A Lesson in Capturing the Attention and Trust of Designers

Almost every decorative plumbing and hardware showroom wants to know the secret sauce of becoming the go-to-resource for their local design community. 1stdibs has become the trusted online source for thousands of designers tasked with sourcing furniture, antiques, art, rugs and other furnishing for the home. The company’s website has more than 800,000 pieces that are individually vetted by a 1stdbis team member. Why has a website selling luxury products captured the attention and support of the design community? One reason is that 1stdibs makes it easy to search and to buy, streamlining the designers’ process tremendously.

Second, there are 100 1stdibs team members dedicated to the trade who help designers find specific products that may not be featured on the site. This gives a personal touch that most websites don’t offer. Third, 1stdibs eliminates much of the ordinary risk that would come from sourcing unique, limited edition or one-of-a-kind products. The company accepts returns for any domestic product, ala Amazon, and gives designers up to 90 days for returns.

The company also leverages its editorial platforms, a monthly magazine, a blog, email newsletters and social media to promote designers’ work.

So how can we apply these lessons in DPH showrooms?

• Make it easy for the design community to buy from you. 
• Allow returns within 90 days even for custom orders, just for design clients.
• Use your website, social media and other communication mediums to promote your good designers’ work.
• Have at least one team member as the go-to resource for the design community.
• Create a special designer-only section on your website that features customization capabilities, unique products and projects and limited-distribution lines that you feature.
• Use the DPHA Connections blog to help promote local designers’ projects and their partnerships with your showroom.

Welcomed Thoughts from a Fellow (Jeff Valles): What Gifts Should I Send this Holiday Season?

Let’s think about walking into a showroom, a purchasing office or an interior designer’s studio during the holiday season. What do you see? There are large and small Christmas trees, twinkly lights, cookies and candy galore, tall rectangular lavishly wrapped booze boxes and holiday cards by the score. Lots of people exchanging numerous gifts, thanking their customers for a great year and others trying to be remembered in the New Year. So many companies and individuals trying to make an impression. So what happens to all of those gifts?

The business holiday season is a traffic jam of companies trying to be remembered by old accounts or impress new ones. Is this where you want to spend your marketing money? Hoping that Johnny at ABC will recall yet another logo coffee cup that will motivate him to lead his next customer to your display? How many gifts will Johnny receive? Will yours be the one that is magically remembered? It is a big HOPE. But you don’t want to be that company that plays Scrooge and does nothing.

I would like to offer an alternative solution for holiday brand building.

I always tried to find a solid charity that offered a holiday card where we could place a picture of our complete team on the cover wishing Happy Holidays. The money went to a good cause and when anyone asked a team member, they had a good holiday story to share and show where they are in the card cover image.

Doing this freed our holiday marketing money to use during a time when it made a more substantial impression. By mid-January, a lot of people are back in the day-to-day workflow and miss the “entertainment validation” of the holidays. This is a good time to take a target to dinner, bring in a catered lunch or hand out gift cards. By waiting until the January holiday hangover, you will be the lone brand thanking key players and it just might wash away the gift they received from your competitor way back in December. Some companies that follow this plan have a large event in early spring to welcome the building season and rev everyone up.

This plan also removes the stress of trying to do the best thing for your clients and allows you to better focus on your family’s holiday festivities. Because isn’t that what the holidays are all about?

P.S. Let’s never forget that HOPE is not a strategy.

Opportunity Knocking

Americans are increasingly choosing to remain in their homes as they age.   Baby boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1964, represent approximately 72 million folks and account for about 20% of the population. They will be nearing their 80's in the next decade, which is typically the age Americans move into senior housing. The age of people who enter senior housing continues to climb, however. Partially due to better health, but more likely the result of wanting to and being able to stay in their existing homes. 

This trend creates tremendous marketing and service opportunities for decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms to help their clients age in place. Barrier-free showers, shower seats and decorative grab bars are some great tools for allowing your customers to stay in their homes for longer. Decorative plumbing and hardware showrooms should develop expertise for assisting their clients to convert their bathrooms and kitchen to allow them to age in place gracefully.  

Welcomed Thoughts from a Fellow (Jeff Valles): Recap of the 2019 DPHA Conference in Seattle

As always, the 2019 DPHA conference was abuzz every day from 7 in the morning until well after midnight.  It has been another good year for our industry, and most are enthusiastic about their individual futures and excited about the expanding opportunities in the decorative plumbing and hardware market.

 

The days were punctuated by captivating product booths and many varied discussion topics.  Below are the more popular trends and topics that were consistent threads in my many conversations:

• Business remains strong with some secondary markets anticipating a small slowdown in early 2020.
• New products introduced were mostly simple upgrades and product line tweaks with only a few truly new products presented.
• People are interested to see if industry consolidation will continue and how it will affect the DPH showroom world.
• The industry needs to remain focused on luxury versus premium. 
• Where do the fascinating new technologies fit into our hand-crafted product business?

 

The education sessions were anchored by talented, insightful people.  Here are my key  takeaways:

 

David Avrin enlightened us by helping us to:

• Locate customers we did not know existed
• Continually work to surprise and delight our customers
• Remove FRICTION at all points of customer interaction
• Allow your team members to make what they think is the best decision versus “doing what the book dictates”
• Learn why your customers want to buy
• Remember trust is the root of a good relationship

 

Jay Acunzo open our eyes to:

• Never stop looking for the next big thing
• Never wait for what was the next big thing to die before moving on
• Never stop improving your business' unique draw
• Never stop evaluating your process and structure
• Understand what the anchors of your business are
• Build on and refine what is working
• Meet your customer where they are
• Make your business’ culture embrace change and creativity

Designer Panel: Overcoming Confirmation Bias, What The Trades Really Want 

• Do not get rid of printed catalogs
• As a group, they do not want to buy plumbing on the Internet
• They need more door hardware training to improve their confidence with product applications
• Trades cannot always get to the showroom to work with a client, and might send in client alone with STRICT instructions on what to show them
• They need CAD files now and will soon need BIM (building information modeling) product files
• A lot of clients are not adventurous and want their entire bathroom designed from one brand’s product series with no deviations
• New product updates are important, so please ask how each designer would like updates delivered (email, text, etc.)
• CEU’s are important but not mid-day
• Designers need finish samples to complete client design presentations - why are they so very hard to get?

The DPHA conference allows the talented people in the DPH world the opportunity to focus on bettering their businesses. Other gatherings are focused on product and purchasing programs. Last week we talked about everything from what ERP to use to earning customer trust.  If you did not attend, you missed the opportunity to gain valuable insights into your business by bouncing ideas off of some very knowledgeable and engaged people.

 

It is now only 11 months till our next DPHA conference.  Please make plans to join your fellow Decorative Plumbing and Hardware professionals in New Orleans, October 22 - 25, 2020.  

 

The more we work together the more our industry will improve for the benefit of us all. 

A Whack on the Side of the Head

The key to creativity is to look at the same things differently.  In his classic work, A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger Van Och advises that when you do, great things happen.  Here is a great example.  A man named George de Mestral was inspired by how the burrs from plants stuck to his clothes.  Looking at the plants through a microscope revealed that there were hooks on the end of the burrs that would attach to the looped fibers in clothing.  The ah ha moment was to create a hook and loop alternative to conventional zippers.  And voila – Velcro was invented! 

Looking at the same things differently is easier said than done, because the human brain is not wired to look at things that way.  The brain defaults to the familiar.  What one needs to do to avoid the familiar is to de-familiarize.  That’s what a lot of artists, inventors and entrepreneurs do to spur creativity.  Famed author Tolstoy described common objects from a distorted vantage point.  

But how do we de-familiarize?  A technique offered by New York University Professor Adam Brandenburger is to observe commonalities from a different perspective.  “Not just name what is around us, but come up with new names.  Not just consider the whole, but break things up (or down) into pieces.  These techniques can help us see our way to the new and revolutionary, whether in the arts or business.”

Another technique is to take a page from Sherlock Holmes, who once famously told Watson that “you see, but you do not observe.”  Holmes frequently would discuss what he saw with Watson to help make the nonobvious obvious.  Do the same.  Write down or discuss with others your observations.  What are you not seeing that’s not obvious?

Welcomed Thoughts from a Fellow (Jeff Valles): No, No, Not That Mask, Oh Vendor, Oh Vendor!

A large vendor had just entered our market and we were just crushing it.  We had no displays. When a customer sounded interested, we brought them into the warehouse and opened boxes to present the products.  Every time, the product captivated both the customer and the sales associates.  This was going to be good.  

Then, the corporate mask descended over the product line.  The rules and conditions of their “program” appeared.  To become a full-fledged distributor, you HAVE to display this, and it MUST be supported with these products.  Oh, and the display WILL look like this.  

A large portion of the line was not for our customer base, and the display looked like an alien spaceship.  It was...unique.  We pleaded our case and were politely informed that they would think about it.  A few months later a quasi-competitor brought in the entire program and we were told to order from them.  By then, sales had diminished to nothing.  It was an opportunity missed.  Even more frustrating for me was that I had done the same stupid thing in my early years at Phylrich.  It was a hard lesson learned.

Each DPH showroom is unique for the simple reason that they are all owned and managed by confident, assertive individuals.  On paper, DPH businesses may focus on the same target markets, but their styles, product mixes and cultures are crafted by their owner.  Today they are referred to as entrepreneurs.  They are not generic individuals, their businesses are not generic businesses and they should not have to follow a generic program.   

Let’s also not forget the premium and luxury market clientele, whom many of our showrooms target.  Interior designers, architecturally-driven builders, open-minded plumbers and style-conscious homeowners do not gravitate to “factory displays”.  Stylists and style lovers are attracted to knowledgeable people presenting dynamic displays.  I cannot even begin to number the times a person of these talented professions would tell me that they were so turned off by that sterile “generic display”.  

Please do not make DPH showrooms wear the corporate mask of what a remote merchandising person concocted as best for the general market.  There is not one general luxury market.

Meet with your distributors and co-create a go-to-market strategy backed with numerical goals and targeted market penetration.  With a program in place, both parties can get to work and make it happen.  Please stop trying to put a constraining mask on a successful entrepreneur and their company.  This is a sure-fire path to mediocrity.

So on November 1, 2019, after the ghosts of the past have settled back home, let’s stop with the black and white ideas and rote proposals and let’s work together to surprise and delight the style-conscious individuals by removing the generic mask and let the showrooms unique style shine.