For eplans.com, 84 Lumber’s initial and most prolific plan sales partner, the affiliation garners not only revenue (the dealer purchases a modification kit and license from the plan source to make changes to each set of prints, if requested), but also creates a gateway to pros. “It’s an opportunity to get to builders and a way for them to get plans,” says Pearce. “We’re looking to set up similar partnerships [with other dealers].”
Homeplans.com’s approach with Lampert Yards and other dealers is far less formal than what 84 has fashioned with its plan sources and dedicated sales and design staff. Simply, when an e-ffiliate dealer’s customer purchases a set of plans through the online portal to Homeplans.com, the house plan publisher sends that customer’s name and contact information back to the dealer for potential follow-up on a materials sale; each e-ffiliate has an identification code to traffic such information. In addition, any sales through a Homeplans.com e-ffiliate portal garner the dealer a percentage of the purchase; Lampert Yards’ cut, for instance, is 15 percent.
In addition to addressing the demand by pros and consumers to go online instead of buy books as the preferred source for house plans, Homeplans.com has worked with its e-ffiliates to expand its plan offerings. Lampert Yards, for instance, asked for prints for small projects, including garages, sheds, and gazebos, based on requests from its pro and consumer customers. “We actually sell more of those through the [online portal] than home plans,” says Leier. Homeplans.com also will deliver the set of prints to the dealer’s location, or wherever the purchaser prefers, to help facilitate a materials sale or boost customer satisfaction.
An upcoming expansion of the publisher’s e-ffiliates program will offer its builder and dealer partners not only the commission on plan sales through the portal, but also a discount on plans they purchase. The program also will offer discounts on volume plan purchases and on modification services. Though such incentives might be more attractive and appropriate for a builder, a dealer could also take advantage as part of offering turnkey home packages or installed sales.
In addition, an e-ffiliate can create or link to a particular style or series within Homeplans.com’s collection of 15,000 plans, or even select and build a custom library of those that the builder has purchased or built previously or wants to specialize. “It makes the selection process more manageable,” says Coulter, and it sets the stage for her company to boost its 22,000 annual plan sales with a dedicated approach to pros.
While some home plan providers certainly have experience, albeit limited, selling their offerings to builders through the LBM supply channel, others don’t even have dealers on their radar screen despite dedicated efforts to pros. “It’s not a market we’ve pursued yet,” says Richard Seagraves, assistant director of sales operations for Frank Betz Associates, an established plan source in Smyrna, Ga. “No lumberyards have approached us to partner.”
Not that the firm needs them. Seventy-five percent of its approximately 7,800 plan sales a year are to builders, a relative anomaly in the house plans industry that Seagraves credits to the publisher’s longtime focus on pros. “We have a reputation among builders as providing stock plans that are easily adapted in the field,” he says, noting that a complete set of prints from Betz includes a detailed framing layout, which most other plan publishers provide for an extra cost, if at all. The firm also provides a complete materials takeoff, with a 10 percent waste factor, so builders can more easily order materials from their local suppliers.
Despite its success in reaching builders without the help of a supply chain connection, Frank Betz Associates wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to partner with an LBM dealer. “The more people linked to our Web site, the higher we get placed in the search engines,” says Seagraves. And in a sea of 300-million-plus links, every little hit counts. —Rich Binsacca is a contributing editor for PROSALES.
Editor’s Note: Since its initial popularity in the early-1900s with the Sears Modern Homes catalog of plans and kit home packages, the market for stock blueprints has evolved into a major publishing and online industry. PROSALES contributing editor Rich Binsacca chronicles the history of house plans, kit homes, and other industrialized housing options in Kit Homes: Your Guide to Homebuilding Options, from Catalogs to Factories (The Globe Pequot Press, ISBN-13: 978-0-7627-3141-1; $16.95), available at retail and online booksellers nationwide. In addition to guiding consumers through plan catalog sources, modular and manufactured home industries, and various types of kit homes and home packages, the author credits the role of local lumberyards in carrying on the spirit of Sears’ efforts to provide housing to the masses. “… The concept of selecting a house plan from a catalog lives on among a sea of home plan publishers and online sources that, like the Sears Modern Homes catalog, offer an affordable alternative to architectural design and provide a complete list of materials that any local lumberyard today can fulfill and deliver for construction.”
