entrepreneurship, starting first as an HVAC contractor and then transitioning into HVAC equipment sales throughout the 90s. Our big break into e-commerce came in the year 2000 when we made our first HVAC sale online. At the time, this put us ahead of the pack in our home state of Kentucky, making us one of the earliest e-commerce companies operating here.

At the time, I was able to pull from my experience and network with other HVAC contractors to function as a B2B sales company. However, as we’ve expanded and grown, we’ve evolved from that traditional supplier/contractor relationship into a true B2C company focused on marketing directly to homeowners. In a specification-heavy industry like HVAC, promoting our products online to homeowners in an accessible way is a game-changer.

Nowadays, what makes us unique within the e-commerce HVAC industry is that we’ve dedicated ourselves to a return to the basics, so to speak. We understand the importance of real humans in a sales environment, so we employ real sales representatives and a real team of HVAC experts who are available to answer questions and guide customers through the purchasing process, all in-house. By its nature, e-commerce sacrifices face-to-face sales and dehumanizes the sales experience, but we understand the importance of customer relationship building and see our sales team as a major force in that.

2. Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?

Doug Ingram: Our largest turning point was shifting our customer base from strictly HVAC contractors to homeowners. Now, our primary customers are homeowners. It may sound backward, but selling directly to homeowners is a bit uncommon in the HVAC industry, although accessibility to DIY HVAC solutions is changing that. HVAC products are difficult to comprehend for non-professionals. With the exception of DIY solutions like the MrCool line of DIY mini splits, an HVAC professional is required to install the unit. Oftentimes, professionals have their own sales pipeline for affiliated brands, but we noticed that customers want to feel empowered in every decision that goes into crafting their homes. Homeowners know their homes better than anyone else: they know which rooms get too warm and which ones can’t hold onto heat. They know what outdoor and indoor aesthetic they want to craft, and they know how much money they want to put into an HVAC system. By selling directly to the homeowner, we give them the tools to make those decisions. The biggest lesson we took away from this is knowing your audience—and always looking for ways that your audience is shifting or growing.

However, we also learned that intense focus on one customer base (in this instance, homeowners) can alienate pre-existing customers. To rectify this alienation of contractors, we have decided to pivot again. More specifically, we’re going to return to our foundations. Moving forward, we are empowering contractors through our new IWAEPros program. We’re now offering exclusive discounts, priority parts access, and a dedicated Pro agent to certified contractors. We’re already seeing an increase in interactions and activity from Pro-level customers, showing that audiences can be won back if their needs are nurtured.

3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?

Doug Ingram: At the moment, our top channels are paid social and email marketing. Gone are the days of the catalogue. Paid social advertising is what we see as the logical replacement for the catalogue, which puts specific products directly in front of the customer. Paid social advertising is great for pulling in new leads, but email marketing keeps those leads in our pipeline. Our marketing team has done an excellent job of determining our audience segments and keeping them in the sales funnel. Our marketing often focuses on creating a conversation with our customers, not strictly on making overt sales pitches. HVAC comes with a lot of questions, especially when we work with non-professionals. Our emails are a primary point of preemptively answering those questions, as we send email blasts with common seasonal issues or maintenance questions linking back to original web content on our website that provides in-depth information and how-to guides. Furthermore, we segment emails according to customer interest. For example, any customer interested in MrCool products will receive special attention to any MrCool-focused marketing we put out, from sales to specialized resource articles. Conversely, organic SEO targets these segments from the opposite end of the funnel, pulling in prospective customers who have HVAC maintenance questions, want to know more about specific product lines, or want to see more use cases for our products. This organic traffic is then directed toward email sign-up, which completes the marketing circle.

4. How are you thinking about search in 2026 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?

Doug Ingram: AISEO is the primary problem to solve going forward. Our customers are making a palpable shift away from places like Google as their primary search engine and instead looking to AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, as a one-stop solution to product selection. Even more, the recent update made to Google’s internal search engine has made ranking within AI systems a critical visibility issue. As part of our content and product strategy, we keep careful note of organizational elements AI is favorable to—things like bulleted information, list format, and digestible writing styles. However, we also understand that the core of AISEO integrates the foundational elements of traditional SEO, just with a small twist. Instead of a focus on individual keywords, we are more concerned with longtail keywords and query fan out (QFO) as the pillars of our content. At the end of the day, though, we center user experience, relevance, and approachability in our content strategy, bolstering these critical user-friendly elements with foundational SEO/AISEO strategies.

5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?

Doug Ingram: When you think of HVAC equipment and sales, you might not immediately think of creating repeat customers. Our units are built to last, so how do we get out of the first-time buyer trenches and create flows of returning customers? Our primary solution has been to pad out our inventory so that we can follow our customers through all the stages of a system’s life and provide solutions for the auxiliary, repair, or replacement needs that arise.

Here’s a scenario that showcases this mentality:
A first-time homeowner comes to us to get a new split system for their house. In a few years, they might introduce pets and children into the home, which comes with new needs. Now, they’re more concerned with indoor air quality than they were before. We have the equipment they need to feel secure and comfortable. A few more years pass, and now maybe dad wants to add a man-cave or mom wants to move her crafting workshop into a she-shed. We have units for that, too. As they’re making these additions, they call in an HVAC professional for annual maintenance. The professional discovers that their original split system isn’t performing as well as it should because it needs to have a few parts replaced. We’ve got those parts, and we make it easy to look up and purchase those parts due to our detailed BOM (Bill of Materials) diagrams. Anytime our customer has a need, whether that’s in relation to their very first purchase or a product to resolve a new issue, we’ve got them covered.

Beyond this, we create real-world events where customers can try out our products. We know that customers are more likely to dedicate themselves to a bigger purchase if they’ve personally verified the quality. That’s why we have the Tundra Tunnel, which is a shipping container we’ve converted into a cooling tunnel to showcase the power of our cooling equipment. We take the Tundra Tunnel to local shows and events during the summer months to provide respite from the heat while promoting our products. In doing this, we’re calling on an old-school method of advertising: word of mouth. With social media, that word of mouth doesn’t have to stay local. With videos describing the experiences living across various social media platforms, we benefit from user testimonials without having to invest extra money into advertising.

6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?

Doug Ingram: Starting with what to let go: Customers want relatability. This means letting go of ultra-polished, sanitized content that speaks without a soul. They want product descriptions that are benefit-first, not feature-first. They want to see how products directly contribute to their quality of life without having to wade through jargon-heavy paragraphs of specifications.
Instead of speaking purely to industry authority, speak to authenticity and customer relationships. Product pages must include specifications. That’s true, but padding that with other content that adds value to a product without tunnel vision on the sale is key. Showcase the use case for your products through informative social media posts or step-by-step blogs.
Simply put, the old sales pitch is out, but relationship and trust building are in. Make sure the content on your website is tailored to that approach.