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Home Show to Stress ldea Exchange

Workshops, forums and roundtables will promote exchanges of ideas among attendees at the National Home Center Show & Conference, March 8l0 at McCormick Place East, Chicago, il.

A two hour discussion between more than a dozen retail, manufacturing and distribution buyers and sellers moderated by Harvard law professor Arthur Miller will open the conference Sunday moming. Workshops covering wholesalers, distributors, environmental products, remodeler customers, niche retailing, service, advertising and employee motivation will begin on Sunday and continue through Monday with mid-day sessions.

Forums on product trends and change will offer opinions of more than 40 home improvement experts on home beautification, outdoor revitalization, quality wood products, tools, maintenance and repair, basic building materials and windows, doors and millwork. The National Buildins Material Distributors Association aid the National Sash & Door Jobbers Association are among the sponsors.

Dealer-to-dealer roundtables with captains of the industry will be held throughout the show during breakfast, lunch and late afternoon. Participants will register in advance for these programs which include breakfast, lunch or snacks. Nine topics have been selected: advertising, inventory shrinkage, employee motivation, rural yards, competing with chains, sales promotions, compensation plans and dealerlwholesaler relations.

The show will inaugurate a service to assist retail dealers in setting up appointments with show exhibitors. Appointment Service requests will be forwarded to exhibitors who will responddirectly to the dealer.

Lackluster Homebuilding

As construction recoveries go, this one is in a class by itself, economist George A. Christie told the 52nd annual Building Products Executive Conference.

"Commercial building is about as bad as it is going to get, and it won't improve much in the near future," he said. "The early dominance of homebuilding is already evident and will become more apparent in 1992. In fact, there is little opportunity for near-term expansion in anything except single family housing."

Christie estimated a total of 975,000 single family units for 1992, a 207o increase. Multifamily will gain 57o at200,000.

Housing construction, which normally jumps as much as 3OVo or 40Vo following a recession, may have trouble achieving even this lower pace with the recovery moving as slowly as signs indicate, he explained. Despite projections that housing will improve in 1992, housing starts and home sales have deteriorated since August. "If those numbers stick," Christie said, "we may have some reason to worry."

He said that commercial building and publicly financed construction won't improve much and that the 1992 outlook for total construction comes down to a matter of how much the housing market can deliver. Credit availability, geographic concentrations and demographic influences will be limiting factors in residential building recovery.

High Tech Quality Marks

Commencement Bay Mill Co., Tacoma, Wa., is conducting a 60 day test of a computerized spray-on grademarking system for the Westem Wood Products Association's quality standards service.

Manufactured by Domino Amjet, Inc., the system, which is controlled by a computer chip, uses ink spraying to apply the official WWPA grade stamp. WWPA is monitoring the test. The association has developed policies, security and quality control procedures for computer generated gradestamping of westem lumber, according to chief lumber inspector Bill Hill.

Seueml doys o cctmulotion of bonding, normally requires a special trip to the londtlil.

Employees hote the donger and work to ttonster to dumpster or truck. A Jeut minuies when unpcklng unlts, results in this compact, eosily stored vahtable scttp, olrady stored in o steel drum Jor disposol and sr,le.

Chain Gang

Chain products displays which can fit into existing store fixtures are now available from Curtis Industries.

Chain-Paks feature a built-in handle to make restocking easy.