Showroom antics
Expanding your showroom can boost sales and simply be fun for customers
By Ken Brack -- Industrial Distribution, 3/1/1999
DISTRIBUTORS ARE FINDING CREATIVE WAYS to boost their sales in expanded showrooms stocked with accessories, product demonstration areas, and occasionally, slightly eccentric touches.In some cases, distributorships that sell to contractors vie to become a one-stop source for related supplies and specialty items. Other firms are simply providing more space for customers to try out products like hoses and connectors in an attractive, well-lit setting. As products like safety equipment get displayed out front in the showroom, branch managers say spot buying increases. Providing munchies, decent coffee and even free ice also helps bring customers back.
One company even set a goal of doing away with traditional sales calls and attracts customers to its massive tool rooms instead with humorous advertising and contests. While the approach used by Berland's House of Tools near Chicago may seem far out, some of Berland's retailing methods are being used successfully by other distributorships.
To promote its two showrooms, billed as the largest tool storerooms in the world, Berland's produces a half-hour television show in Chicago several times a year and created a "Name That Tool'' game, another show that appears on cable television in 100 markets. This fall it ran a look-alike contest based on the host of the "This Old House" television show. Berland's also rents advertising space above the urinals at four minor league ballparks to interest what company president Dwight Sherman calls a captive audience.
"We are the extreme," says Sherman. "It's totally allowed us to not have outside salespeople, delivery trucks. We put all that money into knowledgeable salespeople and brightly lit stores."
Berland's, which proclaims itself king of funny showroom promotions, does nearly $12 million in sales from walk-ins and maintains $5 million in inventory. About 85 percent of those sales go to professional tool users -- from surveyors and carpenters to millwrights -- and the rest to serious do-it-your-selfers. The firm sends out only 15 to 20 packages via UPS a day.
Storefront forefront
For other firms, beefing up their showrooms allows them to bring out new products and supplement services -- but not abandon their sales approach.
Joey Simmons, the owner of 4-Star Hose & Supply, Inc. in Dallas, Tex., saw a marked increase in walk-in sales after he added showroom space at several branches. Besides its expanded room size and making gear like safety equipment more visible, 4-Star attracts repeat visits with free popcorn and coffee.
"Because we do a lot of hydraulic business, a guy brings a hydraulic hose in and he's got to wait a little bit. So he can shop for some other things and it doesn't look like our service is slow," says Simmons. "We felt we had to make an atmosphere ... where they can pick up a few more items."
At its Dallas branch, 4-Star expected to double its showroom by the start of the year, which includes tripling the counter size to 36 feet. Walk-in sales there average about 50 a day, he says. Through last fall, counter sales at each of 4-Star's (four) branches shot up by 25 percent, while overall sales for the company rose 22 percent compared to 1997 for the $8.5 million distributorship.
"We used to not sell rain boots, they would sit out back, and ever since we've had them up there I have to order a few times a week," says Simmons. Other faster-turning items in the showroom are hand cleaners and safety wear like glasses, helmets and boots. "Those types of things have probably tripled in sales," he says.
Dan Weitzel, an industrial hose marketing manager at Gates Rubber Co., says 4-Star's showroom improvements help it stand out.
"It has an all around positive approach to customers," Weitzel says. While not fancy, he says its showroom "is more than a typical hose distributor that has a small counter in back of the warehouse."
An Oregon distributor, Fluid Connector Products, Inc., created space at its four branches to allow for more demonstrations of hydraulic and pneumatic hoses and components. Its Salem branch has a 1,500 square foot "demo-display shopping area," says Steve Robinson, vice president of sales. That includes a slot wall with 50 feet of hose assemblies, hand tools and more. The firm added bright lighting, gondolas similar to a grocery store and bins filled with product that can be tried out with benders and crimpers, for example.
"I think they appreciate everything is clean and neat so you can solve a problem," he says. "Everything is lined out in a logical manner."
Each of the FCP stores have 1,000 to 2,000 square feet in front so customers can comfortably walk around and see items, he says. FCP has no minimum order sizes because, as Robinson says, "the guy who's in there one minute buying a five dollar item, we don't have any idea what he'll need next." The company also set out to increase walk-in traffic by building stores in warehouses with prominent signs and good road frontage. Each location hosts barbecues for customers a few times a year.
"We still have a strong outside sales force to cover those people who expect us to come to them," he says. "We figured that if we can do a good job on both we'd really have something there."
Armani industrial
Some distributors go all out to make a visual splash. Catering to construction or mechanical contractors may mean offering subtle perks such as a sports bar-like ordering counter and showing sports events on TV.
Before renovating his firm' showroom in Salt Lake City last year, Phil Thompson, CEO of Industrial Supply Co., Inc. hired a store designer and borrowed ideas from retailers. Thompson even went to a Giorgio Armani store in San Francisco that had a bar in it. He came back with the idea to add an expensive counter.
"We spent probably five to ten times more on a stainless steel counter, something we felt was different," he says. When not picking up power or hand tools or catching some news on a 35-inch TV, customers can also make toll-free long distance calls from the showroom. "The consumer is seeing some real state-of-the-art environments now," he says. "The contractors want more."
Sound frivolous? Sherman recalls that back about 15 years ago, people laughed at Berland's House of Tools' idea to put hoses, taps and dies on display with power tools. But his competitors aren't laughing any more.
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