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BILL FISHMAN

Bill Fishman & Affiliates

1'1650 lberia Place San Diego, Ca.92128

uOUSING starts reaching a tt post war, all time low, lumber dealers are scratching to replace that builder business. There aren't too many directions in which the traditional lumber dealer can move. He can go after new remodeling/contractor business, or commercial business, or more do-ityourselfer business by expanding his product offering. Yet, there is a lot of business germane to the lumber dealer that some are letting slip away!

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.

Ironically the lumber dealer who is scratching for volume to survive this terri- ble interim economy 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 one store inthe 22 we called, I would have been very disappointed in the waythe calls were handled if I were the owner of those retail stores. 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.

Not oneattempted to get thename of the caller.

. Only one of the 22 established nis store as being a headquarters for energy saving products.

Up until now, we, as a retail industry, have too often been no more than order takers, rather than merchants, when vending energy saving products to the homeowner.

As brought out by this telephone survey, we have only been able to serve those customers who came to us knowing what they needed to cut their energy consumption. We haven't yet appealed to the much, much greater 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 program. We'vc been standing by and letting the solar

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