Family
Event Brings Customers to Showroom
Having
a showroom is a great sales tool for
the products you sell and your company. The
downside, however, is the costs associated
with building and maintaining a showroom are
high. Remodeling companies that open large
showrooms are constantly looking for more ways to
get people in the door and, hopefully, increase
business.
Alure
Home Improvements has a 3-floor showroom spanning
8,000 square feet located in East Meadow, N.Y. The
showroom is filled with full-sized kitchen, bath,
roofing, siding, window and basement displays. The
showroom also has a design area with a mixture of
cabinet, countertops and fixture samples in all
different colors, materials and styles.
To
increase the traffic flow of customers, Alure
hosted a planning and design show in their huge
space. "We've always hosted an event at the
showroom during the wintertime because it's a
slower time of the year," says Seth Selesnow,
director of marketing at Alure.
Previously,
the idea was to set up a carnival for families on
the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when
kids have a day off of school. "We did the
carnival at the showroom for a little over 10
years, which consisted of us covering up the
displays to protect them from the carnival fare,"
Selesnow says.
The
new event combined the family fun theme with
accessibility to the displays in an event named
the Design & Planning Show. "We shifted to a
design show, which used the displays as a place to
hold educational seminars while having an area
dedicated to the kids, with carnival games and a
magician," he says.
The
new concept provided the best of both worlds and,
the hope is, an interested client base, ready to
start work on their homes this spring.
The
seminars lasted anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes and
were ongoing throughout the day at the top of each
hour. "The show had a nice flow-guests came in and
either traveled from seminar to seminar or waited
for the beginning of a particular seminar to start
again," Selesnow says.
Each
seminar was hosted by one of Alure's designers,
and topics ranged from kitchen, cabinets, home
performance and insulation. Green Street LI, a
grassroots environmental movement for Long
Islanders and a partner of Alure, had its own
seminar that focused on environmental topics.
"The
goal of the event was to provide the overall
customer experience that Alure is known for,"
Selesnow says. "We wanted to educate the customer
on different types of home improvements and
educate them on all we do and the quality we
provide, start to finish."
The
event also was Alure's way of giving back to the
community by providing something fun for families
to do when it's cold outside.
Selesnow
advertised the event on the company's Web site and
via e-mail to the company's database. He also
bought paid advertisements in the local newspaper
and on the radio.
The
three-day event brought in 500 new and past
clients to the showroom. The event was held
Saturday, Sunday and Monday, with most of the
families with children attending on Monday when
they were off of school.
Selesnow
estimates half of the total attendees brought
their children, and that is consistent with their
client demographic, which depends heavily on job
type. "From experience, I know that clients who
want basement remodels have kids, but clients with
bathroom remodels usually don't have kids,"
Selesnow says.
The
event appealed to both of Alure's target
demographics because of the educational aspect.
Each client filled out an information card as they
walked into the event, which automatically entered
them into a raffle drawing to win one of two
50-inch plasma TVs. The winner was announced on
the Alure Web site one day after the show.
The
cards enabled Selesnow to add attendees to their
client database and follow up with those clients
that needed more information.
"We
also passed around special promotional coupons to
all attendees to entice them to remodel this
spring," he says.
It's
hard to tell just how much business is gained from
the event because they have been hosting it for
the past 11 years, and it's become a tradition in
the Long Island area. But Selesnow has no plans to
discontinue the show next year. It's already time
to start thinking about next year's show: "We book
catering and entertainment almost eight months in
advance."