Creating opportunities — even when it seems there are none — to help businesses thrive and prosper was the theme of Episode 9 of NKBA Live’s “Brave New Business” weekly forum. By Dianne M. Pogoda
The kitchen and bath industry is poised to come out of the pandemic in a stronger position, and businesses will use technology to implement changes in the way they operate, but there’s no substitute for human interaction.
These were just a few points to emerge from last week’s “Brave New Business” live online forum, hosted weekly by NKBA CEO Bill Darcy. Three executives from different areas of the industry engaged in a lively, wide-ranging discussion about “Grabbing Market Share and Creating Opportunity,” including Adam Sandow, CEO of multiplatform media and logistics giant Sandow; Andreas Hansen, President of the newly introduced wine preservation system Plum, and Marty Davis, President and CEO of American-made, family-owned, natural quartz surface producer Cambria.
Hansen launched his Plum wine preservation and dispensing unit at KBIS in January. The niche luxury product, which is Wi-Fi enabled and communicates data about wine consumption patterns to the company, won the Best of KBIS Kitchen Gold Award and “Brand with the Biggest Bite” during DesignBites, gaining good traction among designers, dealers and specifiers. The national lockdown that took effect some eight weeks after the show could have destroyed momentum for a new product, but Hansen said he saw wine consumption spike early on, and viewed the lockdown as an opportunity to be seized.
“Because our system is connected, we saw that suddenly, wine consumption was up among Plum users by 35%,” he said. “People are home now and drinking more wine. This was a great opportunity for us to engage with dealers. We started doing webinars, and in the past two months, we’ve trained more than 1,000 kitchen professionals — architects, designers, dealers — and as a result, added hundreds of new dealers. I never expected this! We’re also investing more in advertising in trade magazines, even as others are pulling back. We figured this is ‘the time of wine,’ and we’re going to be as aggressive as possible. People are craving little luxuries right now. We’re creating good content, and engaging in online sales.”
He added that new dealers weren’t really viewing Plum as pitching a sale, as much as providing a design solution — a new appliance their customers haven’t seen before. It provides the talking point that’s the hook to open the conversation about selling a new product.
Davis said the key to his company’s success during the shutdown was that Cambria kept its full sales force employed, active at a minimum of 60% of their capacity — often higher — staying “very active and progressive” with their business and channel partners through technology, not only with Cambria, but connecting peer groups within the design, K&B and builder communities.
“So they became facilitators across the industry,” he said. “Could you imagine going through COVID-19 without today’s technology? Our team connected the community, and the community found engagement and became immersed in the communication and the conversation, and found it to be a place of substance.”
He added that Cambria continued to invest heavily in social media, ramping up efforts to support the reps, as well as in product design, research and development.
“The citizenry of the nation has been more plugged in than ever — just look at the increase in activity on platforms like Netflix — and we recognized that this was not a slowdown period, but actually one for us to be on our game and focused on learning and using those tools to leverage those platforms.”
Cambria’s aggressive investment in R&D took cues from the recession of 2008-2009, when it launched its “Waterstone” collection. As such, it advanced its product design work, and in fact, is working overtime in the lab, the plant, in field work, facilities, point-of-sale development — the way of doing business in the big picture.
“The answer is investing heavily in the sales team, social media, R&D and innovation platforms,” he advised, “otherwise it’s going to be tough to reemerge in business and not lose some pretty good ground.”
Sandow discussed the synergies of the two main prongs of his business: media and logistics. Even though publishing and materials sampling would seem like two very different operations, he said the Sandow parent firm has built an “ecosystem of companies to serve the design industry,” bringing all parts of the businesses together — all brands and editors, digital teams, the Material ConneXion subscription-based materials library, the material sampling and logistics platform Material Bank — when the pandemic started to hit. By doing so, and developing DesignTV, the company was able to answer “The unprecedented demand for information, connectivity and research for the industry to continue to be able to work from home,” he said. “Connectivity is more important than ever.”
He said Material Bank, which sources and sends samples to designers, architects, builders, etc., was built for a situation like this. As the health crisis began to spread, the company immediately brought in nurses to its sampling and shipping warehouse facilities to keep the operation fully staffed and operating. Having invested in a sophisticated technology and robotic distribution facility, it has been able to keep operating and supplying the industry.
Almost overnight, some 35,000 users switched from shipping to their offices to shipping to their homes, he said, so all packages are treated with disinfectant. And while reps can’t get in to see clients, Material Bank has been feeding its supplier partners with hundreds of leads every day.
“We’re going into a new world. This is a paradigm shift that happens once in a generation,” said Sandow, “and it’s going to ripple through every single business. Some will be positively affected, some negatively. What we’ve always done with our media brands is communicate and educate our partners and provide them with the research and information they need to stay competitive. Now, we’re bringing it all together, using all our tools, through all our platforms.”
Davis echoed that the health crisis has emphasized the critical importance of connectivity — especially the human variety.
“We’ll continue to innovate and advance technology to refine the way we do business, but pandemic has proven that not having relationships and interface, human [contact] and networking makes it very difficult to conduct business,” he said. “Technology has brought a lot to us, but it’s very important to continue to sustain and nurture relationships in the marketplace with your customers. We still need that human interface and relationship.”
Sandow addressed the luxury market’s ability to rebound after the pandemic, noting that he feels it will come back quicker and stronger than other categories. One of the companies he owns is Media Jet, which operates newsstands in private jet airports, and he’s seeing a lot of activity in that arena, which bodes well for luxury markets in general.
Sandow concluded with the thought that the kitchen and bath industry is poised to come out of this crisis in a very strong position, since people have been home and therefore using their houses in a way they are rarely used: as a true shelter. “We’re always on the go, outside our homes, but now, we’re inside,” he said. “They’re looking at their kitchens, home offices, all spaces in a new way.
“Certainly not in my lifetime, we’ve never seen the home actually as a true shelter. People are cooking more than ever, interacting with their families more than ever, and I think there’s going to be a long-term boom for the kitchen and bath industry and the residential industry. People are looking at their kitchens and homes in an entirely different way. People will have more interest in their homes — do I need a real office in my home? a professional set-up? is it time to renovate the kitchen? — and we’ll be seeing this continue.”
To view this episode of “Brave New Business,” click here.
“Brave New Business “livestreams on Thursdays at 2 pm (Eastern Time) and features thought leaders across all segments of the business in a free online forum. They’ll share best practices, experiences and advice on topics of critical interest to kitchen and bath design, remodeling, manufacturing and distribution, as well as survival tactics for small businesses and independent operators.
The next episode livestreams on Thursday, and will discuss “Measuring the Impact — How will Home Design Change?” with Paul Keskeys, Content Director at Architizer, based in New York City; Lloyd Alter,Design Editor and Adjunct Professor of Interior Design at Ryerson University in Toronto, and Theresa Casey, Principal and Registered Interior Designer of Casey Design | Planning Group, also in Toronto. These three experts will explore the ways our homes, kitchens and baths, and in fact, our cities, will inevitably be transformed as a result of the pandemic.
To register for this week’s Brave New Business forum, fill in the form below.
