Show and Tell

Watch the animated couples wandering through a Home Depot Expo Design Center or Great Indoors on a Saturday morning. They're comparing tiles, perusing paint charts, fiddling with faucets, and yes, taking off their shoes to climb into whirlpool tubs and give them a sit test.

There's no doubt about it: Consumers love showrooms.

Poll a group of remodelers on the value of showrooms, though, and the feelings are decidedly mixed, with reactions ranging from unabashed enthusiasm to no, never, not for me. The naysayers tick off a list of drawbacks: the difficulty of finding the right location, the headache of hiring qualified staff, the expense generated by the need for constant updating.

Those who operate successful showrooms point to business generated by walk-in traffic, brand awareness created by manufacturer advertising that pre-sells your showroom product, and the convenience for clients of having all their product choices in one location.

The expansive Airoom showroom features a half-dozen differently styled kitchens, and the same number of baths. Clients can also see a master bedroom, mudroom, family room, and an exterior setting showing off windows, roofing, and decking.

Bev Gilbert is a passionate proponent of showrooms. She and her husband Bruce own Regarding Kitchens, a 7-year-old kitchen and bath design and installation firm in Lenexa, Kan., in the greater Kansas City area. She has a 15-year career as a designer; he spent two decades as a plumbing rep. They've just closed two smaller showrooms and opened a 15,000-square-foot space that, along with model living rooms, kitchens, and baths, features a demonstration kitchen with seating for 30 people. The 10-year-old commercial building that they gutted and remade to their specifications has an attractive bonus: huge east-facing windows that allow products to be viewed in natural light.

“It was always our dream to have the largest showroom in the area without losing the cozy feeling that people connect to kitchens,” Gilbert says. “We have that here. People comment on it.”

One kitchen, for example, has a seating area with a working fireplace surrounded by bookcases. The model living room has comfortable furnishings, along with a bar and entertainment unit. Clients and designers can use these display rooms to discuss projects, or move to the designers' offices, each outfitted with a different type of cabinetry and decorated in a residential, rather than a corporate, style.

“We've worked to create a home-like atmosphere,” Gilbert says. “We have 9- and 10-foot ceilings in our rooms. No matter how hard they try, the chains can't get away from the big box feeling. You look up at those 30-foot ceilings and you know you're in a warehouse.”

Gilbert is especially pleased with the location of the new showroom. There's no foot traffic here, but this southwest corner of the metro area has become a hub of home-improvement-related businesses, including a granite warehouse, tile showrooms, and appliance stores. “You know what they say,” she adds with a laugh, “If you're going to do it better than your competition, move in across the street from them.”

If priority one is finding a location where walk-in traffic is likely, opening a showroom next door to a Starbucks would seem to be a particularly savvy strategy. Jim Stenger, owner of Remodeling Specialties, has done just that in Northfield, a North Shore Chicago suburb. After working as a remodeler for 20 years without a showroom, Stenger purchased an existing storefront shop in February 2004 and hired designer Erin Bear to manage the 1,200-square-foot enterprise.

“Jim does a lot of kitchen and bath remodeling,” Bear says, “and he's always done well with word-of-mouth. But he wants his clients to be able to see product.”

The new Remodeling Specialties showroom is still a work in progress, with only a kitchen vignette featuring birch cabinetry fully in place. Walker Zanger tiles, Sonoma Cast Stone, Doverra fireplaces, and Emtek hardware are among the featured mid- to higher-end lines to be incorporated in planned vignettes that include another kitchen and two bathroom vanities with tile backsplashes. Tile design is a specialty of the firm, Bear says, and she's struggling to schedule tile setters, busy with clients' projects, to work on completing showroom displays.

“We haven't officially opened the showroom yet,” Bear says, “but people want to see product and they're coming in already. It's really exciting for us.”

William and Joseph Schafer — brothers who paired their carpentry and painting skills to form Schafer Builders in 1990 — are in the midst of setting up a new showroom, too. They've just moved from a 4,500-square-foot space to an expansive 17,000-square-foot building in Crystal Lake, Ill. Like a family regretfully leaving a modest but much-loved home for larger lodgings, the staff has mixed emotions about their recent move.

“We're excited because we took over the old school administration building and quadrupled the size of our facility,” says marketing manager Faith Watson, “but our last building was an old home in the historic district, and everybody loved that place.”

The residential quality of the old site helped clients envision what could be done to rehab their own homes. There was a working kitchen that served as a showcase for new ideas and a bathroom made over with the firm's featured one-day bath remodeling system, Rebath. The downtown location meant there was plenty of foot traffic, but showroom, office, and warehouse space was limited.

International Market Square, a converted industrial complex near downtown Minneapolis, houses more than 80 showrooms representing 1,400 manufacturers. Many of Bob Flynn's clients find their way there, says the owner of Flynn Construction.

The new facility, on a highway away from the center of town, gives up the greater visibility of a downtown location for the possibilities offered by a huge increase in usable space. The move has expanded the firm's ability to highlight exterior as well as interior remodeling products and styles with walls of various types of siding, roof overhangs, and operable windows. And, says Watson, “There are separate quiet areas with lots of samples where people can sit down and really take their time making decisions.” There is also space devoted to products appropriate to accessible design — a specialty of the firm — and a warehouse with room to stage jobs.

The showroom, Watson says, is a practical response to their clients' needs. Dual-income families with busy work and personal lives want the convenience of finding everything in a single showroom.

“‘Building Clients for Life' is our slogan,” Watson points out, “and I think having a showroom visibly demonstrates that. You should be able to see what your exterior or interior will look like. It makes it easier to get ideas; it establishes a working relationship, and it's a way to demonstrate your capability.”

Jon Pritchett likes the showroom concept, too, for a lot of the same reasons. And after 43 years of remodeling homes in central Indiana, Pritchett Brothers has just opened its first showroom, albeit on a very modest scale.

Pritchett wasn't interested in a full-blown showroom that needed lots of space, full-time staffing, and continual updating.

“We've taken a 25- by 40-foot area and put some bays and booths in it. It's more of an idea space than a showroom,” says Pritchett. “We're not trying to compete with Lowe's or Home Depot.”

Each bay focuses on a category of product or an aspect of the remodeling process. Doors, wood flooring, moldings and casings, tile, and glass block all have their spot. One bay is dedicated to current design-related books and magazines that feature stories on home makeovers and ads touting the latest products. And of course there are before and after pictures of the firm's remodeling work.

“Before this, we just teamed with local suppliers. They're experts, so that's worked,” Pritchett says. “But we found we get bottlenecked on allowance items like cabinets. We needed an area to have meetings.”

Pritchett thinks clients will especially appreciate the library of picture-packed books and magazines they can draw on for ideas, and he's counting on those beautifully photographed rooms to improve client-remodeler communication. “Even when they see a lot of product, it's not always as helpful as when they look at a picture and say ‘I want it to look like that.'”

Chicago-area Airoom Architects & Builders have been in business even longer than Pritchett. Few independently owned showrooms can match its longevity, scope, and employee numbers. The business, now headed by president and CEO Michael Klein, debuted in 1958. “My father built four room-sized spaces — kitchen, bedroom, bath, family room — to show the kind of work we did. It was a new concept then.”

Airoom's expansive main showroom, in the northside Chicago community of Lincolnwood, covers 30,000 square feet. Two more showrooms have opened recently in suburban Naperville and Hinsdale, and plans are in the works for an expansion to the East Coast. The design/build firm has more than 170 employees.

Browsing the glassy three-story showroom for remodeling ideas, homeowners encounter a half-dozen differently styled kitchens, and the same number of baths, from powder rooms, to kids' baths, to his and hers master baths. There's a master bedroom, mudroom, family room, and an exterior setting showing off windows, roofing, and decking.

Klein has some caveats for remodelers considering launching a showroom. “First, have enough money to do it correctly. Don't underestimate the cost. It's capital-intensive. Staying current means you're changing out the displays every two to three years. A new showroom becomes very old very fast.”

Getting the right product mix and staffing with personnel who can talk knowledgeably about both the product and the remodeling process is vital to success.

“It's important to key your showroom to your clientele,” Klein says. “You could do all moderate lines if that's who your client base is, or you could skim off the top 1% of the population and focus on them. If you have the bandwidth, you can service them all adequately.”

Today's sophisticated computer technology offers options that weren't dreamed of when Burton Klein built those first four demonstration rooms nearly 50 years ago, and Michael Klein predicts that the Internet will become an increasingly attractive alternative selling venue for remodelers.

“Building out a showroom costs $200 to $300 a square foot. We feel we have to have a showroom — it's our heritage. But virtual showrooms may change the thinking in the industry.”

Bob Flynn knows something about virtual showrooms. The way he sees it, a showroom serves two primary functions. “On the front end, it's selling yourself to a prospective client; later, it's about product selection.” Flynn, of Flynn Construction in Chanhassen, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, has opted to handle these functions in cyberspace.

“It's a matter of economics,” he says, summarizing his reasons for not having a physical showroom. “It's hard to put in everything that's available. You have to constantly update. You can have a big space; people don't see what they want, and just walk out.”

Instead, Flynn has invested approximately $40,000 in meticulously documenting his remodeling projects. The money represents professionally propping, styling, lighting, and photographing his work over the past six years. The photos are on the firm's Web site and in extensive portfolios Flynn shows to prospective clients.

“I can show them a maple kitchen, a cherry kitchen, a painted kitchen. It's all there,” he says. Homeowners who like what they see and engage Flynn are given a list of preferred vendors to visit. His clients, whom he describes as “high-end and particular,” often choose to go beyond his suggested sources to track down product. Many find their way to International Market Square, a sort of “super showroom.” The converted industrial complex near downtown Minneapolis houses more than 80 showrooms representing 1,400 manufacturers of everything from fabrics and wall coverings to lighting, floor coverings, and kitchen and bath products.

Jill Liptow, president of RCI/Remodeling Center, based in Milwaukee's western suburbs, can direct clients to a similarly rich home-design resource: the Kohler Design Center in Kohler, Wis., a three-level showcase for Kohler products featuring a dozen full kitchens and baths created by big-name designers. “People like looking at the rooms at Kohler,” Liptow says, “but in general, we use suppliers' showrooms, wholesale showrooms that don't sell to the general public.”

Kohler runs its own design center, where the company features a dozen kitchens and bathrooms over three levels. Jill Liptow of RCI/Remodeling Center often directs clients there for product ideas and information.

At Liptow's 10-year-old firm, clients begin the design process at the firm's offices. They see preliminary designs for their project and view representative product samples that indicate the type of materials appropriate to their project's budget.

“Then clients meet at a wholesale showroom with our staff interior designer to see the full range of product,” Liptow says. “For instance, we go to the local tile supplier, then contract with our own tile installer. We buy product at a cost saving to the homeowner because there's no middleman.”

Liptow's reasons for choosing to work without her own showroom include concerns from finding a location with good traffic flow, to hiring skilled staff, to space restrictions that limit product selection.

Another type of limitation is imposed by the exclusive ties to specific manufacturers that showrooms establish. Liptow, who has worked in showrooms, says those arrangements have both advantages and drawbacks. Consider cabinet lines, she says. A showroom may carry high-end, mid-range, and low-end cabinetry from three different manufacturers, or perhaps deal with a single manufacturer that produces high, moderate, and economy lines. The upside is that if the cabinetry carries a brand name that is aggressively advertised, consumers may seek out a particular showroom because they carry that brand. The downside is that within this limited selection, clients may not find what they want.

“A new home builder builds the same kitchen 50 times. As a remodeler, every job is custom,” Liptow says. “By using multiple wholesale showrooms, we can meet many different price points and find product that can work within any budget. Because the requirements of our jobs vary so widely, having more options available enables us to match the client to the product.”

Stephanie Witt has taken a somewhat different approach. She's the “Stephanie” in Kitchens by Stephanie, a Michigan designer with 35 years experience who ran her own showroom for 20 years. In fact, at one time she operated two showrooms, a large one in Grand Rapids, in the southwestern part of the state, and a smaller one 180 miles north, in the popular vacation community of Petoskey.

Witt has now closed both showrooms. Instead, she's operating her design business from a home studio. The home's kitchen is a showpiece, a walk-through example of Witt's design work where clients can see the best in . cabinetry, appliances, plumbing fixtures, lighting, and flooring. Her studio has a product selection area with samples of cabinetry, flooring, light fixtures, and more.

Because she's in a residential neighborhood, Witt is careful to keep her business low-key. She sees clients by appointment only and takes deliveries off-site at a mini-warehouse.

She's delighted at the flexibility the home studio gives her. With no storefront location, there are no set hours, no need for additional staff, and no worries about outdated vignettes needing constant updating.

Showrooms are commodity driven, she points out. Witt, a certified kitchen designer and certified bath designer, says giving up the showroom has enabled her to focus instead on her “expertise in design,” maintaining public awareness of her business with a Web site and with full-color ads in regional home-related magazines.

“I wouldn't recommend it to a person starting out,” Witt says. “We've eliminated walk-in traffic, and that can be valuable to a new business. You have to decide for yourself if a showroom is the way to go.” —Judith Knuth writes about design and travel from her home in Milwaukee.