Dealers Discuss Timing of Showroom Updates

Kitchen & Bath Design News recently posed the following question to dealers and designers in the kitchen and bath industry: "How can a kitchen and bath dealership determine when to update or expand its showroom?" Following are some of the responses KBDN received.

"In our experience, we've noticed that customers come up with certain demands or ideas of what they like and we try to always keep up with those ideas. It is a matter of keeping up with demand and trying to keep on top of the trends. We deal with Italy a lot, so whenever the newest trend hits over there, we try to import it to here and display it. We are currently rethinking our showroom, since we have a small showroom and it might not be enough space for the amount of customers that we get. We are thinking about changing the complete layout, because I don't think it will work in the space that we have right now."

Derek Zylewicz, president

Urban Homes, Inc.

New York, NY

We just remodeled our '3,000-square-foot showroom in January, mainly because our displays were ranging from five to ten years old. The manufacturers had discontinued many of the kitchens that we had displayed. We try to differentiate ourselves from our competitors, so we focused on all aspects from floor to ceiling. Basically, we needed a platform to demonstrate the latest in kitchen design. What we had before was nice, but it was showing its age and was a little dated. The driving factor for us was that we were outdated and we needed a better platform to compete here locally with other showrooms that were also showing their age. Ironically, a lot of them have now recently updated as well."