Utah door retailer opens showroom in shopping mall

RAMATIC door displays common in home centers. Pioneer Door Sales, part of Pioneer Lumber Co., Ogden, Ut., has achieved the ultimate with a doors only showroom in a sprawling suburban shopping mall.

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Few shoppers miss the showroom's l2 foot entry door unit sparkling with beveled glass and brass came, backlighted for emphasis. lt's an eye catcher and attention getter.

According to Karl Lindley, president and general manager, the showroom will increase customer convenience. selection and sales. "We've always had a fine showroom at our Ogden facility and supported it with a lot of advertising. But, it was hard to get the traffic. Once we got people through our doors, they'd come back because they were impressed with the quality and presentation of the product. The whole idea of the mall showroom is to increase customer awareness and traffic and create salesto create a need in the consumer to put a new door on a house."

"There's an enormous market out there." he adds. "and we have to do creative things to tap it. We're not going to promote the product successfully if we treat it as we did in the lumber yards 30 years ago. We're selling quality merchandise and it has to be presented in a quality way."

Everything in Pioneer's showroom is geared to promoting the sales of quality highend doors and hardware. They maintain crews to install any purchase and have even bought an engraving machine so that hardware and accessories can be personalized with the customer's name.

Inside the showroom a 70 foot wall of brick has entry units installed, backlighted and spotlighted. Between this wall and the true wall of the showroom, Pioneer has installed hand rail systems and landings so that the shopper has the inrpression of looking through a door into the entry hall of a home. On the opposite wall door units simulate the experience of looking from inside a house onto a rural scene.

Hardware is displayed in jewelry cases. The back wall features displays ol patio door systems, fire doors. storm doors, security doors and garage doors. Along other walls are 170 large illuminated photographs of doors. [:ach is framed in oak and separated by brass strips. Door names and prices plus installation costs complete the display.

Story at a Glance

Mall setting provides good traffic for first of four satellite showKx)ms...displays simulate "home" look . extras, personalized hardware promote high end image.

"Through the years, the company has stocked, sold and installed anything to do with a door or door hardware," Lindley explains. "You can hardly think of a door product we don't sell. That goes for related door hardware as well - locks, kick plates, door viewers and so on."

"We show our door units installed with thresholds and weatherstripping, finished and spotlighted. Most people can't visualize what a door in a catalog really looks like. We're doing all that we can to do the visualization for them."

Pioneer Door Sales opened in Ogden in 1973. Residential construction accounts for 750/o of the company's business. Retail accounts lor l5o/o and commercial for the final

A I)D-ON sales of accessories

fl along with door and window sales are possible, but for some retail outlets, improbable. Especially if doors and windows are lined along the back wall. locksets stocked near the hardware section, security devices shunted off to the side in the electrical department, and window furnishings hidden amid floor and wallcoverings.

lluilding a well marked trail beginning with hardware and leading through accessories to the windows and doors themselves can create an aisle of add-on sales.

Cross-merchandising possibilities include all or any of the following menu:

O Door hardware, locking hasps, keyed entry locksets, electronic entry locksets, combination locksets with deadbolts, separate deadbolts, interior door locks (chain door guards, surface bolts, flip-over locks).

O Garage door hardware, padlocks, sliding garage door tracks, garage door openers. Screen/storm doors. screen/storm door hardware.

O Door knockers, numbers, letters, chimes.

O Door-mounted alarms/security systems, door reinforcers, door

Pioneer Lumber Co separate division.

Ogden as a

Karl's son, Jeff Lindley, mall showroom manager, is optimistic about the possibilities and advantages of the retail mall. "We are really excited about this opportunity to show our products in a professional presentation," he said. "When we made our decision to open a store in a mall environment, we were primarily thinking of the retail retrofit customer, but we can see now that this showroom will be used heavily by our contractors and their home buyers. We have increased our store hours by 16 hours per week, making it much more convenient for our customers."

The Layton Hill Mall showroom is supported by the 55,000 square foot main lacility where Pioneer manulactures or prefabricates most of the door products they sell. They intend to open three other mall showrooms.