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Handy TV Appliance is coming to a computer near you.
The state's largest independent retailer of appliances, electronics and lawn care products will join the ranks of "bricks-and-clicks" merchants like Best Buy and Lowe's this summer when it launches an e-commerce Web site to complement its 22 stores in Alabama and Georgia.
The company has had an Internet presence since 2000, but its current site (www.handytv.com) is primarily informational.
"We hadn't committed to it because the Web is like another store," says president and CEO Bill Hancock. "We needed to find someone to run it. We want to do that by the middle of this year."
Slow but steady growth
It took the better part of three decades for Handy to reach this point. Hancock, 60, grew up in rural Madison County and attended Bessemer High School. He got his start in the business at age 15 with a it janitorial job at Jack's TV Supply Inc., where his stepfather also worked.
From sweeping up showroom floors,...