“Virtually everything in the entire building is a part of the showroom, and that is a big commitment for pro dealers,” Caulfield says. “There is a lot of cost and time involved in getting it done. But it does help customers visualize in a more complete way what they can add and offer, so the clear trend is to incorporate everything together, the windows, the doors, the lighting, the floor finishes, all of it to make the experience more realistic in the way that you would expect to see in a home.”
Hughes, who worked as a regional manager for Andersen Windows prior to owning his own remodeling firm for the past four years, is most impressed with the depth of product selection, and as a former contractor feels Kuiken Bros. is definitely on target. “You can really make all of your product choices, everything that you can get from us, from this one showroom,” he says. “Even the exterior of the building—we used a lot of the product that we sell.”
Both Hughes and Berlin laud the showroom’s use of interior and exterior vignettes where contractors can show high-end products in an installed setting and highlight a wide range of their service capabilities in one place as opposed to dragging homeowners from past project to past project, interrupting their previous clients. “The showroom is such an asset to us,” Berlin says. “… It’s just 10 minutes away, and the scope of product planned for the showroom, the kitchen and bath cabinetry, the windows and doors, its going to be beautiful and be a nice place for them as well as for contractors like us to sell their product.”
Rethinking Retail Berlin’s embrace of the showroom as partially his own selling space is something that the Kuiken Bros. team would love to turn into a trend among all of their contractor customers. While the pro dealer will have five seasoned sales and design reps—two for kitchen and bath, two for doors, windows, and millwork, and a sales manager with experience in both product categories—staffing the showroom under Hughes, there is an intent and expectation to treat the showroom as almost a community center aimed at achieving collaborative business success. While products undeniably abound, the focus is no longer on immediate product pushing, but on long-term project sales and supply chain networking between Kuiken Bros., architects, designers, contractors, and homeowners.
It’s an emerging way of thinking among pro dealers with showrooms, according to Kuiken, to approach the facility as an opportunity beyond sales, as a training area, as a meeting area, as something more involved beyond the sale of product. “There are almost a limitless number of events that we can do to target any certain audience,” Kuiken says while detailing the working kitchen on a raised platform, the seating for 40 visitors, the wireless sound system, and the flat-screen TVs installed in the facility. “We can bring in designer and architect groups; we can bring in the builder’s association or the chamber of commerce or service organizations. It becomes a resource for the community that in turn gets people into the showroom as a great avenue for marketing and networking.”
Like Kuiken Bros.’ own financial commitment, the dollars that north Jersey homeowners are shelling out for their own construction and remodel projects are sizeable and substantial. According to Hughes, kitchen and bath projects company-wide at Kuiken Bros. are commonly in the $10,000 range, although the dealer certainly has some projects with much higher tickets. With the showroom in place, Hughes says, there’s a definite possibility to start working on some six-figure kitchen and bath projects. “We don’t sell tchotchke product here,” agrees Kuiken marketing manager Ryan Mulkeen. “Showrooms are not a place where someone comes in and spends $20. These projects are often a five- to six-month process, and you have to change the way you look at normal retail. You have to scale back your approach, scale back the hard sell.”
