EDITORIAL

Clean Up Your Actll

I T'S BOTH puzzling and disgusting that too I high a percentage of lumberyards and home centers look like dumps. With some it's the exterior, others the interior. Often it's both.

Why is this? Aren't these the same people who are trying to sell the beauty of remodeling, the joys of home improvement? lt's like a 300 pounder trying to sell you a diet program. Or a beauty parlor run by liver-spotted, wrinkled old crones. A 98 pound weakling trying to peddle Nautilus fitness equipment.

Of all the businesses in Anytown, USA, the retailers of home improvement products and materials should have the best looking stores. It should be, but too often it just isn't so. If a bunch of minimum wagers at McDonald's can keep their store clean and spotless, what's our industry's excuse?

Exteriors too often are blemished with flaking, faded paint, yet inside, paint is for sale. Entries are cluttered and unswept. Yet indoors , trash cans and brooms are for sale. Weeds abound in the parking lot. Inside string trimmers are offered as a sale-of-the-week item. Similar horrors haunt the interior.

Two things are in order here. The first is obvious. Clean up the place. Make it as spickand-span as possible.

Next, take a step back to try to look at the place as if you had never seen it before. Is the outside inviting, bright and fresh? Does the exterior say here's a leading merchant in the area, one who knows what he's doing? Is there a pattern and layout to the interior? An overall design that reflects thoughtful planning and careful installation of displays, counters, gondolas and all the rest? Customers want to have a pleasant shopping experience. Not to wrestle a dusty purchase off a grubby shelf.

Take a look at your place of business with new eyes. Then tell yourself honestly whether you pass or fail.