Western Turnings & Stair Company Home Center

Merchant BILL FISHMAN

Bill Fishman & Atfiliates lhere is a lot of business germane to the lumber dealer that some are letting slip away! o Only one of the 22 established his store as being a headquarters for energy saving products. o Almost all stores told our caller to go elsewhere for information. o Until she actually led the store into it - only one asked our caller to come in and buy after she found out elsewhere what she wanted. o One told the customer to shop the competition.

11650 lberia Place San Diego, Ca.92128 vending energy saving products to thc homeowner.

Even more than before, homeowners are seeking ways to cut their home energy expense. They're looking for the place they can trust, where they can get the knowledge, the products and the how-toinstall-it knowledge.

The lumber dealer is doing a very poor job of capitalizing on these homeowner needs. Instead of becoming the headquarters for energy saving products (which he has always carried in his inventory), instead of asking the homeowner to come to him for the information he needs to do the job of cutting fuel bills, they send him to the utility company for energy audits and then fail to ask the homeowner to come back to buywhat the utility company tells him to install.

Last week we conducted a small research project by phoning 22 retailers along the route that I will be traveling for a regional lumbermen's association. Our goal was to determine how these lumber dealers would handle a homeowner's inquiry about reducing energy costs in the home.

Frankly, except for on€ store in the 22 we called, I would have been very disappointed in the way the calls were handled if I were the owner of those retail stores.

. Not oneattempted to get thename of the caller.

Up until now, we, as a retail industry, have too often been no more than order takers, rather than merchants, when

TAs brought out by this telephone survey, we have only been able to scrvc those customers who came to us knowing what they needed to cut their energy consumption. We haven't yet appealed to the much, much Ereater number who don't have the knowledge.

As an industry we have been allowing the high binders, the suede shoe guys, to have a field day soaking the public at the expense of the tax credit progxam. We've been standing by and letting the solar panel instdlers and the furnace repair canvassers set themselves up as energy headquarters. That's not where the title belongs. It belongs in the lumber yard, where the public has been treated fairly and professionally, and, best knows about the construction and the needs of the home.

Imagine how many dollars in volume can be generated by promoting cnergy saving clinics.

Imagine how may dollars in salcs a lumber retailer could generate if he ran a promotion thu said:

"Bring us your gas and electric bills and let us show you how you may be able to cut this monthly cost ! ! ! "

Thql's How lt Goes!

Dealers Slow To Stock Electronic Home Entertainment

In the not-too-distant future. the typical color television and stereo sound system of today will seem as antiquated as yesteryear's Victrola and console radio. America's growing appetite for more sophisticated modes of home entertainment, satisfied now with video games, video discs and video cassette recorders. will soon crave stereo televisions, videotex link-ups and direct broadcast satellite television converters.

Relatively few home centers are responding to the consumer demand at the present. Our telephone poll of l0 chain and independent stores revealed only three that were into electronic home entertainment merchandise. Perhaps dealers feel it is too specialized or too expensive to stock, but on the other hand perhaps there is a growing market that could be captured with a little effort.

According to Predicasts, Inc., the Cleveland-based business information and market research firm. increases in leisure time and discretionary income, coupled with our natural fascination for electronic gadgetry, will result in a continually expanding market for new and different audio and video entertainment equipment well into the 1990s.

In analyzing the present and future markets for radios, audio reproduction equipment, televisions, reproduced and intelligent video equipment and other electronic entertainment systems, they point to a number of factors which led to an almost l09o annual growth for the home entertainment industry between I 967 and 1981, including a steady increase in consumer affluence and spending, favorable demographic trends and declining equipment prices resulting from technological advances and increased competition. Sales of entertainment equipment rose from under $4 billion in 1967 to more than $13.5 billion in l98l Predicasts expects the market to further expand to $17.5 billion by 1985, and to nearly $30 billion by the mid-1990s.

Television, an in-home novelty just 30 yeas ago, has long been, is now, and will continue to be the largest home entertainment market segment. Total sets in use will increase from about 150 million in 198 I to nearly 220 million in 1995, an average of two per household. Color sets are expected to maintain about an 8690 share of sales from now until the mid-1990s. Sales of large screen models, which comprised only 4Vo of market in 1981, are projected by Predicasts to reach l09o by 1995.

Rather than experience any decline in popularity over the next decade, television equipment-will entrench even further into American family life for a number of reasons. Specifically, many of the recent home entertainment innovations, such as video games, video recorders and personal computers involve the use of television units.

The advent and mass consumer acceptance of high fidelity stereophonic sound equipment resulted in an ll-plus go annual increase in sales of audio equipment from the late 1960s to rhe early 1980s. Sales of audio reproduction equipment, in particular, rose from $600 million in 1967 to nearly $4 billion in 198 I , due mainly to continual technological improvements and product innovations. Cassette recorder and player sales have exhibited dramatic increases, mushrooming from $8 million in 1967 to $2.5 billion in 1981. Proiecrions for cassette equipment call for increases to over $3 billion by I 985, and over $5.5 billion by the mid-1990s. Predicasts also sees significant gains for audio components, speakers, amplifiers, receivers and microphones. Sales of this equipment are projected to expand from about $650 million in l98l to over $l billion in 1985, and more than $3 billion by the mid-1990s.

Home Show SRO

Nearly 1,750 exhibitors have been assigned space in the 79th National Housewares Manufacturers Association International Housewares Exposition's last July show before shifting to a new spring/fall schedule in April, 1984.

"Our final July show will be the most important summer show for the industry in the NHMA's 44 year history," Ronald A. Fippinger, managing director, said, "because of the nine month hiatus until our next show in April."

Show dates will be July 10-14 at McCormick Place plus McCormick Place West, Chicago, Il.