Home improvement: a billion $ market

full line of home improvement products is preferred by shoppers 3 to I over limited line stores selling more specialized products.

Just under half of the homeowners pinpointed manufacturer "how to" product instructions as extremely important, particularly among the 25 to 34 age group and white collar workers with higher education.

If friendly, trained, knowledgeable sales people who can answer customer's questions about home repairs, maintenance and improvements make business thrive, how can the home center operator produce these people?

The market is there, but what can you as a retailer do to attract customers to your home center and keep them coming back ? A, study conducted by Market Facts, Inc. and the Home Center Research Bureau revealed that more than 8090 of the homeowners think courteous salespeople are extremely or very important in choosing where they shop, making that quality the most important factor in selecting a home center.

Second (72s/o) in importance to consumers is the sales staff's knowledge of the products they are selling. It also is extremely or very important to 54v/o of those surveyed that salespeople be able to assist customers with specific project information.

Consumers want to know the store they shop in offers the highest quality of merchandise and will stand behind its products. The home center with its

Story at a Glance

Home repair, maintenance, improvement market expanding... consumers demand product, project knowledge . want high qualaty merchandise. guaranteed reliability.

In today's expanding home center market, according to Better Homes and Gardens, which recently published a product knowledge training course, this is not easy. Entry-level positions are usually filled by recent graduates with limited work experience. New employees often find themselves on the firing line with little or no practical knowledge of home improvement. They recommend their training manual, which they say is the only course for home center personnel that is self-taught, in conjunction with the Complete Guide to Home Repair, Maintenance & Improvement, also published by them.

Other ways to train salespeople to be able to guide and help customers include in-store training sessions taught by veteran staff members or manufacturer's reps; required reading of "how-to" bulletins and instructions provided by manufacturers; hands-on clinics to produce product displays for the store; and the reading of informational articles such as you will find in this issue of Building Products Digest.

Almost every store has one old timer who knows all the answers or has a second sense for finding them. Take advantage of him, designate this person as the official store expert. Give him a title and a special (l'leasa tunt to pugc 36)