The showroom, the centre piece of every proud business. The place where a business can show off the very best of what they do to the buying public. It has to be clean. It has to be organised. It has to get people dreaming of those products in their home. A great showroom can seal a deal. But how is it best to run a showroom in a time where the industry is pumping out new products so often?
So many products, so little space
One of the problems we’re finding at the moment is the lack of space in our showroom to display any potential new products we want to start selling. There is a great deal we want to do, including dipping our toes in the timber and aluminium markets, but with so little space to install really good examples, we don’t want to start selling something without being able to show it off properly in our showroom. So we have a dilemma, we want to move forward with new ideas, but don’t have the space we need to do that properly.
What we tend to do is rip out old gear and replace it with new, but that only frees up that space, rather than giving us any extra, again limiting what we can put in. Ideally if we’re going to start dramatically expanding our ranges we need to create a serious amount of extra space, which at the moment would mean ripping quite a lot of the current showroom out and starting from scratch, but that’s not an option. So we’re trying to look at other options to be creative with space.
Using reception
The option to build a second showroom isn’t an option. But we do have a reception area that could double up as a decent second display area. There are quite a few windows we can change to show new and different products. The roof is large and flat so would make good space to put a couple of lantern roofs in. We’re still lacking in options to show off doors though, so that option is limited.
I did see a rather nifty idea on the Distinction Doors stand at the FiT Show. They had dozens and dozens of door slabs on display in a neat racking system where you could pull the slab out, almost like a drawer, and view the door and put it back. There were all side by side and they were able to show off so many options without taking up that much space. That idea I have considered and it would be easy for customers to navigate their way around. But it still doesn’t show the product fitted, which is something we are quite picky about. We want to show the products as close to being actually fitted as possible.
Your thoughts
This is something I would like to get your views on. What is it you guys do to keep your showroom looking modern and up to date? How do you organise things to show off brand new products as well as keeping the older options on view too? It has to be a juggle for most given how many new products and options we have at our disposal now.
As always your comments are welcome in the section below.
