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COVER STORY - web only
WHAT’S AHEAD?
Where the industry seems to be going.
Someone once said, “He who lives
by the crystal ball will learn to eat
ground glass.” Nevertheless, Bursten peers into the future and here’s
what he sees:
• Draperies: For many reasons, you can expect a boom in custom draperies
that actually began almost two years ago. I predict it will be two years before
the market
really gets it, and it will be another eight years before reaching a peak.
• Alternative Products: Alternative products (blinds, shadings and now
shutters) have experienced unbelievable growth the past 20 years. Hunter Douglas
has changed
the industry, and through advertising has broadened the market for custom products.
However, we are reaching the peak of product introductions and innovation will
be slower paced. There are so many products in this category now that dealers
and consumers cannot assimilate more for a while.
• Media Advertising: Newspaper and yellow pages have peaked for most window
coverings retailers. Many are spending the same money to get fewer appointments.
This is
not a temporary aberration, it is a long-term trend affected by age groups and
Internet technology.
•
Marketing: Marketing is more than advertising. It is focusing on the right customer
profile and the ways to communicate to them. The big change is the “Neiman
Marcus Effect” as I call it: more and more million-dollar homes and a huge
wave of $500,000-plus home values behind them. Learning how to target these customers
will be the key to affordable lead development. Leaders are already moving toward
concentrating on past customers, marketing to them with postal mail and e-mail.
Results have been outstanding for most.
Another emerging trend: pay-per-click and local searches on Internet search
engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc. Any player who wants more appointments
is going to
move in this direction. These are all “stealth marketing” options—your
competitor can be stealing your leads and you don’t even see the ads. All
you know is your appointments are going down.
• Personal Promotion: This is where franchising is starting to create real
problems for conventional retailers. A new franchise has plenty of time to pass
out flyers,
knock on doors and call homeowners in target neighborhoods. This method of marketing
is more powerful and costs less than any other form of client development in
our industry. It has been for the last 50 years, and I predict it will be for
the next 50.
• Computers: Computer programs are emerging for marketing and management,
for design and presentation, price quotation, ordering and operating systems.
The industry
is still figuring out how to use these programs to sell more or to cut expenses.
We are not there yet.
Five years ago people said it would take three to five more years. It didn’t.
The industry is not even five percent computerized. It will be five to eight
years before 50 percent of the industry is on computers . . . but leaders will
be making more profits using them in the next two to three years.
•
Training: Our industry has been thirsty for training since its birth in the 1960s.
Training is the reason I started Decorating Den—people wanted to be in
this business, but they couldn’t find a way. Today, there are many wonderful
options to learn about products, about window treatment design and how to order
products; but there is still no training on how to advertise, how to promote
for appointments, how to close sales, how to follow up, how to manage a business
and (the “final frontier”) how to recruit and manage sales consultants.
•
Finding sales consultants and decorators: You cannot find experienced sales consultants.
They aren’t looking for work. No one, except franchises, have mastered
training new people, and they have to charge $25,000 to more than $50,000 to
recruit inexperienced sellers.
This is the only remaining unknown in this industry. Every other problem has
been solved by somebody, somewhere. But no experienced window fashions retailer
has a solution for hiring large numbers of inexperienced consultants each year.
It is the single question Steve Wishnow and I are devoting the most energy
on today.
•
Competition: It will get worse . . . and worse . . . and worse. With franchising
growing as a force in our industry—and I love franchising as a system—there
will be an estimated 500 well-trained competitors with great marketing and advertising
programs and a national name entering the window coverings industry every year.
If you haven’t felt it yet, your business is so small that it is not the
way you make your family’s income. That is why we developed the Exciting
Windows! brand of service—to allow existing business owners to keep their
established name and compete with the same tools and knowledge as a franchise.
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