Company: Huntington Outdoor
Markets: Nationwide
Headquarters: 311 East Street, Gordon, OH. 45304
Phone: 800-704-5973
Email: office@huntingtonoutdoor.com
Huntington Outdoor operates a billboard plant with over over 4,700 displays including 64 digital displays across 17 states in the midwest and east. The company was formed by Justin Powell in 2008. Powell gave an outstanding talk at the 2024 IBO show on 3 tips for Selling Out of Home. In 2023 Huntington bought an empty church in Gordon Ohio and converted the space into offices. Here are excerpts from our interviews with Justin Powell.
Justin, how did you enter the out of home business?
I started Huntington Outdoor in 2008. I wasn’t really looking to get into the billboard business. I was just out of college and looking for a job. The recession was in full swing and jobs for twenty year old college graduates were not plentiful. It was at this point I decided to “create” my own job. I had no experience, no idea what “job” I wanted so I started doing some research: restaurants, insurance, real estate, car washes, internet sales, and so on… A friend of mine suggested billboards. He said they seemed like they were a good business. I continued my research and decided to look into buying a billboard company. While looking for a company to purchase, I realized quickly that either people didn’t want to sell or if they did, they were overpriced so I decided to build my own (more research) and so Huntington Outdoor was born
Growing pains
About the time I got to about 70 billboards my occupancy rate was atrocious…It was 40% or something. It was absolutely awful because I was doing everything. I would have nice clothes on and talk to an advertiser and then I would change out of my nice clothes in the car and change into climbing gear and change out a vinyl and then I would chop down trees. I would do land leasing. I would do everything. My little sister at that time – Jena was 17. She looked at me and said “Hey Justin, why don’t you let me take over sales. And I’m like yeah sure. She became a partner in the business. And then my brother, he was 16. He came to me and he said, Justin, I think I can build these things for you. Let me do that…On that foundation we continued to build and build and build. We got to about 500 billboards and my sister Jena got elected as State Representative…So we hired a General Manager at that point…things have transitioned a bit.
The CISD system for finding good locations
How do you find winners? I came up with a little system that’s easy to remember and might help you. First, unless it’s a very special case, don’t bother with a location with less than 5,000 a day traffic count. Obviously, more is better. Second, look for what I call “CISD” locations (I always say “KISSED locations”). Here’s what that stands for: you want locations that are either at the end of a Curve, at an Intersection, Slow traffic, or you have Demand from advertisers wanting a billboard at a certain location.
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