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Marketing Interviews & Tips for Window Treatment and Awning Companies
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<p>Karen Lander is the founder of Drapery Design, a custom window treatments company she built from a one-person home-based workroom into a million-dollar business serving top interior designers and architects nationwide. With over thirty-five years of experience in design, fabrication, and project management, she has worked across multiple business models while consistently growing her company. Today, Karen is focused on sharing her proven systems, templates, and industry insights to help the next generation of window-covering professionals build efficient, profitable businesses.</p>
Guest Profile: Ann Johnson Ann K. Johnson’s wholesale workroom, Sew Easy Windows LLC, Avon Lake, Ohio, was established in 1992. She is the author of The Professional Workroom Handbook of Swags I & II, and publishes Kitty Stein’s Price Your Work With Confidence! Ann offers private workroom training and consultations. She is a dynamic instructor for seminars and hands-on classes in workroom fabrication, pattern drafting, efficiency and pricing. She is a popular instructor for CWC, IWCE & WCAA. Other Notes/Links: Resources Mentioned in This Episode Ann K. Johnson – https://annkjohnson.com Curtains & Soft Furnishings Resource Library (CSF Library) – https://csfrl.org The Workroom Channel – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com The Workroom Channel (YouTube) – https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorkroomChannel Window Coverings Association of America (WCAA) – https://wcaa.org WCAA Virtual Chapter – https://virtualchapterwcaa.org Educational Resources Referenced CSF Library Archived Webinars & Industry Resources – https://csfrl.org WCAA Educational Webinars – https://wcaa.org Workroom Tours & Method Shares – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com Follow Sew Easy Windows LLC On: Facebook pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/laWhqS5cAvI?si=bzfEoocniu1okFh4 Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00) to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is someone who spent over three decades inside the workroom, not just working in it, but constantly refining how it runs. She built and operated her own workroom for more than 30 years before recently stepping away from production to focus fully on what she’s become known for in the industry, helping workrooms become more efficient. She’s taught at major industry conferences, developed training programs, and works directly with teams to improve workflow, reduce wasted motion, and ultimately make businesses more profitable and sustainable. If you ever felt like the workroom is busy all the time and you’re still struggling to keep up, this conversation is going to hit home. Welcome to the show, Ann Johnson. Ann K. Johnson (01:02) Thanks, Will. I’m glad to be here. William Hanke (01:04) Yeah, appreciate you coming on. So let’s jump in. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what’s keeping you busy right now. Ann K. Johnson (01:10) Okay, well, history what gives me license to teach other workrooms. I started in ninety-two. I worked and I’ll tell you what, there was I didn’t even know I was a workroom. Had no idea, didn’t have the right equipment or anything, kept thinking I was gonna get out of this business because I fell into it and didn’t choose it. in 2006 I had been going to a workroom networking group, and the owner of the place who always hosted us Asked me to come work for him as workroom manager. And I thought, hot dog, no more cutting and covering boards and work, you know, on Monday through Friday, nine to five. And after two years, I realized that I just wasn’t employee material anymore. You know, you work for yourself, it’s hard to go back. So what I learned in that two years, because he had five sewists and a whole staff behind that, so they were William Hanke (01:56) Yes. Ann K. Johnson (02:07) putting work through this custom workroom, unbelievable amounts of work. And he was all about efficiency. always, well, how he put it, tweaking, you know, processes. So when I walked away from that business, from him, still friends, I developed the class on efficiency because it just it brought it home. And then the more I teach it, The more it brings it home. it also keeps it in my brain so that when I was working, I was on top of all this, but I was always grabbing other people’s ideas. You know, this workroom did this. Well, that’s intriguing. Let me try it. ⁓ I like it. I’m going to include it, or doesn’t work for me, but I might still include it and say pros and cons, right? So William Hanke (02:53) Fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (02:53) Because the way I do it isn’t necessarily the way somebody else wants to do it, right? And so I’ve just built up the reputation as an efficiency expert in the workroom. when I give a class and the whole class gasps, ⁓ that’s my moment. yeah. And I’ve taught workrooms that have been in business long longer than I have, 35 plus years. William Hanke (03:10) awesome. Ann K. Johnson (03:19) And they always walk away and say, wish I’d known that sooner, right? So that’s where I’m coming from is efficiency, intentional efficiency, thinking about it every day and constantly looking at your processes and seeing what can I do to make it better. William Hanke (03:23) Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re gonna dive into some of that today, by the way. so I’m excited to hear a little bit more. Now you spent decades actually doing the work before stepping into the teaching side. And I think a lot of our listeners are kind of in that phase, you know, where they’re listening. Ann K. Johnson (03:41) I know. Yes. William Hanke (03:54) When you look back at the early workroom days, what were you doing the hard work way that you see different now? Ann K. Johnson (04:02) everything every stinking thing I didn’t have the table the machines the tools right and because those first 15 years I kept thinking well maybe I won’t stick with this right I wouldn’t invest and it wasn’t until I was meeting other workrooms or going to George’s workroom meetings and seeing what he had then I William Hanke (04:03) Okay. Right. Ann K. Johnson (04:27) Picked up a couple of machines, but I still, again, back then, workrooms were not charging what they needed to charge, right? So I never had enough to go out and pay for, invest in. And I just kept thinking, ⁓ next year I might not be in this anymore. So why get into it? It wasn’t until I left Georgia’s. I’m like, okay, I’m stuck in this. I now need to make the investment. There were no Professional patterns when I started, right? Everything was singer-sewing for the home and the library. doing everything the hard way. And then my first client who got me into this was a designer who was extra creative. So there was no references. And so it was all doing it the hard way. And and a lot of times I will take my mistakes, my struggles, and turn those into lessons because I don’t want workrooms who are coming into the business to suffer the same thing, right? So yeah, I pretty much did everything wrong for the first 15 years. William Hanke (05:32) ⁓ too funny. ⁓ you mentioned not having the right tools early on. ⁓ how much did that affect like the overall efficiency day to day? Ann K. Johnson (05:42) everything. And I had no idea, right? I was just struggling. Okay, so you know, the right tool is your table, a padded table. You can pin things into it, it’s at your the right height, it’s the width, it’s 60 inches wide for a width of fabric, and it can be as long as you can make it. And so I started out on a ping pong table and then it collapsed on me, so I took half of it and propped it up on a couple of folding tables and I was making full length wide panels on a half a ping pong table with no padding. So you can’t get any more inefficient than that. totally. Because I refused to take and invest the money, right? William Hanke (06:25) Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. So before we get too far, how do you define efficiency in a workroom beyond just like moving faster? Ann K. Johnson (06:39) Right, right. So efficiency isn’t necessarily going as fast as you can. It’s better quality for sure. because you’ve got a happier client. You put out the same product every time, you know, you get the same details. your clients know what to expect. That’s what they get, right? That’s efficiency, having standards and that sort of thing, and also keeping your error rate low, right? There’s so many details and numbers that go through the workroom, and especially if you’re handing stuff off to employees or subcontractors, there’s even another level where things can go wrong. So setting up processes and all to keep those things moving, through the workroom. So what did I say? Quality, continuity, low error rate, that’s efficiency. William Hanke (07:27) Yeah. And that’s I mean the what’s the very well known book, the E-Myth right? That was that was all about McDonald’s, for example, always making the same burger the same way every time and the output’s always the same. So yeah. Ann K. Johnson (07:33) Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And they had processes for it. And as far as I’m a aware now, Amazon does the same thing. You know, they’ve got processes and they’ve got things set up so that the workers don’t have to go hunt the right box or bag or whatever. You know, it’s all folded into that. William Hanke (07:47) For sure. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So for somebody that’s listening who maybe feels like they’re constantly busy but behind, what’s usually the real issue here? Is it workload or workflow? Ann K. Johnson (08:05) Mm-hmm. Okay, I’m gonna go with workflow on that because workload is controllable, quote unquote, because you can say no, right? You can back your clients up. They might squawk, but then send them on their way. They’re not your client, right? ⁓ yeah, no. ⁓ you never hire somebody new when you’re under stress. William Hanke (08:27) Yeah. Or you can hire more people, right? I mean that’s it’s a solvable problem. Okay, fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (08:38) Ask me how I know. ⁓ it’s it’s just too hard. because bringing somebody in under stress, if you don’t have documentation and processes in place, you can’t teach them, right? And then you’re constantly overseeing them. And ⁓ there’s only one employee that I always recommend hiring, and ⁓ because a lot of employees work at their own most employees they work at their own speed and i’ve seen this in workrooms right people are like i don’t know how to make them work faster you either have a little buzzy bee who is just so fast and loves what they’re doing and wants to do more rare that’s very rare ⁓ you’ve got the good steady workers in between But more often than not, you’ve got the ones that are just gonna work at their own pace and they don’t care what the schedule is or anything. So that gets frustrating if you’re a very ⁓ high energy person, right? ⁓ did I get off the question there? So with work, yeah, with work load though, you can you can ⁓ like say no or back them off or whatever, but work flow is always there. William Hanke (09:41) No, you’re good. Ann K. Johnson (09:54) And if you have bottlenecks or whatever, then you’re always going to come up against those, and they’re always going to slow you down ⁓ at the bottlenecks, and those are what you need to. Andor an underreported or thought about is error rate. That’s really quite important because that’s a huge bottleneck. If you’re having trouble. Moving stuff through the workroom and you get a lot of errors either in the workroom you’re having to redo something or you go to the install and there’s something wrong and you have to bring it back and redo it. That’s all the worst thing, right? Right. So studying your error rate. William Hanke (10:32) Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (10:37) will help you, you know, catalog them and analyze them and figure out where your weaknesses are. And that helps too. You can target them. William Hanke (10:46) Yeah, yeah. Very good. let’s get into the real day-to-day stuff. I think a lot of people don’t realize kind of where they’re losing time. so imagine you walk into a workroom for the first time. What are the first inefficiencies you usually notice? Ann K. Johnson (11:01) Okay, let’s talk about drapery panels because that’s the most common thing everybody does. And and I used to do it this way. they cut all their panels and then they split the ones they need to split, and then they spend time shuffling everything back together into panels, right? And William Hanke (11:03) Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (11:19) Then you can that’s number one, that’s a lot of extra work doing all that shuffling. And number two, now you’re setting yourself up for an error of two right panels or two left panels because you didn’t put them back together in the right order. ⁓ and then bringing it back to the table after you ⁓ shuffle everything, bringing it back to the table, and then going along and glue basting or taping or pinning to pattern match. Right, so that you can sew your seam. Whereas if you simply cut your whists in the right order, split them in the right order, and stack them, you go straight to the machine, and there’s a method to pattern match right at the machine without doing all that pre-work. Every time you take that treatment back to the table, you are handling it. Too much, right? So if we can eliminate some of those steps back, and that’s been somebody once said I just took 30% of the time off of their making panels with just with that. ⁓ workrooms also, I call them crutches, time wasters. somewhere along the line, something William Hanke (12:26) Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (12:38) Catastrophic happened, right? And it it caused all sorts of trouble. Now they worry. And one of them is length of panels, right? They went to hang them, they were too long, they were too short, they grew or whatever. And so now they hang up every panel that they fabricate. That’s a waste of time, you know. And this is where I have to go to them and say, no, you’ve been doing this long enough, you know which fabrics are good and which fabrics are bad. William Hanke (12:55) Okay. Yep. Ann K. Johnson (13:04) Right? So the fabrics that you know are good and stable and all make up your panel, trust your work and get it out. If you have a fabric that you’re not too sure of, go ahead and hang that one. Right. But we clutch sometimes these crutches because we’re afraid because of something that happened in the past. Mm-hmm. William Hanke (13:23) Right. Yeah. Definitely makes sense. Ann K. Johnson (13:26) and and you know, you could probably look at just about every type of treatment out there. In the last, I’m most familiar now with drapery panels, Roman shades, various versions, and box bleated valences, simple box bleeded valances, because that’s all anybody’s made in the last six, eight years, right? So if you go back to swags and kingston valances and the frufru stuff. Those aren’t gonna be as efficient because you don’t do them as often, right? And you don’t have that, but you can really get those core treatments down. Panels have often been thought of sometimes as a lost leader, and they shouldn’t be, right? William Hanke (14:06) Yeah. Yeah, those are some great tips. You’ve already affected a couple hundred workrooms, I think, just with this. Ann K. Johnson (14:12) We’ll see. William Hanke (14:15) So what are some common habits that feel normal to owners but are actually killing their productivity? Ann K. Johnson (14:20) hoarding fabric and you know they have leftover fabric they don’t know what to do with it or they’re always someday i’ll make pillows out of this right and it piles up around them and so keeping Extra leftovers in your workroom, in your actual work area, slows you down because you’re working around it. It’s also eliminating space for your tools and materials that you use on a daily basis and keeping them near you, right? And then another one of the biggest things is perfectionism. If you go to any group and you say who defines himself as a perfectionist, You know, ha more than half the hands go up, and it’s like, no, don’t do that. By definition, perfectionism is not attainable, right? And this is fabric, it’s not even like stone or wood, it’s fabric, it has a life of its own, and it’s gonna do what it damn well pleases. Sorry about that. And ⁓ so I’m trying now to get people to look more to to to get perfectionism. how do I move forward on this? I can’t make it perfect, or I can’t follow this standard or or whatever. And then they freeze up and they’re not happy with what they did. Whereas if you tell yourself, I’m striving for excellence, okay? It gives you it literally just that word takes a load off your shoulders. And you say, Okay. William Hanke (15:51) Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (15:55) I’m doing the very best I can. I’m putting out an excellent product. People love my work. They keep coming back. Perfectionism isn’t gonna do you any good. You have to change your mindset. William Hanke (16:10) I like that. I’ve heard the phrase done is better than perfect. ⁓ you know, that’s yeah. Yeah. But I do like excellent is better than perfect, right? That’s that keeps that excellence in mind. I like that. That’s really good. So are there any specific workflow breakdowns you see over and over again across the different shops that you visit? Ann K. Johnson (16:13) yes, love that phrase, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. the shops that I go into, and lately I’ve been going into more that are multiple employees, and a couple last year were designers bought their workroom because the workroom owner was tired and wanted to quit, retire, but the designers didn’t want to lose them. William Hanke (16:49) Okay. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (17:00) Assuming that the workroom has two or three employees that know how to do the work, right? And so, but the ⁓ designers would then call me because they were like, I can’t believe how slow these people are, right? And a lot of it was because the workroom owners had been in the business too long, were tired, and weren’t out there learning new. Right? They were just like caught up in their own. So I would say the most common thing is is doing it the way you always did it. Okay. And and sometimes that’s almost inevitable because you have it it’s like a spiral, right? You’ve you have this huge workload and you’re just killing yourself trying to get it done. And you know there’s gotta be a better way. You go to conferences, you come home, your head’s ringing, and you’ve got all these great ideas, but my gosh, you got those deadlines, so you jump right back in to doing it the way you always did, and so you never quite get and and you don’t give yourself permission to step back and take a week off or a couple days, and you get so overwhelmed you just don’t even know where to start. That’s where sometimes whenever I teach. William Hanke (18:21) Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (18:25) Here we go. I’m gonna assign your listeners homework. ⁓ whenever I teach a class, any class, and the four-day workroom hands-on class, they have to do this every night, is through the course of the class write down three things. I don’t care if it’s tips, it’s a technique, a process, a tool, that you’re going to immediately. William Hanke (18:28) Okay. Ann K. Johnson (18:51) ⁓ use when you get back to your workroom. You’re gonna order it, you’re gonna practice it, and you’re going to make it happen in your workroom. If ⁓ this way they go home with a targeted list, right? And if they have more, then make two or three one one lady said, can I make a list for my husband? Because he worked with her. And I was like, yeah, go for it. But ⁓ this helps narrow your brain down. You’ve learned so much William Hanke (19:11) Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (19:19) You don’t know where to start. You’re you’re overwhelmed. You have to just jump right back into that gopher wheel again. And and and you don’t give yourself time to learn something new. William Hanke (19:31) Yeah. Yeah. There’s something to be said for speed to implementation, right? ⁓ just and and just like mentally having some sort of a win, you know, when you’re trying to improve something, if it’s j
Guest Profile: Anthony Ngucaj Anthony Ngucaj is the founder of Skugga Blinds, a custom window treatment company serving both residential and commercial clients. With a focus on clean, modern solutions, he has successfully completed projects ranging from private homes to large-scale commercial installation, including projects with up to 1,000 roller shades. Other Notes/Links: Follow Us On: Instagram pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CEwmcFZEYs&feature=youtu.be Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00) Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is the founder of Skugga a custom window treatment company serving both residential and commercial clients. He built his business from hands-on experience in construction and installation and has grown Skugga into a company focused on clean, modern solutions. He’s worked on everything from smaller residential projects to large scale commercial installs, including projects with up to a thousand roller shades. What makes his story especially interesting is the evolution. He’s gone from competing on price through platforms like Thumbtack to developing a more strategic approach around pricing, efficiency and scalability with clear goals on building a business that doesn’t rely on him being on site for every job. At the same time, he’s balancing that growth with family life. including being a dad and thinking intentionally about what kind of business he wants to build long-term. This conversation is about growth, mistakes, pricing reality, and what it takes to transition from installer to business owner. Welcome to the show, Anthony Ngucaj Anthony Ngucaj (01:26) hi, how are you? William Hanke (01:27) Fantastic, I’m really happy to have you here today. Let’s jump in and talk about the beginning, like the origin story. How did you get into window treatments from a background in construction? Anthony Ngucaj (01:40) I have necessity to be honest with you. Our shade guy, Steve, who’s my mentor now, whether he realized it or not, but he is. so we will finish our projects and my dad’s name is Bill and the interior designers say, okay, Bill, you did a great job. Now we need shades, we need to sleep. And so my dad be like, okay, let me call Steve. Steve will be… available and everything and, and, but I guess he grew. it came to a point where Steve wouldn’t just be like, okay, I’m coming. He’d be like, wait a minute. How many shades are and how many are motorized? You know, he will have a minimum. then once the, if everything went okay, he’ll come. So at a time came where he wasn’t available, nobody was available. And then, I spoke to him and I said, Hey, we’ve got a problem here. You know, you know, William Hanke (02:18) Yeah. Anthony Ngucaj (02:30) we’re completing 99%. We gotta take the extra 1%. I have some experience, I worked in hotels, you know, and they teach you everything, shades, AC, elevators, whatever. And I said, you know what, I’m gonna do it. And so that’s how I got into it, necessity. William Hanke (02:45) Nice. Yeah, that’s great. You mentioned working with your dad before you started your own thing. What made you want to branch out and kind of start your own business? Anthony Ngucaj (02:57) ⁓ well, I did have an honest conversation with my dad because I’ve been with him since I was 15 years old, know, immigrant family, know, home, what you call it, family business. And I started as a translator. Okay, dad, you know, the customer said this, this, this. Okay, miss, my dad is saying this, you know, it started like that. then William Hanke (03:08) Yeah. Yeah. Anthony Ngucaj (03:22) I passed, started managing multiple projects at the same time for everything, everything. And then before you know it, I graduated my college in 2014 or so. So I was maybe 22 or something like that. And then some more time passed. The problem with having a family business is you get comfortable fast, you know, because you get into this assumption that, okay, I’m going to take over. But as time passes by, it’s kind of like, okay, I need to do my own thing. Do I have a future here? I had a conversation with my dad about this. It was uncomfortable. And we got to a point and we said, listen, you know what? I got to do my own thing. I’m married now. And so, that’s how I got started. It was a little uncomfortable in the beginning for sure. Because as you know, I started from thumbtack and it was just these… Tiny projects, one shade here, 50 bucks there, you know. And, but over time it just, as you said, evolved. Yeah, that’s how I got started. You were about to mention the early grind. Then it was, it was tough because my first customer, I lost her because we had completed the project. did an entire renovation, entire house, beautiful house. And then I go up there and I’m like, Hey, how are you guys doing? I’m here to do your window treatments. They looked at me like I came from the moon. They’re like, Anthony, what are you doing here? Yeah. I’m like, what I’m. William Hanke (04:53) Thank Anthony Ngucaj (04:56) I mean, here, do your window treatments. They’re like, okay, I guess do your thing. I don’t know. You know, and they were telling me stuff I’ve never heard of cellular shades. All I knew was roller shades. That’s all I knew. They were telling me cellular shades, Hunter Douglas, Gerber, something like that. I’m like, wait, what, what is cellular shades? I thought, I swear to God, I thought cellular shades was with the phone. I said, it must be something you can control from your phone. You know, but, William Hanke (05:09) Okay. What the hell? Fair enough. Anthony Ngucaj (05:25) I lost her because to be honest, she could tell that I had no idea what I was talking about. So that was embarrassing. But then some more time passed and I met and I had my first customer and I don’t remember her name, but she was maybe in her sixties who had been in early seventies and she had a problem with her vertical blinds. Right. And still, I mean, I was just like figuring it out and And I had told her, listen, miss, you know, I’m all about customer service and I’m trying to save you money. And I’m going to do the minimum that I can, you know, so you don’t have to buy a new shade or something like that. Cause I’m not here to upsell. I’m here to take care of you and your needs, you know, as I went by the time I, by the time I went through, had gotten there three times. Very nice lady paid me every time. And then it got to a point where I called Steve and I said, Steve, man, listen, I’m trying to fix this vertical line and it’s giving me a freaking headache. And then Steve was like, we should have come in sooner. I will tell you, waste your time. Just tell her, buy a new track. It had head rail. And then that’s it because, the clips, the carriers, whatever that carried the vines, right. They were broken. And because these were old fashioned ones to replace them. It was it just it was impossible, you know And so by the time I told her this she said okay send me a quote and like I didn’t add anything on top I just told her listen this size cost this much. just sent her a link and everything And then she said look, you know what to be honest you we spent so much money at this point that We’re just gonna leave it as it is, know what? William Hanke (06:54) Right. Anthony Ngucaj (07:18) Thursday, I, to be honest with you, if I could have not charged her, it would make me feel so good. You know why? Because she reminded me of my grandma who had passed away maybe like two, three years before her. Very nice lady. but everything’s a learning experience over time, you you evolve and you got to adapt that business to be honest with you. ⁓ well, business like that. ⁓ I know, ⁓ since a very young kid I’ve been in the business world. And I’ve seen two different types of business professionals, business owners, right? There’s the first type where it’s they’re strict. It’s, this is what I do, know, have a nice day. I’ve been doing it for 30 years, have a nice day, right? And then there’s the other one, which I’m not gonna lie, it’s more of the modern generation, right? where they analyze trends and they see, okay, I spent X amount of time doing this activity. Maybe I should switch around and do something else instead within the same market, To be honest with you, the way that things are flowing, things are changing so fast, technology, AI, you have to. you will be left in the dust and they’re gonna be like, what? Skugga who? You know? You know? They’re gonna be like, what? Nah, must adapt. You have to go with the flow. And I don’t remember the scientist’s name, but he said, survivor of the fittest, Charles Darwin. Talk about evolution. He said survivor of the fittest. When he said that he didn’t mean the strongest or fastest, he meant who can fit into any given… William Hanke (08:44) Yeah. Yeah. Anthony Ngucaj (09:08) situation best. That’s what that means. It’s about adapting to any situation, to your customers, to the market. It’s a lot, you know, it’s been a man. It’s been a journey. William Hanke (09:21) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of the early grind and kind of getting those first customers, ⁓ tell me about the name Skugga. Where did that come from? Anthony Ngucaj (09:31) Gosh, that’s hilarious. First of all, that’s where when I first got the idea of opening a window treatment business, I told my wife and I said, you know what? ⁓ That’s it, I’m done. I got to do my own thing. And what I do know is Steve, he makes a lot of money, know, he’s not very rich, but he’s doing okay, you know? Maybe I should do that. I’m good with my hands and this and that. We had a little discussion and then she said, you know, don’t know what you’re gonna do you’re gonna sell shades Anthony you’re a nerd what are you gonna sell? said listen man I gotta make some money and you know what whatever and whatever whatever she said you know all right you know what if you’re gonna do this let’s do it properly set a name I said I have no idea what I’m gonna do to call it Anthony’s blinds you know there’s so many Anthony’s out there and and then it came to us just so random William Hanke (10:20) You Anthony Ngucaj (10:25) I said, yo, you’re taking a master’s degree in Sweden, kind of, right? And she said, yeah. I said, what’s shade or blind in Swedish? know, it’s so random, you know? And then we looked it up and she said, oh, it’s Skugga I said, oh, okay, you know what? That sounds kind of weird, but it sounds unique because what does Google it? What’s Google? It has no meaning to it. William Hanke (10:40) Yeah. Right. Anthony Ngucaj (10:52) Right? What about William Hanke (10:53) Yeah. Anthony Ngucaj (10:53) Yahoo? It’s Yahoo. It makes no sense. Right? It’s actually kind of funny. Right? So I said it doesn’t need to mean anything. Doesn’t have to sound cool. It just has to stick to somebody’s brain. And it’s short. And we say, hey, let’s do it. And Skugga means shades in Swedish. So if you see Skugga blinds or whatever, a Swedish person is going to be like, what? Did he really name his company Shades? That’s where that name came from. William Hanke (10:57) Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That’s awesome. I love that. I love that. It’s original, which is great. Easy to remember. It’s fantastic. So I know that you’ve worked across thumbtack we mentioned, getting referrals, and even some large commercial jobs. How do you think about pricing differently depending on the type of customer? Anthony Ngucaj (11:43) Well at this moment I’m still in the growth stage and And so what from what I’ve noticed there’s almost two paths that you kind of have to take when it comes to growing You know what window treatments right you have for one path which is to Do it individually, right? You talk to them individually and you say, hey, what’s your budget? And read the personnel, you know, kind of get a feel and give them a range and, you know, and see if you can hit some kind of middle ground, right? Or there’s option two, but that’s when you’re larger, right? You can say, hey, this is our prices. We can give you a small discount for that. You know what I mean? Right now, I’m not at a point where I can just say, hey, this is our price, we charge whatever, Have a nice day. You know, I’m at a point where I’m still trying to make connections. so because that’s to be honest to you, to have any business sustainable, it don’t matter, podcast, supermarket, construction, it don’t matter. It’s about relationships. Right. Because, you know, you can only get so many customers, you know, I don’t know. passing out ads, right? But you gotta get like in our instance, right? In the window treatment, you gotta get a contractor. You gotta get deals with designers or maybe window companies. man, if you can hit a window company, because as soon as you install in your window, guess what? You need new shades, right? It must have, it’s about relationships. That’s what it’s about. So right now I’m in the phase where I’m trying to establish relationships. William Hanke (13:04) Right. Anthony Ngucaj (13:30) And then I can maybe get to a point where I can say, okay, this is our prices, you know? That’s where I’m at right now. William Hanke (13:38) Yeah, definitely makes sense. know that you mentioned thumbtacks, some of those types of things. How do you decide which jobs are worth taking and which ones are not? Anthony Ngucaj (13:49) You know what, I would say experience because when I first started, I would just take anything, pretty much anything. I would say out of whatever one shade, 60 bucks, that’s $60 and a half. Right. Well, now I have a lot going on, a lot. I’m a first time dad, right? Generally I’m running on what? Four hours of sleep. man, if I get six hours sleep, that’s almost like vacation, you know? And so, said to myself, okay, so let me get something right. First, I have my son’s unpredictable sleep schedule, right? Which sometimes he sleeps at 9 p.m., sometimes he sleeps at 2 a.m., right? And so there’s that. And then there’s this, trying to grow this business, right? And then there is… William Hanke (14:14) You Anthony Ngucaj (14:42) Now I’m training for a New York City Marathon. This year, I’m running it this year. And so I have been training for a while now. When I first started, was like one mile here, two miles there, which is like, whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes max, right? But now I’m at a point where I’m doing seven miles, eight miles. And so my work day will start eight, nine AM, something like that. And so if I’m doing six miles, that’s an hour, right? So if I gotta be somewhere eight, then that means that seven, I gotta be on my way anywhere. So that means that maybe 5.30 in the morning, I gotta be up, spend an hour, 6.30. Disgusting, I know, forgive me. No shower, no breakfast, nothing. Just change the shirt, you know, and maybe my face a little bit and then continue. And so… William Hanke (15:31) You Anthony Ngucaj (15:39) What I’m getting at is that I realized with all this going on, time is so valuable for me. I’m not like an important guy. not trying to make it, but it’s just, I got to make it count. I got to make it count. You know, ⁓ especially now that I started selling, I guess with our language, it’s, I’ve become a dealer. I realized that there’s significantly more money when you do provide. and install, right? Because you can easily go to one job and I’ve done a project, just one shape and made $300 profit, right? Because I provided the product and I installed, right? Because if I just did installation, how much I’m gonna charge? How much, how high can I go for one shape? You know what I mean? So I gotta justify, right? You gotta provide the product. And so… William Hanke (16:25) Right. you Anthony Ngucaj (16:38) I said to myself, okay, so I can spend a day, even one day, telling you, it can take five minutes, right? Or it can take two hours. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know, you know, until you get there. I have a customer tomorrow. Yesterday, he texted me, hey, how long is it going to take? I said, I don’t know. It’s going to take anywhere from one to three hours. I don’t know until I get started, right? And so now, What happens is that, okay, even once you can take me one to three hours, do I really want to spend one to three hours for $60? Right. And so maybe I don’t, maybe I use that time to stay home or go outside and just make phone calls or go on social media, reach out. Hey, does anybody has any extra work or just get on the phone and maybe optimize the business internally. Right? Maybe mess around with the profile or make some focus of designers and techs. Hey, I just want to say hi. Let me know if you need something. But even though it’s not physically working, all that takes time, you know? And so within one hour, it’s either make 60 bucks or make nothing that day. that one conversation could land you hundreds of dollars or in the thousand. William Hanke (17:35) Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Right. Anthony Ngucaj (18:04) You know, it be like, you know what? Yeah, it’s nice time to you. Why don’t we catch up? I actually have a project I want to bring you on board. You know, I don’t know, shades or whatever. And so, yeah, that day you didn’t work, but that day that you spent on the phone made you like a thousand dollars, $2,000 where you will be spending that time making 60 bucks. You understand? So time is very big, man. You’ve got to choose your time very carefully. Absolutely. William Hanke (18:21) Right. care. Yeah, for sure. Along those lines, any mistakes that you’ve made around pricing that you’re willing to share? Anthony Ngucaj (18:37) Hey Yeah. You guilty. fell into the trap of AI. I started using AI. ChatGPT is my best friend. I’m telling you. Because now… I have to do a quote for example, right? And if I’m mid install, I can’t do that quote. And so I have already contacted my suppliers and they give me price lists, right? And then before it was just like, I don’t know, 20 bucks per shade, just install, right? And then as I grew, I said, wait a minute, hold on. Sometimes I’ll do work for my suppliers, right? To, you know, if they have too much work, I’ll take it on. And then I would say, hey man, like, so how much you pay? You know, I don’t really care. He’s my, he or she is my supplier. I’m not going to nickel and dime them, right? Whatever they can pay. And so they’ll be like, Hey, we’ll pay you $30 per shade. And I’m like, wait, what? mean, thank you. But what? You pay me $30 per shade. So then in my brain, I’m like, wait a minute, I’m charging people 20 a shade, you know? William Hanke (19:44) You Anthony Ngucaj (19:50) So what advice can I give? Do your research. And you know what? Don’t be scared. Use ChatGPT. Use whatever you got on know Gemini or whatever AI you got. Do your research because you know what? Before you know it, you have done, I don’t know, you could do say, you just say, okay, you know what? $20 per shade. I do five shades, whatever. takes you an hour or so. You made, what’s that? A hundred bucks or whatever, right? Where the… Another individual who’s done a little bit of research, right, who had made two, 300 just because they priced it properly. And another thing, reach out, don’t be scared, don’t be ashamed of reaching out. Steve, going back to Steve, can’t stop talking about him. I call Steve and he says, Steve, I got this project. What do I do? And I said, how much would you charge? Steve doesn’t care because he’s been doing it 40 years. He’
Adam Culbreath Adam Culbreath, co-owner of Made in the Shade St. Louis, was raised in Wildwood, Missouri, and graduated from Eureka High School. He developed a passion for soccer early on, which he continues to enjoy today. Adam pursued a degree in finance at Murray State University, where he also strengthened his bond with his brother through shared experiences, including fraternity life. He has a strong sense of adventure, highlighted by studying abroad in Alicante, Spain and traveling to over 20 countries. After college, Adam returned to St. Louis to start a business with his brother, combining his entrepreneurial drive with a deep connection to his hometown. Dustin Yocum Dustin Yocum is the owner of World Class Window Coverings, serving Contra Costa County, CA. With over 20 years of industry experience, from manufacturing to retail, Dustin leads a team dedicated to building personal relationships, listening to clients’ needs, and delivering “World Class” Red-Carpet service. His hands-on approach ensures homeowners and businesses get creative, high-quality window solutions every time. Other Notes/Links: pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Adam Culbreath Made in the Shade St. Louis: Visit Website Dustin Yocum World Class Window Coverings: Visit Website Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK7WWPPIyA4 Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00) All right, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working, what’s changing and how they’re growing their business. I’m Will Hanke and today’s episode is our quarterly check-in where we zoom out a bit and look at what’s actually working in the industry right now. Today I’ve got two guests. First of all, Adam Culbreath Adam is the co-owner of Made in the Shade St. Louis, a Wildwood, Missouri native and a finance graduate from Murray State University. With a background shaped by travel to over 20 countries and studying abroad in Spain, Adam brings a global perspective to his work. Today, he runs the business alongside his brother, combining his entrepreneurial drive with the strong roots in his hometown. Dustin Yocum is the owner of World Class Window Coverings, serving Contra Costa County, California. With over 20 years of industry experience from manufacturing to retail, Dustin leads a team dedicated to bringing personal relationships, listening to clients’ needs, and delivering world-class red carpet service. His hands-on approach ensures homeowners and businesses get creative, high-quality window solutions every single time. Guys, welcome to the show. Adam Culbreath (01:21) Thanks for having us. William Hanke (01:22) Yeah, appreciate you guys being here. let’s start with something simple. How has Q1 felt for you guys so far? Adam, you want to start? Dustin Yocum (01:22) Yes, thank you. Pleasure. Adam Culbreath (01:31) Sure, it’s been kind of odd. It was a little bit different than last year, but kind of a more seasonal, know, kind of went back to the general season that I think window treatments have where January, February is generally a little bit slower. And then it picks up once the warm weather hits with, you know, the early spring stuff. So, you we had a pretty slow January, February, but we’ve since made a lot of that up just with the business from this month and last month. So, which is… William Hanke (01:47) Yeah. Adam Culbreath (01:57) Pretty similar to how we started when I first started the business, know, the first several, couple of years before COVID and all the craziness of the, you know, all that brought, but I would say this one was pretty standard. William Hanke (02:08) Pretty standard. And you’re in the Midwest, so we have four seasons in the Midwest. How about you, Dustin? I know California has one season, Summer. Adam Culbreath (02:13) Yeah, all the seasons. Dustin Yocum (02:17) Pretty much the weather was pretty consistent. Although we’ve had a lot of rain You know, which is great for us, but a little unusual. But yeah, similar like quarter one’s always a little slower And you know Right now we’re picking up so as it’s getting warmer people are wanting more exterior products We’re getting getting those calls coming in. So actually this month is we’re doing very well William Hanke (02:24) Yeah. Okay, that’s great. I’ve also heard it’s been really warm in California, unseasonably warm, so that probably drives a lot more of the exterior stuff. Dustin Yocum (02:46) Yeah, for March it’s been it’s been insane. yeah, it’s it’s the warmer weather brings brings people out wanting them to spend some money. So it’s been it’s been a good thing. William Hanke (02:55) Yeah. How does your Q1 this year compare to your last year? Dustin Yocum (02:59) Well, it’s very different for us just because we merged with a new company. we got, I can’t even compare any numbers to any season we’ve ever had. this is all brand new us since we’ve merged with Winduology. William Hanke (03:06) Yeah. Fair enough, that’s great. Congrats on that growth, by the way, that’s awesome. What has been taking up most of your attention lately in the business? Dustin Yocum (03:13) Thank you, Most of my attention, honestly, is just trying to generate leads and then put a system in place so that way we could nurture those leads and then handle those leads as they come in. So I think it’s mainly just working with the team and figuring out what we need to do so we can be consistent from start to finish for everybody. And we finally now have that team in place where we can do that. William Hanke (03:37) Nice, that feels good. You got the hiring out of the way, now you just have to work on systems. Perfect. Dustin Yocum (03:42) That’s right. That’s right. Every day it’s just improving. That’s I mean, it’s never going to stop. William Hanke (03:46) It never does stop. Yeah, the systems get better, but there’s always some sort of tweaking or update or something changes where you got to go back and redo something. How about you, Adam? What’s been taking up most of your attention lately? D ustin Yocum (03:55) That’s right. Adam Culbreath (03:55) yeah. Right now, I would say we actually have kind of been actually hiring some installers. So we’ve been trying to implement a little bit more systems with that, trying to train new people for installation. It’s the hardest position we found to fill consistently and to have, you know, redundancy and quality. you know, we’re… We’re actually losing my installer, which is my dad. He’s actually, he’s been working with us for, he joined us a couple of years after we started our company with my brother and I. And now he’s kind of moving on to another role kind of in the early stages of retirement, which is pretty exciting for him. So now we’re moving towards less family members into the business, which is nice, but also, you know, trying to create some processes where we can actually have people that are, you know, quality installers that can join into the business, know what to expect, know what to do. So kind of starting to build those processes around them so that way we can grow. Because we’re getting a lot of leads and we have a good salesperson, a couple of good salespeople now, but we’re starting to need to focus on the supply part of the business rather than the demand. William Hanke (05:05) Nice. That’s great. A lot of window treatment dealers are struggling to find installers. How did you guys find yours? Adam Culbreath (05:12) We’ve always found them from different methods, but for one, we actually used Indeed for an installer that we’re actually going to be hiring here at the end of this week, actually. But I found them through multiple different methods from other installers just referring us, as well as taking cards from handyman contractors that we liked. Sometimes when you show up to some of these jobs, you’re like, you know, the fourth or fifth guy that is working on another project in that house while they’re finishing, you know, some space. So, you know, with that, we’ve always just asked for leads and are also just asked for referrals from the client themselves. You know, did you like your guy? Did you like how they did this or that? And a lot of these guys know how to do and install a lot of different products. They actually don’t really mess with window treatments too often is what we find, but they are willing and interested because you can make a lot of money doing it. You know, and so it can be just a little add on. already have a lot of the tools. So we’ve been kind of pushing people that ultimately have some of have their own business and just want to grow, you know, an extra, you know, an extra thing that they can install to make some additional money. It’s a one day job. so it’s not something that’s going to totally rock their world. They can fill in, they can use it to fill in, you know, kitchen remodels, bathroom remodeling stuff, if they have a couple days while the drywalls, butters, they’re in or the painters are finishing. So, found that to be kind of a unique fit. We found some really quality guys to do it. William Hanke (06:31) That’s a great way to do it. Are you just 1099 those guys? Adam Culbreath (06:34) As of right now, yeah. So, but you know, as they grow and I think a lot of them like it, they see it can be simple, but there’s still enough challenge to what has to be done that there’s a decent amount of experience that needs to know like what you’re drilling into, how to fix stuff, how to cut things down if it’s needed to. But ultimately it’s a lot easier than remodeling a kitchen or a bathroom, you know? So it can be a good fit for a lot of people depending on at what point they’re at in their careers. So, but yeah, that’s very nice. William Hanke (07:01) Yeah, really good. Really good. Dustin, how about you on the hiring side? Anything going on there? Dustin Yocum (07:05) You know, I can relate to the Indeed theme, Indeed thing, and I can also relate to having a struggle finding qualified installers. That was our biggest challenge, I would say, more so two, three years ago, for a good stretch there, maybe four or five years, was hard for me to find anybody of quality that just had the integrity that we expect and the work ethic. So this year, the last couple of years, we’ve… Adam Culbreath (07:26) Yes. Dustin Yocum (07:30) We have some great installers, even the ones that we took over Windowology, they have a great installer. He’s a lead. Anything we throw at him, could be a high tech motorization job, hardwired, all the way down to drapery. He can do it in exterior. So we actually have a great team right now, a couple great in-house guys, and I use subs as well. for overflow and actually to handle a lot of our exterior stuff. I’d rather have the guys, if they’re gonna do exterior work, I would prefer them to do exterior work every day. You learn all the tricks of the trade, you can be more efficient, you’re on autopilot with it. So that’s pretty much what we’re doing. We’ve got in-house guys to handle everything we can and then we sub out some of the overflow. William Hanke (08:09) Do you guys tend to see it’s a breed of person that does exterior versus interior? Dustin Yocum (08:14) Yeah, yeah, know guys that put up pergolas and do some construction work, usually, that goes hand in hand, the awnings and the exterior screens. But yeah, but our in-house guys can do the exterior. So, I mean, I think it’s just a matter of them seeing it a few times and, you know, doing it wrong enough, long enough, you tend to figure it out. William Hanke (08:32) Yeah, yeah, Adam Culbreath (08:34) Yeah, I’d agree. William Hanke (08:34) go ahead. Adam Culbreath (08:35) lot of it’s like tools for us. It’s like what tools they have access to, what tools they bring. It’s a totally different subset of tools sometimes for some of those patio shades or the exterior projects. William Hanke (08:45) Yeah. And I guess the training is a little different as well. How do you guys handle that? Dustin Yocum (08:50) I got, we actually have a manager that goes out on site and he’ll oversee everything and he’s seen it from start to finish, you know, for 10 years now. So there’s not a whole lot he hasn’t seen. So that’s usually how it goes. We hire a new guy. We’ll just send him out there for the first, you know, five, 10 installs just to make sure he can oversee everything. And the other ones doing, you know, the heavy lifting, because that’s the main thing with Onyx is. And exterior is just how heavy those things are. You know, lift them up and over your head so you can be a great installer. But if you don’t have that strength, it’s going to be a challenge. So not anybody can do the exterior work or are willing to do it, I should say. William Hanke (09:28) Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Adam Culbreath (09:30) Right? Yeah, we’ve had, we have same kind of deal. Originally it was my dad that was kind of in charge of the installation stuff. So he would go out and kind of get the guy started, tell him where he needs to be, where he needs to go, what needs to happen, stuff like that. But eventually they get to the point pretty quickly, especially if they’re used to doing a lot of exterior installations that they’ll be able to pretty much look and see where, you know, generally where it’s going to need to be going. And so they get a pretty good idea as to. how it needs to be mounted and stuff like that. But as far as the weight stuff, actually, we found a mechanical motorized lift actually. I haven’t purchased it yet, but I have some of our other franchisees have actually been working with it they really, really like it. I can post the link or send a link to you Will on it. But it’s a pretty large lift that actually will raise the awnings or the patio shades to think it’s like 16 feet too if you want to get a big one. That has totally changed a lot of people’s business. It’s a couple grand though, but if you do a lot of exterior projects, mean, especially for a few years, I mean, that can be worth its weight. Honestly, it could probably pay for itself by just avoiding having an extra person on site to have to lift it on both sides. You could have one guy do a lot of it itself. William Hanke (10:39) Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Send me that link. I’ll put it down in the show notes for sure. Yeah. That’d be great. All right. So Q1, we’re pretty much at the end of Q1 when we’re recording this. It’ll probably go out a couple of days after we’re already into Q2. So what are you guys leaning into more as a business owner in Q2 than you have maybe in Q1? Adam Culbreath (10:59) For us, we’re actually really trying to build out our lead boomerang actually. we’ve been with lead boomerang now for about two years, I want to say. And we really want to get the workflow side of our business actually built out more so that we can automate a little bit more too. We’ve actually been incorporating as well lot of AI into our business a little bit. So, we do a lot of our order entry and I’m quoting to with different softwares, but we’ve never had a real way to make it accurate and to make it where we can double check ourselves. So we’ve built actually an AI tool to basically where we can send reports and use that to cross check basically what we’ve been doing. So, and it’s already saved us a little bit of money just in the beginning, since we’ve just started this, it was like last week is when I built it. So. It’s pretty exciting stuff, so I’m excited to continue to build it out. There’s a lot of tweaks that come with it, but it’s overall pretty simple. William Hanke (11:53) That’s awesome. What tool are you guys using? What language model are you using for that? Adam Culbreath (11:57) Originally I built it with Chat GPT, but I actually switched it to Gemini. Just because we’ve, I’ve just saw, mean, Gemini is pretty interesting not to make it just like an ad for Gemini here, but I do really like having the multi dashboard usage. If you’ve experienced that where it actually will look at the different pages you have open on a website, which is the most integrative that I’ve seen AI be with how you use like an internet browser. So. It’s amazing. Like I could have a picture of my drawings of a measuring sheet and my brother has done some, he doesn’t have good handwriting, I can be honest with you there. But the language model will look at the drawings and it will actually cross check and implement all the measurements into an Excel doc or into a report if you want it to. And then it’ll just automatically cross check what you have as well in the quote or what you’re gonna order on the. Dustin Yocum (12:42) and Adam Culbreath (12:50) dashboard or just on your page of the ordering software for the manufacturer you choose. it’s pretty amazing what’s coming, I think, or how it’s going to continue to be built out. It’s obviously really in the early stages of a lot of it, but I’m at a point now where I really don’t want to make any mistakes, any of these dumb mistakes that we have for ordering that come up. there’s so many buttons, there’s so many ways to mess this stuff up. And we found that if I could just have another way to, another set of eyes constantly. to double check on and maybe just flag things that look odd or different or you choose the wrong color somewhere. There’s just a million ways to make it go wrong. So if we could do anything we can to help save us some money and it already has, it’s amazing. William Hanke (13:32) That’s great. I love that you’re leaning into AI. love that you’re leaning into Lead Boomerang. Lead Boomerang is our CRM on steroids that we’ve built specifically for the window treatment industry. And Adam and Dustin are both our clients, so they get access to that as part of our program. So that’s awesome. I love to hear that. ⁓ Dustin, what is it that you guys are leaning into more this quarter? Dustin Yocum (13:55) You know, follow what Adam said along with lead boomerang. That’s the same idea. We’re trying to get more and more, get the team more more comfortable with it. So I know they’ve been meeting and getting more comfortable with it because we actually use lead boomerang to capture the leads, but we use HubSpot for nurturing the leads. we’ve always had HubSpot, so we’re kind of afraid to jump to all in with one and until we’re real comfortable with it know how to have it built out exactly the way we need it. But anyhow, That’s, you know, as far as nurturing the leads and all that kind of stuff. But more in-house builds is my focus. I’m excited about, you know, we manufacture our own roller shades and we do it right in Pleasanton. So Pleasanton, California. And we have full control over the quality there and our guys are true craftsmen, you know, that build. And so that to me is what we’re. Focusing on we’ve got a few good jobs We’re doing right now that we’re building but just getting that get that in the hands of our designers So they could start pushing it more. That’s that’s been my biggest focus for this year as well as just you know, selling our main vendors the Graver and Hunter and all that stuff William Hanke (15:02) ⁓ We’ve seen an increase in the amount of clients that we have that also have a manufacturing segment. So that’s interesting that you guys are doing that as well. And like you said, you can control the quality. You can control most of the entire process at that point. Dustin Yocum (15:18) Yeah, we, know, our minimums and maximums are going to be different than the large companies. So again, we just have more control and we build a great motorized shade. We could put any motor in there, but also repa
Guest Profile: Lexi Schultz Lexi Schultz is a co-owner of The Great Curtain Company, a woman-owned, mother-daughter business based in Austin, Texas. With nearly two decades in the custom drapery and window treatment industry, Lexi has built a reputation for blending high-end design with real-world expertise, helping homeowners and designers navigate everything from fabric selection to architectural problem-solving. Known for her candid approach, deep industry knowledge, and concierge-level service, Lexi specializes in custom drapery, shades, and design-driven solutions that elevate how people live in their homes. Offer: As a thank you to the Marketing Panes community , Lexi is offering a complimentary Curtain Clarity Call for designers or homeowners who need direction on an upcoming project. It’s a short, high-value conversation to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence. Simply mention the podcast when you connect with her. Other Notes/Links: Websites: The Great Curtain Company pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9CcZVXdDzs Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:02) Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals. about what’s working and marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is the owner of The Great Curtain Company in Austin, Texas, a showroom known to locals as the Disneyland of Curtains. Her roots in the business run deep. She grew up working side by side with her mom. We’re gonna dig into that a little bit. her mom who ran a decorating den franchise and then co-founded their own drapery business in 2006. Since then she helped grow the company into one of the largest curtain showrooms in the Gulf Coast region expanding from retail into trade services, custom fabrication, and most recently a new educational platform called Art of Drapery Academy. She’s a savvy sales leader, designer advocate, and unapologetic fan of American-made sourcing. Lexi Schultz, welcome to the show. Excited to dig into some of this stuff. There’s a lot to unpack here already, right? Lexi Schultz (01:09) Hey, well, thanks so much for having me. ⁓ I’m so excited too. I really appreciate you guys and I can’t wait to tell you more about our story and kind of how we work. William Hanke (01:22) Yeah, yeah, well, why don’t you go ahead and take me back? Take me back. How did the great curtain company come to be? Lexi Schultz (01:29) Sure. So my mom, Lauren Schultz, she has owned a decorating den franchise since the early 90s. So when we moved to Texas, I very, at a very young age was following her around at, you know, site visits and things like that, kind of helping her with books and things like that. And she had this franchise for probably a solid 10 years and she grew her franchise into one of the biggest decked-in franchises in the central Texas region. And after she did that for long time, she decided that she didn’t want to be a part of a franchise anymore. She really wanted to dig deep and do her own thing. So she did her own interior design for a long time. But as the early 2000s came around, she had decided, you know what, I want to go back to window treatments. Window treatments were always a passion of hers. And in my entire childhood, we grew up with the most extravagant swag boards and all of the OG 90s stuff that you remember, William Hanke (02:16) Yeah. Lexi Schultz (02:19) know, wallpapered drapes, wallpapered walls, wallpapered everything and draperies that match. And so I grew up with a love of the same textiles and just the overall craftsmanship that go into this. So in the early 2000s, she decided, you know what, I’m done with doing interior design exclusively. I just want to do window treatments again. And she built this storefront from scratch in 2006. And as I was graduating high school, I had kind of two paths to choose. You I could either kind of go along with what I thought I was going to do, which was graphic design. and I’ve been noodling around in Photoshop since I was nine years old. So I had a really firm grasp of design and layouts for magazines and doing all of our advertising and things like that. But when she built this showroom and I did all of that for a couple of years when we first started, I really wanted to get into the tactile beauty of fabric, actually touching and seeing and working with real textiles versus everything being conceptual on the computer all the time. So I really leaned back into interior design. but still work both side by side. So in 2006, we built this beautiful storefront. It is not a franchise. It is family owned still to this day, 20 years later. It’s still the two of us. And we have a great staff and installer on staff and everything to be able to help us make some of the most beautiful treatments you can possibly imagine. Yeah. William Hanke (03:37) I love that. That’s great. What’s it been like building something like this with your mom? Lexi Schultz (03:42) It’s been both fun and challenging. So I am an only child. So she is literally my best friend. She’s everything to me. And so when we built this storefront, was initially her vision of just having wall to wall custom draperies that were ready made. We had a concept in 2006 when we first started where it was dominantly just beautiful silk draperies, because silk was the thing in the early 2000s. a very Tuscan Italian Mediterranean style showroom for the central Texas region of that time. And her concept was just, want to have beautiful off the shelf, high quality, handmade in the US type drapery. And we did that for many years until we saw more architects building and developing bigger homes, bigger windows that required custom. So that’s where we just fully went into custom. But building a brand side by side with a family member. It’s been really rewarding, know, her having all of the experience to be able to produce a business model that allows me to kind of pick up the torch now and be a face person for our brand and still be very much in touch with today’s trends, having all of the knowledge, but also the current foresight of where, you know, our business model is going. It’s been fun working with her side by side for so long. Yeah. William Hanke (04:58) That’s great. So my daughter Amber works with me too. she so I understand I understand the dynamic ⁓ Lexi Schultz (05:01) ⁓ yeah, for sure. We certainly have our moments. I’m not gonna lie and say we don’t have an all out, you know, fight over something or a concept both of us don’t agree on. We do a lot of designing for the showroom as far as having display pieces and like what brands to bring on. William Hanke (05:12) Right. Lexi Schultz (05:18) So we don’t always see eye to eye as like what drapery we want to make on the wall or what Roman shade we want to make for a display for this season. But beyond that, we’ve been working together so long that we really have a very know, tandem style of how we’re gonna do the future building of the store. William Hanke (05:34) Yeah, it’s fun. The dynamics great. And I’ve given Amber, my daughter permission to tell me no, because as a visionary, you’re like, we should do this, and we should do this, and we should do this, right? So I need somebody to kind of keep me focused. ⁓ Lexi Schultz (05:39) yeah, absolutely. Exactly, exactly. She’s a very, she’s a great idea person and I like to be more of an executor. So it’s a good combination, but sometimes where it’s like we have so many ideas, but we want to do them all at one time. And it’s not totally logistical to do that, but we can. William Hanke (06:02) Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I know you probably started out in the mail room or whatever and worked your way up. So how have you seen over the last 20 years the businesses evolved? Lexi Schultz (06:04) Yeah. Yes, exactly, yes! Yeah, so like I mentioned before, we started off, our concept was strictly just walk-in traffic. We did newspaper magazine ads in the day. We had magazine ads. There was no real internet advertising at this time. It hadn’t become quite a thing just yet. And so we really relied heavily on being open six days a week, you know, 10 to five, having clients come in and do, you know, design on the fly where they bring pillows or they bring sketches of their window configurations. And pictures on a camera phone or even print it out at that time. And so people would bring a lot of homework with them just without even making an appointment. It was full walk in and we could sit down and look at things on the wall and go, this is the one. But in the last decade, specifically from like 2013 to 2019, we saw a huge shift in not only not wanting to something off the shelf, really honing in on customization. So we brought on a lot of different suppliers and vendors when it came to hardware. when it came to fabric and then ultimately buying in and building our workrooms that can support a much larger scale than we had initially thought the showroom was ever going to be. So in the last 10 years or so, we’ve William Hanke (07:23) wow. Lexi Schultz (07:25) seen walk-in traffic kind of dip. I’m pretty sure anyone in this industry who’s got a storefront, a brick and mortar has seen the same thing since the pandemic. But we started to see just a bigger trend at that point of online people, different vendors from around the country providing things and being able to drop ship. So the world really changed probably after 2013 for window treatments specifically and having to really cater to more of a one-on-one experience, making an in-store appointment. Walk-in traffic wasn’t the big flow anymore. We had to spend a lot more on advertising to get calls and build campaigns around that that would support people finding us, not just assuming they’re. walking by or getting a coffee, which we’re in a coffee shop area, and coming in like they used to and going, this is perfect. Let’s buy this right now. It doesn’t work that way anymore. William Hanke (08:10) Yeah, yeah, the audience is still there. They’ve just changed location, right? Lexi Schultz (08:13) Absolutely, absolutely. we change with it. The beauty of what we’ve done in keeping it small, but expanding internally, my mom and I are really good at pivoting. So we can kind of see trends coming at us and go, okay, we’ve seen enough of this as far as it’s shift in our marketing. We’ve seen enough of this type of group of people reaching out. We’ve seen enough of this ⁓ type of product out in the market that we need to jump into, that we need to bring on. So we’re good at adapting. But it’s certainly, it’s been kind of a Mr. Toad’s wild ride, you know, because up and down with the retail marketplace ⁓ today, can be no one tomorrow, there could be 50 people calling. So it’s one of those things that we just have had to adapt specifically since the pandemic, but even before that, we were seeing walk-ins and the concierge level needing to be more of how we built our brand around. Yeah. William Hanke (09:03) Yeah, what’s one thing you’ve learned working in a family business that others might not expect? Lexi Schultz (09:09) probably just the amount of time in your life that you’re going to dedicate to your job. A lot of people and you see the memes online that are like, it must be great to run your own business. And then you see somebody like completely passed out asleep, you know, at the wheel or just waiting for the day to end because they don’t, they’re so tired. And so having people understand that you are going to take your business everywhere with you, whether you are sitting in the showroom, whether you are driving home, you’re going to be pulling over and sending a text to somebody. Whether you’re on an airplane at an airport and you’re managing an installation back at home, you are texting them and telling them, I can’t talk. I’m getting on an airplane, but I’ll get back to you in two hours. I even equate it to recently we went to Disney World and I’m laughing saying I’m sitting here with Mickey ears and I’m texting on my store phone to clients while I’m on the monorail. You know what I mean? Like this is the level that you take with you and blessing and a curse. But at the same time, you’re You’re so into your business and having your connections and your installers. There’s not really any one person you can pass the buck to when it’s your own business that you independently own and operate with yourself or a family member. William Hanke (10:18) Yeah, and it’s hard to separate, right, from the Lexi Schultz (10:21) It is super hard to separate. That’s what we’re kind of trying to kind of build in 2026, our systems that are going to allow us to not necessarily be more autonomous, but at least have touch points that we can prioritize because we manage anywhere from 30 to 50 clients a month with 30 to 50 installations happening a month. And so any point of the day, nighttime, two in the morning, I’ll wake up in a sweat and have a question on an order. It doesn’t stop. There’s nothing you can do to really like turn it off when you have your own. business, which makes us very successful. We’re very much all about our clients’ William Hanke (10:54) Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely think that’s a big part of it. You want everybody to have a great experience overall, right? And you’ll do. Lexi Schultz (11:01) service. I grew up with the mantra of the customer is always right. And then you have just this background of generations of my mom and her mother being in an industry of customer service like this. So it means a lot to be able to take that and bring it into the 2026 because you don’t see it as much anymore. People who really care about your experience, whether it’s at a coffee shop, a restaurant or walking into a high end furniture store. The general feedback I feel as a consumer going in is I wish you would service me like I service my people, you know? And so that’s just what we’re trying to keep going with. We’re not going to stop that. William Hanke (11:32) Right. That’s great. What’s one moment working with your mom that still makes you laugh or taught you something big, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time? Lexi Schultz (11:47) We used to hours building magazine ads because this is when magazines were the thing. Early 2000s, Texas Home and Living, in Austin we have a company called Austin Woman Magazine. We were in the Austin Statesman. This is how we had our clients find us was hard magazine ads before the invention of AI or the internet when it came to advertising. We used to be, because of my graphic design background, I would just kind of take the reins and start building the ad. But then she and I would sit there and start tweaking it. And this would be turned into like, you know, having wine night and making pasta and working on the ads and things like that that were just felt so monumental at the time because they were so difficult. But now 20 years fast forward, we are doing. such a different approach to advertising that, you I feel like all that work we put in in the early 2000s to build the brand and be able to know what colors work and what stylistically we wanted our ads to look like has made our job a lot easier when telling our advertisers now, hey, here’s what we want. Here’s our branding. It’s really built this like ⁓ runway for us to be able to not stress about how we want to present ourselves to the public. So We spent hours laughing, crying, yelling at the computer, making ads, uploading them at 11:55 p.m. before they were due the next day to go to print. And then nowadays I’m like, I go back and I laugh at it because that was so much physical work that we had to do. A lot of it’s been the relief valve’s been pulled by using AI, but AI is just a tool you can use only if you know what you’re doing with it. So having all this background as far as how to make this brand feel cohesive through the years, has been the biggest like, ⁓ I’m glad we put in the time on that, you know? ⁓ William Hanke (13:37) Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So I want to shift a little bit talk about sales, buyer habits and things you mentioned. You mentioned retail has changed a lot since the pandemic, especially people are shopping a little bit differently now. Walk us through what somebody sees when they walk into your showroom. Lexi Schultz (13:52) Mm-hmm. William Hanke (13:56) What’s the first kind of like wow piece that they notice? Lexi Schultz (14:00) Absolutely. So I know we’re a little cropped right now, but we have about a thousand square feet of a very long showroom. So when they walk in, I have these stunning velvet draperies with a big set of trim on them. And they kind of set the tone because they’re oversized, they’re 14 foot tall, they’re on a gorgeous rod. And they kind of separate the front half of the showroom, which is dominantly display product and Roman shades and a tactile finished product. So they can see what a finished drapery or cornice box looks like. And then as they kind of like explore the rest of our showroom, we’ve got all of our fabrics. We’ve got shelving units. We’ve got everything back here that feels more curated and more come sit down and explore the materials is kind of the feel in the back of the store. That’s more of the studio. This is more of the front facing part of the store where people can touch and feel and see a pinch pleat and pull it on a track system. So having a really dynamic amount of visceral. reaction when people walk in to see textiles from silk to linen to velvet, everything, and then really knowing they can step back here and, my gosh, look at all this choice. That’s where we come in and really provide that concierge service of pairing what they want with the right fabric. So we’ve got studio and then we’ve got like actionable, visible workroom in the front. William Hanke (15:10) Yeah. Is the, is the showroom continually changing? Are you guys pulling stuff down, putting new stuff up? Lexi Schultz (15:18) my gosh, yes, Will. I mean, after this call, I literally have to like, you know, go take my jacket off and move a drapery two feet to the right, because we just got some new stuff. So I’m always up and down on a ladder. We’re always here after hours rotating and changing things, especially if we bring on a new vendor. And it’s really hard to room in a small amount of square footage to keep bringing on bigger and better things. But we do really drill down on what are our top sellers. That’s been the most important thing. I do not keep in my showroom anything that I don’t actually sell. William Hanke (15:20) Thank Lexi Schultz (15:47) because every inch of square footage is profit. It’s also ⁓ a vision to show my clientele of what is the latest and the greatest. So anything that doesn’t meet a lot of standards for us, we’ve been able to just kind of trim the fat over the years. But we will always sit down and probably rotate at least once, if not twice a year, major display products. ⁓ And then we have kind of a big clearance sale seasonally so that people can come in and buy one off display drapery or a beautiful mock Roman topper or something so that it doesn’t just go to waste. William Hanke (16:17) I think you’ve got great energy and I think obviously that plays into all of this as well. So what role does story playing, inspiration play in closing a sale today? Lexi Schultz (16:27) Yeah, mean, just what we just talked about having the storefront when a client walks in makes them feel like, wow, these people know what they’re doing. They’re going to know how drapery is sup
Guest Profile: Nathan Eldridge Nathan Eldridge is the CEO of Franchise Support Services (FSS), Nathan has leveraged his extensive background in technology and executive management to bring transformative solutions to the industry. His entrepreneurial journey began with the launch of two successful window treatment franchises in Dallas and Houston, where he quickly identified the industry’s need for more efficient and accurate measuring tools. Nathan’s most notable contribution is the development of the FSS Window Pro™ app, a groundbreaking tool that has revolutionized the window treatment consultation process. By integrating Bluetooth laser and tape measure measuring technology with cloud-based data management, Nathan has addressed one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: measurement accuracy. The app has significantly reduced errors, saved costs, and improved the speed of consultations, directly impacting the bottom line of businesses in the sector. This innovation demonstrates Nathan’s commitment to not only his own success but to the advancement of the entire window coverings industry. Beyond his technological contributions, Nathan’s launch of the Commercial Takeoff service further showcases his dedication to empowering small retailers to expand into larger commercial projects. By simplifying the complexities of project bidding, he is enabling more businesses to grow and thrive. Nathan Eldridge is a visionary leader who is actively reshaping the window treatment industry. Other Notes/Links: Websites: Franchise Support Services pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/P-Fl6yWv4JU?si=NExbpwY1f8Nw6RVu Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00) Hey, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today, we’re joined by the founder of Franchise Support Services and a long-time leader in the window treatment space, Nathan Eldridge. Nathan comes from a deep background in engineering and tech. And after running successful franchises in Dallas and Houston, he shifted his focus to helping businesses improve accuracy, workflow and field operations. His work centers on solving real measurement and training challenges that every window treatment and awning company deals with. Welcome to the show, Nathan. Nathan Eldridge (00:47) Thank you very much, Will. Glad to be here. William Hanke (00:49) Yeah, glad to have you here today. know we’ve been friends for a while now, so ⁓ it’s exciting to have you on to kind of talk about what you’re up to. Yeah. So for anyone who hasn’t met you, how did your career in window treatments begin and how hands-on were you with the measurements and installs early on? Nathan Eldridge (01:11) My journey into the window treatment world was very interesting. in 2018, 2019, I started to look at franchises. I knew I wanted to buy a franchise. And I probably looked at, you know, probably 80 businesses. And when I came across the window treatment business, I looked at it and I realized like an epiphany, like window treatments is what my wife would love to do. And it took us about 18 months of exploring and looking at FDBs, but we bought our first franchise in 2021. And that was with Gotcha covered. It was for my wife to run full time. I kept my corporate job in the backend and I was going to help with systems and processes because that’s what I’ve done for my career. It took us about four months getting into the business and constantly telling our family about how exciting it was and talking with the window treatments and my wife just gravitated to the design side and the fabrics and all those different types of products. My sister looked at it and said, wow, this looks awesome. I want to do the same thing. so within about four or five months, I partnered with my sister. opened a second franchise. And then within one year we expanded to four territories. And so it was quick, fast and furious kind of growth into it. know, anyone that knows me, I don’t sit still very well. And so the growth and the explosion into it, I was there building the systems, the processes, and kind of looking at what we were doing. measurements quickly rose to the top of my focus list for my sister and my wife about how to optimize. And ⁓ what started as just trying to fix something for my family turned into a new product for the industry. William Hanke (02:52) Very good, and that product is the FSS Window Pro, right? Nathan Eldridge (02:58) That’s it, yep. So the FSS Window Pro is the app that we launched. When we first created it, it was really just something that was putting there for us. Being part of a franchise, we have 160 other best friends that are franchise owners and we started to show it to some of them and they started to ask, well, how do we get this? We want this in our business. And so we kind of went down a path of just being something we were gonna use internally to, okay, let’s open it and try to get it to where other franchises can use it, our friends. And then they would tell people and people started coming to us and saying, well, how do we get access to it? We’re not part of the franchise. so it just kind of bloomed in 2023 into something that we put open to the market. And it’s kind of grown word of mouth since then. William Hanke (03:39) I love it. ⁓ That’s awesome. the FSS Window Pro was even an idea, what were some of those biggest frustrations that you were seeing out in the field? Nathan Eldridge (03:50) Man, so measurements were dependent on the person. So you could have one person that could do it really well, one person that did terrible at it. Tape measures, they’re error-prone in real-world conditions, right? You’re at the end of the day, you’re tired, you’re having to bend over, or you’re on a ladder reaching up. My wife is very short, so everything that was above her head was a challenge. You also, it’s independent on rounding decisions. So it’s very inconsistent from person to person, how they read it, what they round to. In our industry, doing inside mount. and rounding down is very important. ⁓ Then that came down to writing the measurement. introducing the human error, was that a 5 8s or a 3 8s, reading the handwriting later, transcribing it ⁓ wrong, were the top pain points. Those five were top pain points for us. William Hanke (04:38) Yeah, and as a systems guy, human error is like the bane of your existence, right? You the whole reason you build these things. Nathan Eldridge (04:45) Yeah, yeah, you know, a good system should have no human error. The process should be so robust that anyone can use it, right? You don’t need super humans to run your business. William Hanke (04:55) Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you’ve mentioned before that those processes and not the people are often the root of the mistakes. So can you unpack that a little bit more? Nathan Eldridge (05:08) Yeah. So coming from my corporate background, you know, at multiple degrees in engineering, lean is embedded in everything that I’ve done my whole career. And, you know, errors when they do happen, it’s not human. The human nature is we go, why did you make that mistake? And you focus on the person, you know, a really basic tool that, you know, people learn early on in lean is five Y’s, right? So when you ask why five times, so if you took a measurement that’s wrong and you asked, why was it wrong? It’s wrong because someone wrote it down incorrectly. Why do they get written down incorrectly? Because the rep was rushing, relying on their memory. Why were they rushing? Because there wasn’t a standard workflow, no validation. Why was there no validation? Because the process was never designed to catch errors. And by time you get down to the fifth, you’re no longer talking about the installer, the sales rep, you’re talking about what’s missing in the standards or a lack of a tool. And so it’s really just about bringing that into a workflow and trying to make it where it’s optimized, where everyone can succeed at the same level. William Hanke (05:57) Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s awesome. You took that kind of you drilled down into what the real issue was, tried to start solving for that, which would obviously then work its way back up the chain. What was what kind of surprised you the most on the tech side training gap, even resistance to change? Nathan Eldridge (06:27) So the first stage was with my sister and my wife and their adaption to new technology was good. I brought them the solution and they were eager to remove problems and so the adaption was easy. When we went to the next step, we kind of expanded it to franchises. I found that people really had a hard time of, this is how I’ve always done it. I’ve always used tape measures. I’ve always done a notepad with a pen and paper. ⁓ Somewhere in the journey into launching it into the full market, I heard enough customer feedback that people maybe didn’t trust lasers. They bought a laser 10 years ago and they tried it and they had accuracy problems. And a lot of the times if you, fly, why did they have accuracy problems on a laser? They treated it like it was a hammer. They threw it in a tool bag. You got thrown in the back of the truck when most of these lasers need to be treated like a cell phone, right? You don’t just throw it in a bag and throw it somewhere. You put it in your pocket. It’s taken care of. ⁓ But one of the things that we’ve looked at is that adoption of the tech side and the resistance to change is the Reekon T1 That’s a nice middle ground. So if you have someone that’s not ready to fully go into a laser, but they want to go digital, they want to remove some human error, they can go into a Reekon T1, which is a Bluetooth tape measure. And that product’s unique because it has no calibration. So if you drop it, as long as it powers on, it doesn’t have to get recalibrated. So it really helps the trust factor. to get them into new tech and the resistance to change. It’s not the ideal product. Laser is definitely the ideal product as a place for both of them, but it is a really nice stepping stone for people to at least engage in a digital way to change their process. William Hanke (08:09) Yeah. What measuring tool do you prefer people to use or recommend? Nathan Eldridge (08:15) Everyone that I do a demo for, I recommend that they buy both. So to me, a laser is like a Phillips screwdriver and the T1 is like a flathead. So everything that’s an inside mount product, you should run the laser for. Everything that’s an outside mount product in draperies, you should run the T1 for. And so my recommendation is that you build your processes around that. I tell a lot of people a story that a lady finished measuring a job. with her X3 on a Friday and she had changed the reference point from the back of the device to the front of the device to measure some depth of some windows. And then she put it in her bag and forgot to change it back. And the next Monday she showed up at a client’s house and she measured an entire $37,000 job with the reference point from the front of the device instead of the back. Cost her $37,000 to remake the whole house because everything inside Mount was three and a half inches short, which was a terrible thing to experience. If she had bought that one tool, $260 to have the T1 and use the T1 for that measurement, she would have never, ever changed her settings. And so like the idea of this again, lean, right? $260, the right tool for the right thing. And she would have never touched her settings ever. And that mistake could never happen in the business. And so I try to convince everyone to think about it that way. There’s two tools, one for inside mount, one for outside mount, and you build it into your process. William Hanke (09:42) ⁓ very good. ⁓ Is that a pretty common measurement mistake that people make or do you see some other ones that are pretty consistent? Nathan Eldridge (09:54) ⁓ I think that a lot of people wouldn’t try to use the laser to measure the depth of a window. They probably would just pull out their tape measure and do it manually. ⁓ So I don’t think that’s a common mistake, but it’s definitely available. Anyone that messes with the settings, you could happen into that as a mistake. William Hanke (10:12) Yeah. Do you see any mistakes that repeat themselves over and over again? Nathan Eldridge (10:17) rushing, being tired, frustrated. One of my favorite examples is helicopter customers. And the helicopter customer, you’re in their home, they want to follow you around and watch you as you’re going through their house. But the helicopter customer is the person that is following you six inches off your side and wanting to talk to you the entire time. And you’re trying to focus on measuring. And you could go up on a step ladder, you get the top measurements, you come back down the ladder, William Hanke (10:38) yeah. Nathan Eldridge (10:44) you go to ride at the notepad. And you don’t remember what the dimension was because you just lost it because you stopped for a second to answer a question to her. so, you know, between the human fatigue of being rushed or tired and the helicopter customers, those definitely set the pace for the largest repeating mistakes. William Hanke (11:00) I feel like we should be able to create like a Seinfeld episode out of this, right? Similar to the close talker, guess, right? Nathan Eldridge (11:05) Yes, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. William Hanke (11:12) Yeah. So are there any hidden costs that business owners don’t always calculate beyond just the remake that you explained in the one example? Nathan Eldridge (11:22) Yeah, remakes are the top and we can see that directly on our P &L as owners and operators. But, you know, one of the hidden things that are cost is return trips. So you were in the home and you think that they’re going to do only inside mount products. So you only measured inside mount. Then you get home and, know, I don’t know what other people experienced in our two businesses. We probably average about two and a half quotes per person. So we’re between two and three iterations of quotes. And a lot of times they’re going to move from an inside mount to an outside mount. Maybe they went to a friend’s house that night and they had beautiful outside mount. They’re like, you know what, we’re inspired. We want to change. And if you didn’t capture those measurements, guess what? You’re doing a new trip and you’re going back out there and re-measuring for outside mount. These add up. They chip away at your margins. They take away your capacity, your team to schedule, you know, more consults and installs. And so I think that’s probably one of the worst things that we do. And we have a solution for that. You’re standing at the window, you capture all the measurements at one time. You measure inside and outside and in know 15 seconds of that window you can iterate your quote 10 times. It doesn’t matter. You have all the dimensions you need as the customer changes their mind on products and so yeah. William Hanke (12:34) Interesting. So it’s a good habit for somebody that’s doing the measuring to have that kind of muscle memory to do that. Are there any other habits or field routines that you see that really separate the pros from the noobs, the starters? Nathan Eldridge (12:54) Measuring the same way every time. So having a process and you know, the pros definitely want to capture the inside mount, the outside mount dimensions all at one time. They never want to have to come back. We modeled the app around how we measure and that’s just how we do it. But we built in a template feature so anyone can take it and mold it to match their measurement processes. And then they save it. So every time they walk up to the window, it’s in the exact order. They can add custom measurements and it makes it their sheet and they do the same thing every single time. That repetition really helps get people in the flow. When they’re measuring every window different based on where they’re standing or, you know, right handed, left handed and, you know, measuring left to right or right to left, top down, it really makes a big difference in the repeatability. So ⁓ William Hanke (13:47) Yeah, yeah. Can you walk us through the day of, you know, day in the life of someone using the FSS Window Pro app? Nathan Eldridge (13:54) Yeah. So today you start, you know, first thing in morning, you’re going to create the clients that you’re going to go measure that day. So you’d look at your calendar, you’d be creating whatever clients you’re going to be measuring. ⁓ When you show up to their house, you go in and you start measuring. In the app we organized today by rooms. Most residential are organized, you know, by the living room, the kitchen, bedroom one, primary bedroom, things like that. Inside of them, we have auto naming in the app that kind of goes through window AA through ZZ. which lets you put about 271 windows per room. And then for every single window, you’re going to capture all the dimensions. We have a section for product notes, installation notes, and job site pictures. And one of the really key things that we try to teach people in the demo phase, that job site pictures, you should take two pictures per window. You should be taking a picture during the tech measure so you can see that that drywall damage was already there. Your team didn’t do it. And then after you do the install, you can take another picture of it. And then that really serves as kind of your warranty claim when they call you back and say, hey, this slats broken. You’ve got that picture as your crew went to leave the house of it perfectly installed. You send it back to the customer and they go, ⁓ you know what my nephew was playing in there last night. Maybe he broke it. Maybe it wasn’t y’all. So the before and after really is powerful. And then you access all of that data from our portal. You can pull all the measurements out in an Excel file or in a PDF report. William Hanke (15:14) Okay. Nathan Eldridge (15:14) Both of those come with all the notes and then you can also pull down the zip files of all the high resolution pictures. And so it really lets you just have a complete data set of that pulled out. lot of our customers want those files moved into their own cloud or customer storage. So they’re pulling them out of our portal and loading it into their SharePoint or Google Drive or wherever they use. William Hanke (15:38) Yeah, very good. I know we’ve got it in lead boomerang. We’ve got a section specifically for documents and pictures. And a lot of our clients will do that exact thing. They’ll take before and afters and save them in there. It’s tied to that contact record so that they have that when they call back a couple of months later and said, you broke this. Nathan Eldridge (15:56) Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s so important. People that are doing notepads, you’re not gonna ever come back and find those. And a lot of our customers, you ask them, how many jobs did you do last month? Oh, we did 30 jobs. Okay, how many pictures on your camera roll from that job? 1,400. How are you gonna find the one picture to that one window that you need for the warranty claim? So having it organized with an easy button is really, really good. William Hanke (16:22) Yeah, yeah, having all that data tied to something that’s easy, easily searchable. What data do you think people often forget or miss, especially when they’re measuring by hand? Nathan Eldridge (16:32) Definitely obstructions or the installa
Guest Profile: Ceil DiGuglielmo Ceil DiGuglielmo is the owner of The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library, the industry’s largest collection of educational resources for Custom Home Furnishings Professionals. She is also the owner of Learn to Choose Window Coverings an online course for window treatment professionals created by Linda Erlam.Ceil has owned a to the trade workroom since 2005. Ceil is passionate about education and technology in the window coverings and soft home furnishings industry. She has taught at the Custom Workroom Conference and has done presentations for several Window Coverings Association of America chapters. Ceil is the producer and Host of The Sew Much More Podcast, an interview-style podcast sharing the stories of the people in the custom home furnishings industry. Ceil also produces and co-hosts 30 Minutes with Workroom Tech with Susan Woodcock, offering workroom education. Other Notes/Links: Websites: The Sew Much More Podcast The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library Learn to Choose Window Coverings pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/Fb98Tcf4LtQ Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00) Welcome back to Marketing Panes where we talk with real window treatment professionals, business owners and service providers about what’s working in marketing and what’s changing in the industry. Today’s guest is Ceil DiGuglielmo a longtime workroom pro turned educator and the current steward of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library. one of the most comprehensive collections of training and tools in the industry. She spent years helping fabricators and designers not only level up their skills, but build confidence and community along the way. We’ll talk about. what today’s workroom professionals need most, what’s shifting and how people learn the trade, and why education and support can’t be one size fits all. Let’s get into it. Ceil, first of all, thank you so much for being on the show today. Ceil (00:55) Well, thank you. It’s my pleasure. William Hanke (00:58) Glad to have you on. ⁓ How did you first get into this industry? Ceil (01:04) Well, it’s interesting. Well, I think especially for people my age who are in the industry, it started out as I chose to stay home when my oldest daughter was born. And a few months into that, I was like, this isn’t quite what I expected. And I also needed to make some more money. And I had some skills. I knew how to sell. My very first business was making bridal headpieces. And I literally would make a headpiece, photograph it, take it apart, make another headpiece, actually, my husband photographed He was a photographer at the time. And I put together a book and then I started advertising locally. And I did that for a couple years, but I had been in business. I worked for a retail, large retailer in the Philadelphia area. I just did not know how to run a business. And I ended up going to a SCORE meeting for female entrepreneurs. And they are the service core of retired executives if people don’t know who they are. William Hanke (01:57) Okay. Ceil (02:02) It was eye-opening and I learned a lot about how to run my business. I got myself a score mentor and I met two interior designers there who were looking for someone to make soft furnishings and window treatments for them. And it was like the perfect alignment. ⁓ I was able to work with them. And since they were new, I could say to them, I have no idea how to make that, but I will find out. And it was, I wasn’t embarrassed or trying to prove myself. They were new. There were things they didn’t know. So it was a great start. And then I sort of fell into, I found out about other people in the industry through a conference that was advertised. And I went. William Hanke (02:34) Yeah. Ceil (02:46) and I sat down in my first class and it was like, ⁓ these are my people. Like this is what I want to be doing. And I realized it was in fact a business that fabricating window treatments could be a career for me. And it could be something I could work around my family schedule when I needed to and grow it as my family grew. William Hanke (02:59) Yeah. Yeah, I love that you say this could be a business. I remember that as well. Like, ⁓ I could probably do this. This could be a thing, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. So you’ve worked in several corners of the trade now. What experiences shaped that approach? Ceil (03:20) Yes, it’s gonna be a thing. Well, we talk a lot about learning to say no, but it’s also important to say yes. And I said yes to a lot of odd things. And one of the things that I said yes to was doing my own podcast. I had been listening to a podcast that was actually meant for crafters. And I say this very respectfully, I’m really not a crafter. William Hanke (03:58) Sure. Ceil (03:59) I need to make something that has a purpose. I mean, I knit and I do some other things, but I never really saw myself as a crafter and I don’t, can’t tell you why I used to listen to this podcast, except that the woman who did it did such a brilliant job of asking questions. Her name is Abby Glassenberg. And I kept listening to it and thinking, oh, somebody in our industry should do this. William Hanke (04:10) you Ceil (04:24) somebody in our industry should do this. And then one day I figured like, well, I’m somebody and I can go to YouTube and figure out how to run, you know, do a podcast. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. As you well know, there was a whole lot more to it. But I said yes to it. I started to do it. And then when Janelle Deck, who was a previous owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library was William Hanke (04:38) Sure. Ceil (04:52) realizing it no longer connected to what she was trying to build. She and I sat down and talked about it and actually the anniversary is coming up very soon. On January 17th of 2017, we signed the papers and I took over running the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library. William Hanke (05:12) Wow. Wow. Ceil (05:14) So again, I said yes, but I didn’t quite know everything I was getting myself into. But I had been a member of the library and I understood what having a place to go to and look for information, but also having a community. At that point, Facebook groups were becoming very popular, but sometimes I’d look and there’d be like 3000 members on a Facebook group. And I had no way of knowing whether they were professionals or whether the questions that were being answered were the best way to do things or the most recognized. right way. I know there’s no one right way to do everything, but I would get too many answers for things. Inside the library, it’s a smaller group. It is professionals. It’s people who have been helping other people for years. We have some people who are retired from the business and still continue to come into the library and answer questions and help people. So I loved what the library stood for and it was a great ⁓ William Hanke (06:12) Love you. Yeah. Ceil (06:18) It was a great combination of the podcast and the library. I did not realize that I would have so little time and I started to cut back on the fabrication. So in the past maybe two or three years, I’ve cut back to maybe just one or two clients that I work with. And that’s more to keep myself in the workroom once in a while than anything else. So the focus now is on running the library, doing the podcast. And part of the library is also a digital digest, which is a magazine geared towards workrooms. William Hanke (06:45) Yeah. ⁓ that’s awesome. You’ve basically you mentioned score earlier on. You’ve basically built a version of score specifically for this industry, right? Ceil (06:57) Thank You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, based on the fact that so many people within the library are seasoned fabricators and willing to answer questions. the content of the library, Will, it’s grown over the years. Some of it is, William Hanke (07:08) Yeah. Ceil (07:26) Recorded webinars from the old custom home furnishings Academy some of it is courses that people put together sold for a little while and then realized that the content was important but not as Up to date so they would donate it to the library and also have a great working relationship with the workroom channel and a lot of our industry teachers record courses on there. So yeah, yeah, you’re right. I had not thought about that, but it is kind of like score for window treatment fabricators. William Hanke (07:59) Yeah, yeah. And for listeners that aren’t familiar with score, we’ll put a link in the show notes for sure, because I used score when I first got started. What an amazing organization to really, you I love to hear success stories like yours, where you had a mentor that helped you just, you know, just explain that, yes, this can be a thing. And this is the way to get there. Ceil (08:08) Okay. And what I loved about ScoreWill was that it was people with, at one point I had one mentor and then for a little while I was meeting with two or three people. During the pandemic, we were only meeting on Zoom. So ⁓ like three of them would jump on and they would give me different perspectives from their industries. So it was just, and just really helped me keep on task about running the business end of things. William Hanke (08:43) Yeah. Ceil (08:50) not just being creative and this is pretty, I want to make this. I really had to focus on that part of it too. William Hanke (08:51) Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Creative brains have a hard time doing the actual working on the business stuff. It’s like an unfortunate evil in order to eat at the end of the day. You have to do these things, right? That’s awesome. Well, let’s dive in and talk a little bit more about the resource library. I want to hear more about this. Ceil (09:03) Yes, we do. Yeah. Yes. William Hanke (09:21) Give us an overview of what it is and who really is it for specifically. Ceil (09:26) Okay, it’s geared mostly towards workroom owners. And that can be the single person workroom, it could be the person who has a part timer, and it could even be a workroom owner who’s hands off from the fabrication standpoint, but that he or she has to bring in and train employees. So it consists of videos that were from the now defunct Custom Home Furnishings Academy. how to operate a straight stitch machine, how to clean a straight stitch machine, how to make single width panels. So there’s step-by-step videos. There are years worth of magazines that were put out in the past. started with a black and white printed newsletter that was done by Cheryl Strickland, who is a name that a lot of people who have been around for a while know. So there’s step-by-step articles. Then there are the drapery and design webinars, which again, there are some things in our industry just like a lot of our machines. I have a straight stitch machine that’s probably 100 years old. It’s still working. It’s a workhorse. I don’t need an updated machine. Would I love one? Sure, but I don’t need one. Some of the information that’s in the library is like that. There’s a video on how to make a box pleat valance. It’s got older looking fabric, but the method hasn’t changed at all. in that sense, it’s really valuable. And it also cuts down on the expense of updating some things. We haven’t changed how we do a lot of things. William Hanke (10:36) Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Ceil (11:04) hear the step-by-steps. We have webinars on how to deal with sheer fabrics, how to deal with oversized projects when your table is 10 feet by five feet. how do you get something on there that’s even larger? How do you manage fabric for a seven width panel when your tables is wide as one width? It’s things like that. And then over the years we’ve added, there is a course on how to start a business by Michelle Williams. There are some upholstery information classes. We had several people who, we have several people in our industry who do a little bit of both. They make window treatments and they do some small upholstery projects. William Hanke (11:32) great. Ceil (11:44) foam do I use? Here’s a webinar on foam and what the differences are. So it’s, there is so much information in there that sometimes when people reach out to me and say, is this in the library? I have to go, let me think about that for a minute. I know it’s in there somewhere. Now over the years I’ve collected, so it’s easy for me to find, but inevitably there are some things I forget are even in there. So William Hanke (11:48) That’s awesome. Ceil (12:10) My job as the librarian is to help people find things and to remind people of everything that’s in there. We also have a community inside there and it’s called the forum and people can come in and ask questions. And again, it’s moderated by me and it’s my full-time job, unlike the Facebook groups. And since 2017, I have had to ask one person to be a little bit more respectful. No snarky answers, there’s no unkindness. And people will come in and say, this awful thing happened to me today. And seven people will jump on and go, crap, I feel your pain. Here’s what I did when it happened to me. Or there’s nothing I can do to help you, but I’m here for you. And that sense of community that doesn’t have 3,000 people attached to it, I think is just nicer and. William Hanke (12:53) Yeah. Ceil (13:02) It’s just a nicer version of Facebook and a calmer version. And I see people, I don’t have to be the one to answer all the questions. I will see a question pop up and before I can even go on somebody saying, ⁓ here’s a link to this article. here’s, ⁓ this is the product I’m using. And everything within the forum is searchable. So if you’re ready to ask a question, you can always go in and search it first. If no one has answered that question, then you jump in and you ask the question. William Hanke (13:33) Yeah, that’s priceless when you can have a community of like-minded folks, especially ones that just want to be helpful and they’re not worried about being competitors. I think that is absolutely fantastic. Ceil (13:42) Yes. Exactly. Well, we’re geographically diversified, although people will connect with people who are close by to them. But we’re really not in competition with one another. There’s more than enough work out there for all of us. And there are enough people who are part of the library that believe that By helping other people, we elevate the industry and we make it a better place for everyone who’s in it. And we also make the output even better for our clients. William Hanke (14:17) Great. Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a lot of clients that have work rooms. So they’re dealers, but they also have work rooms. I can see this being a fantastic resource to give to your employees and maybe even say, hey, spend an hour or two a week in here as part of your training to help those employees get even better. Ceil (14:39) Right. And I think also, Will, the reason that I talk to workroom owners is if they don’t have a training schedule in place, they literally can sit somebody down in front of the how to make window panels, draperies, let them watch it, and then have someone take them to the table and say, OK, here’s how we do this here. But then it’s not a completely foreign idea. And I just, think it’s a valuable resource. It’s also, we do custom window treatments. If you’re a small workroom, you rarely do the same thing over and over again. And so to be able to go back, or if you have one employee, just to go back and, all right, just refresh my memory on this. How do I do this? I think that’s really a valuable resource for people. William Hanke (15:24) Yeah. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule. If you can give somebody something that’ll get them 80 % of the way done very quickly, and then you just solve that last 20, absolutely fantastic. Ceil (15:37) Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think that’s a good analogy. I like that. William Hanke (15:44) Yeah, yeah. So when people log in to the library, do they typically use the search feature? Are there predetermined courses, folders? How does that piece work? Ceil (15:59) So search is a big part of what people go in and do, but the way we have the library laid out is each of the three levels of membership are listed with what you have access to. So it’s overall, like here’s where all the magazines are, here’s where the older webinars are. for the ProPlus, which is the highest level of the membership. There’s a drop-down menu. Here’s everything that I have access to. One of the things that we do is a monthly webinar called Circle Time. And we have all kinds of different ⁓ types of webinars. They’re business related. They’re fabrication related. They will do technology, anything that assists. our workroom and a lot of the people who are doing those webinars for me are people within the library community, educators within our industry. I know you interviewed Susan Woodcock. She’s done webinars for me. She and I collaborate on a second podcast and a lot of the people who teach at the custom workroom conference also do webinars and they stay recorded inside the library. So people have access to them all the time. So it’s not quite a roadmap on the front page, but it’s a list of everything that people have access to. William Hanke (17:19) That’s awesome. ⁓ What makes this one different from some of the other industry groups that are online? Ceil (17:26) I think it’s more the sense of community and not being afraid to ask a question that reveals that you don’t know something. Even people who been in this business for a very long time have not made everything there is to make. And sometimes people will ask a question on Facebook. It’s like, what’s the best window treatment for this window? And… Sometimes it’s not that simple. There are some other questions you need to ask first. incidentally, one of the women who always used to start that answer with a question, what does your client need, is a woman who wrote a great course called the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course, which I ended up buying from her. It’s standalone, it’s different from the library, but it’s… William Hanke (18:13) nice. Ceil (18:16) how do I reach my clients? How do I tell them what they need for their windows? And she does it in such a logical step-by-step way. And she was getting ready to retire. And I was like, this is really valuable information. This should not go anywhere. So ⁓ again, I said yes to something ⁓ and added it to my umbrella. it’s that willingness to help and answer questions is what makes the library stand out. William Hanke (18:44) Love that. The community is awesome. Any moments from the community that really help someone stand out? Ceil (18:52) I think I see a few things on a day to day basis where someone is just frustrated they can’t find something. You know how much content is out there now. Well, you could go to five different places and get five different answers and AI is great, but it doesn’t have everything we need and Someone will say I don’t know where to find this and within you know 15 minutes five people have come on and said here’s who I buy it from or here’s a great resource for it William Hanke (19:06) Sure. Ceil (19:23) ⁓ Susan and I have been running a workroom accountability and mentoring group that we hold within the library and then people also go to the custom workroom conference. And one of our mentees recently left her job to start this full time. And she was able to first announce it in our private forum and then have her other mentees come on and say, yes, you’ve got this, we’re here to support you. So those are really great moment
Guest Profile: Brandon Moss Brandon Moss, CEOBrandon Moss is the son of founder Mike Moss and now leads a nearly 50-year-old window treatment business as CEO. He carries forward his father’s commitment to quality and customer service while guiding the company through the changing expectations of today’s Florida homeowners. Under Brandon’s leadership, the business continues to evolve by modernizing systems, adapting marketing strategies, and embracing innovation, all while staying rooted in affordability, trust, and service excellence. Brandon brings a valuable perspective on generational leadership, balancing tradition with change, and running a mature business in a competitive, fast-moving market. Other Notes/Links: Website: Blinds & Shutters by Discount Mike pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3CwKC48lHg Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:01) Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes. Today’s conversation is part of our quarterly series where we step back and talk about what’s happening right now in the window treatment industry, what’s changing and what business owners should be paying attention to this quarter. My name is Will Hanke and today I’m joined with Brandon Moss, CEO of a nearly 50 year old window treatment business. Brandon represents the next generation of leadership. balancing longstanding values with realities of today’s homeowners and modern marketing. In this episode, we’ll dig into how legacy businesses adapt, what Brandon is seeing in the market right now, and the lessons other owners can take into the rest of this year. Brandon, thank you for being on today. Brandon (00:51) Hey, Will good to see you, you handsome little fellow, you. William Hanke (00:54) I appreciate that. ⁓ Fantastic having you on. I always enjoy our conversations. Tell me what it was like stepping into a leadership role in a business that your father built. Brandon (00:59) Yes. So a little about my background for the listeners. My wife and I own a manufacturing company. We are in the dairy manufacturing and we manufacture ice cream. I’m not really at liberty to tell you the companies that we sell to, but they’re very large. There’s a lot of quality control and safety issues that go into that. I expect the manufacturers of window treatments to follow those same quality issues. about five years ago, my father had suddenly passed away. He started this blinds company in 1979. I grew up in it. I was literally playing in the basement on Graber G71 tracks. These were my toys. William Hanke (01:31) you you Brandon (01:48) My brother and I built forts with them and I would install on Saturdays. When I went off to college, my father bought me a pickup truck, a toolbox and said, while you’re studying, sell blinds. And that’s what I did. ⁓ At some point after college, I went back down to South Florida, worked with my father and his store for a little bit and decided, you know what? William Hanke (02:04) nice. Brandon (02:13) I don’t want to do this. Let me get out of this business. I came back to central Florida and my wife and I built this factory that makes ice cream. So when my father had passed away, we were closing things up, tying up loose ends and I just fit into it like an old sock, an old glove. It felt comfortable. And my wife took over the ice cream business and I’m rebuilding and relearning this window treatment industry. William Hanke (02:40) Nice, nice. So it was always there, but kind of out of mind, I guess. And now. Brandon (02:46) Yeah, I left the industry just as there was consolidation from regional fabricators. And the major brands like Hunter Douglas and Graber were taking over fabrication at their own factories or overseas or, you know, over the borders, whatever they’re doing now. William Hanke (03:04) Yeah. What part of the the business that you’re now that you’ve been thrown into maybe voluntarily? What was kind of the hardest part to take ownership on early on? Brandon (03:17) I think the pricing strategy has been a real struggle for me. The name of our company is Blinds and Shutters by Discount Mike. And I think that worked in the late 70s and 80s, maybe even going into the 90s. But I think now, unless you want to do high volume on low margin products, there’s not a lot of money in discounting. I think the consumer is not educated on what a window treatment is, what the product is, what the difference is between a premium brand or an off brand. I argue that 90 % of my customers don’t know the difference between Graber, Hunter Douglas, or ABC Blind Regional Manufacturer. And it means nothing to them. You have to demonstrate it to them. I think… William Hanke (03:59) Right. Brandon (04:06) You know, I was going off of some advice from some of my father’s old friends and people in the industry. And we had set some pretty high margins. We were losing sales, then we lowered it. And we’re trying to find a happy medium between, you know, 48 % and 60 % for every job, which is difficult sometimes. And you have to walk away. But I’d rather do quality jobs than a whole lot of little junk. I also personally don’t want to repair things. William Hanke (04:30) Yeah, that’s great. Right. Yeah. I’d say probably 85 90 % of our clients don’t compete on price. We do have some that that is what they stand on is that will beat all the competition. But for the most part they are clients don’t want to compete on price. Brandon (04:51) Yeah, you’d rather do quality. I agree with that. I think another big challenge that I had was, ⁓ William Hanke (04:56) Yeah. Brandon (05:02) and I didn’t realize this, but it became abundantly clear to me that there’s only so many fabric manufacturers on the planet and everybody basically has the same. the larger manufacturers, I believe they’re all dropping the ball. I really do. I think the I’ve come across a couple of regional manufacturers here in Florida that are doing a really great job. They’re providing good customer service. They’re available to answer questions. The challenge is they use different components. And what happens if they disappear? What happens if they have bad management with their money and they go bankrupt? Their lifetime warranty isn’t worth anything. William Hanke (05:45) Right. Yeah, definitely makes sense. think along those lines, your dad started this in 1979, you said. What were some of the biggest things like pricing and like finding different manufacturers? What were some of the things that you found you needed to modernize along the way? Brandon (06:03) So my father was paper and pencil, know, carbon copy invoices went to a customer’s house and had the book, opened it up and sat on their table and went line by line. know, seeing that my father was in business for, you know, 15, 20 years just in central Florida where I am, I’m coming across repeat customers. They call, I go to their house. We sit down at the kitchen table and they tell me about the conversations they had with my father. your father said this and he did that. My father was very, very entertaining. ⁓ William Hanke (06:35) Okay. Brandon (06:41) My father made friends and joined that sit down. Trust was developed because we’re selling. Trust me, I’m going to take your deposit and I’m actually going to return. William Hanke (06:51) Right. Brandon (06:52) Join that period. There’s trust. So there’s something to be said about the old charts where you open up the binder and you find the fabric and you come down and you pick it out and then you add the options to it and have your little calculator and add it all up because that’s the time period where you’re developing the trust. So now that I’ve switched to using the tablet and I’m using ⁓ software that has the pricing built in, I’m losing that. that natural period to have a face-to-face, eye-to-eye conversation with somebody. So I’m finding myself having to stop and find, I love your dog, your dog is cute, and connect with the client to build that trust. William Hanke (07:36) Yeah, yeah, I can see that everything’s a lot faster and more automated, more optimized, but at the same time, you’re missing a piece. Brandon (07:40) Bye. Right. Yeah. I think the technology is fantastic. I embrace it. I’m looking forward to the next wave of technology. I think the consumer is changing. The baby boomers are slowly becoming a consumer that they’re done renovating their homes. at the tail end of their lives. Fixed incomes, they don’t want to spend the money. Generation X, where you and I come from. William Hanke (07:48) Yeah. Brandon (08:14) We’re now starting to think about retirement and where we’re spending money, but you have the millennials and the newer generations that were built on do it yourself, learn how to do it. And they’re going onto Amazon and they’re finding a shade for $150. And they, when you say the same size windows, 400, 500, 600, they don’t want to buy. William Hanke (08:37) Yeah. Definitely makes sense the different markets or segments out there. then trying to, again, trying to build trust with all of them, but definitely in different ways. Brandon (08:42) Correct. Yeah, you have to bring a value. If somebody is calling you to do an estimate and it’s just a discovery, you’re not going to walk away with the sale unless they’re an impulse buyer. If they’re cautious about their budget and they really want to know, it doesn’t matter. You come in there with a $5,000 quote, if that’s a thousand or $2,000 too high, they’re going to go and get other quotes. If the other quotes are along the same lines of the same quality, the same warranty, and the same products, apples to apples, your follow-up is going to be the most important. Make sure you get them on the phone. Make sure you’re texting them. Make sure you’re closing the deal as soon as possible. Within three, four, or five days of giving the quote. William Hanke (09:31) Isn’t it interesting how that’s always like in sales related calls or training that that’s always something people talk about as the follow up and yet it’s the most ignored piece of a sales relationship. Brandon (09:46) Yeah, sometimes it’s really hard to do. You leave a customer’s house. This just actually happened this morning. I spent three, four hours at this house. This is a $2 million home in a very prestigious area in central Florida. The quote was only $14,000. It was very reasonable for some motorized cell shades. I thought that I was walking out of there. I discounted it heavily. It was going to be my last sale of 2025. It was before the new year. It was like December 29, something like that. And they said, you know, thank you very much. So I sent them a text this morning and immediately she said, can I call you? And we had a whole conversation. She removed 25 % of the shades to lower the bid, but I collected a deposit today. So you just never know. William Hanke (10:33) Congrats, that’s great. Yeah, just from a text message. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s great. So as a disclaimer for the listeners, Brandon is a client of ours, and you’ve been a client of ours for maybe a year and a half now, I believe. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about marketing, but I didn’t want to set this up. Brandon (10:37) That’s it, just the text message. Yeah. God, it feels like an eternity. I feel like you’re my best friend. William Hanke (11:00) From a marketing standpoint, what is really driving growth for you right now? Brandon (11:04) I would honestly, I don’t want to blow smoke up your skirt, but yeah, mean, a good portion of it is the SEO work that you guys have been putting in a really good portion of it. I was really surprised. I understand the power of SEO. I know how difficult it is to do and maintain and you have to have a good foundation for it, which is why I decided to hire you. I just didn’t want to do it on my own. I don’t have the time to learn it. Running two complicated businesses is not easy. then, you know, doing the SEO. I stick with there’s only one company that I’m doing print ads with. I also buy a mailing list of people that closed on houses and every Friday we mail out postcards. But other than that, that’s all the marketing we do. William Hanke (11:54) Okay. What, what are those postcards say? Welcome to the neighborhood. Here’s 10 % off. Brandon (11:59) ⁓ Free paper shades, ⁓ congratulations on your new home, and standard stuff, yeah. William Hanke (12:09) Okay, okay. ⁓ Do you know if Florida homeowners are asking different questions today than they were maybe a few years ago? Brandon (12:17) You know what’s really frustrating to me? Florida homeowners or Florida builders, they are building sliding glass doors larger and larger, and the manufacturers are not keeping up with single roller shades or sizes that can cover those sliding glass doors. William Hanke (12:39) Interesting, okay. Brandon (12:40) Yeah, I mean, here in Florida, the clientele, have homes on the lakes. They have beautiful views. They want to see their views. They want to cover those windows up to stop the heat from coming in. But the roller shades, even the verticals, they max out at 144 inches. We’re seeing large sliders at 160 inches, 180 inches, spanning the whole width of these 3,000, 4,000 square foot homes. it’s getting harder and harder to convince people to have a scene. So yeah, so the first thing that people usually ask is, what do I do about this giant door? My solution is to tell them to paint it. William Hanke (13:14) Interesting. You okay, that’ll work. Brandon (13:28) Yeah. Let’s see. Again, I left the business and came back. I was in the business, it was wood blinds and faux wood blinds day in and day out. Now it’s roller and solar day in and day out. know, wood blinds are stuff that they had in the apartments. When I was selling and everybody wanted to get rid of their mini blinds, which is what were in the apartments or in the homes in the 80s. Here in Florida, people want plantation shutters. They don’t want to spend the money. think the marketplace is saturated with so many different types of quality and what do they call them? Trunk slammers that they give it to them close to nothing and those are driving the prices down and it’s becoming harder and harder to compete. But those people don’t last long. They eventually go out of business. William Hanke (14:23) All Yeah, yeah, not unusual for that to happen. I know it specifically in Florida. You mentioned the rollers. Are you doing a lot of exterior lanias, patios and porches? We might call them here in the Midwest. Brandon (14:40) I just started learning how to do that. I’m adding that’s a new business for me. I’m learning the brands. I’m learning how to sell it. I have found the market is really saturated. My first day out, so to speak, on a sales appointment, I was up in the villages. was selling a, the villages is a giant sprawling retirement area. It encompasses four counties in Florida. It’s giant. Thousands and thousands of homes. A lot of people are putting these screens on their garage, these retractable screens. These were previous customers of mine. They called me back. They had three other quotes from three other companies. All three of them were selling them basically the same product for the cost I was buying it at. William Hanke (15:33) ⁓ wow. Brandon (15:36) And that made me do a little research on what’s going on and it’s just a very saturated market. William Hanke (15:45) Yeah. Yeah. So is, is there anything you’re doing around the pricing side of things to help with it? Brandon (15:50) Well, I found another manufacturer. Yeah, William Hanke (15:54) Okay. Brandon (15:55) I found a local regional manufacturer that instead of a national manufacturer that was able to save some costs. But yeah, there are people giving it away. William Hanke (16:05) All right. So that’s a, that’s a good point to, find somebody local. Maybe you’re not paying for the delivery costs, the shipping to land it, that, that type of thing. Got it. Got it. Brandon (16:14) Correct. Correct. William Hanke (16:17) Is there anything that, that you’ve stopped doing because it just doesn’t work anymore? Brandon (16:22) Anything that I stopped doing, that’s interesting. I think I stopped measuring incorrectly because when you measure incorrectly, it costs you a lot of money. No, I’m just kidding. ⁓ I don’t know. I stopped a bunch of advertising because I was just everywhere in all these magazines and it just didn’t make sense. ⁓ William Hanke (16:45) Yeah. Do you think that was a result of your dad? Just a little bit more of the old school. You have to be on the yellow pages and you got to do all these other physical things. Brandon (16:54) Yeah, I may have made a mistake after my dad had passed and I consolidated all of my vendors to basically two. I went with my gut instinct and said, I’m going all in on Graber. I’m Graber Springs industry, everything that they have, I’m learning, I’m going to master. You know, every manufacturer has different thresholds and deductions and motor types and memorizing it all is almost impossible. You can’t have Post-it notes on your tablet to tell you what to do. William Hanke (17:29) Sure. Brandon (17:35) So, so I stopped selling every single brand, which was hard. I think, you know, letting go of Hunter Douglas was, one of the most difficult things for me because I know working with designers, they sometimes want the Hunter Douglas product. And I, I just, I wasn’t going to pay the money for it. My personal experience was my father passed away and we were running around repairing nothing but Hunter Douglas products. It was exhausting. So I decided, you know, it was, you know, just after COVID, there was no sales rep in the area. I think we went through four different sales reps since my father passed away. And I just had enough with it. And the people that they’re hiring as a sales rep for these national companies, you know, my dog knows more than them. William Hanke (18:25) Fair enough. Brandon (18:29) In some cases, I mean, obviously there’s some seasoned reps out there that know a lot, but in my opinion, someone who had to relearn and had a lot of questions, I need to pick up the phone and ask a question right now. My sales rep needs to be available for me and has to have the answers. If they don’t have the answers, they have to be able to call and find the information. And it was very frustrating. I mean, even Graber is the same way. the experts sometimes don’t even have the right answers or customer service contradicts you. And I don’t mean to put anybody down, but there’s so much detail that goes into this. They need to find a better way to organize it so that it’s at our fingertips. William Hanke (19:12) So do you find yourself doing a lot of fact checking? guess just even though you’re getting answers, you almost have to get two answers to make sure, you know, like a second opinion. Brandon (19:20) Absolutely. Absolutely. I would call my rep and, or I would call customer service and then follow up with my rep and then find out what’s going on. Graber just started a couple of months ago, this text to customer service. It’s fantastic. It’s absolutely fantastic because before I would be on hold for 20, 30 minutes waiting for somebody to answer the phone. Now I text within five minutes, they get back to me and And I’ve really enjoyed that service. I it’s one of the best things that Graber has done. So I really commend them. In my manufacturing business, we manufacture food. Let me kind of go off topic here, if that’s okay with you. We manufacture food and we’re highly regulated. So I have a lab in my factory that we take the product off the manufacturing
Guest Profile: Wayne Feltman Wayne Feltman is an accomplished sales management professional that has built a long-term career with VELUX Skylights, the world’s leading Skylight and Roof Window Manufacturer. Wayne started his career with VELUX as a territory sales representative and served in this capacity for about 4 years before advancing into a District Sales Management role overseeing the Eastern Great Lakes District for more than 20 years and most recently moved into a Business Development Management role responsible for the growth and development of the company’s Skylight Specialist Program across a 15-state area comprised of the greater Midwest. Prior to VELUX, Wayne grew up working alongside his father in the family’s retail hardware business but also spent some summer months working for his grandfather, a residential homebuilder. Wayne graduated from Ball State University with a Bachelor of Science from the university’s nationally ranked Business Management and Entrepreneurship Program and while in college, had co-founded and operated a Landscape Management Company giving him a combination of academic and a first-hand real-world experience on what it takes to start and run a successful small business. Through some early exposure to skylights, Wayne developed a passion for Skylights and Sun Tunnels due to their unique ability to transform space and bring an abundance of daylight and fresh air into the built environment where people live, work and play. Other Notes/Links: Velux Websit e: VeluxUSA.com Contact : Reach out through the Velux website to connect with your local representative. pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/cmQdFuX4C08 Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT Will Hanke (00:00) Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. I’m your host, Will Hanke. Today we’re exploring a powerful but often overlooked opportunity, Skylight Shades. If you’ve ever thought skylights were just an architectural feature or dismissed shades as a niche product, you’ll want to stick around. My guest today is Wayne Feltman, a seasoned sales management professional with deep expertise in new business development, sales training, and residential construction. With a strong background in roofing materials, skylights, and solar hot water systems, he now leads efforts to expand the reach of Velux, skylights, and sun tunnels. In his current role, Wayne is passionate about empowering entrepreneurial minded individuals and build businesses that transform homes and lives with daylight and fresh air through a franchise like program that delivers turnkey success without the fees. Wayne, thank you so much for being on the show today. Wayne Feltman (01:08) Will, great to be here. Thanks for having us. Will Hanke (01:10) Yeah, I really appreciate it. So Wayne, could you start by giving the listeners a quick introduction and how, tell us how you got started in the industry. Wayne Feltman (01:18) Sure, absolutely. So I probably should start by just saying I’m based out of Indianapolis, Indiana, born and raised. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad owned hardware stores. So kind of grew up doing the retail hardware thing. And through that, we interacted with a lot of trades. My grandfather was a builder and spent some summers working with him, kind of being the runner and the clean up guy. that did lead to me getting into landscaping. My brother and I had started and ran a landscaping business for a number of years. I tried that, but ⁓ ultimately I had decided I wanted to go to college to be an architect. Initially went to school to be an architect, quickly found out in early 90s that a lot of those guys were struggling to find jobs. So changed my major. I was going to try to get a minor in business anyway, but ended up switching to going full-time business and entrepreneurship and management. Finished with my business degree. I continued to run the landscape management business part-time with my brother for a bit, but tried a few different things. Just to give you an idea, the diversity of my background was a stockbroker financial advisor for about a year, then got into computer system sales for about two to three years. And I was chasing the almighty dollar like a lot of us do coming out of college and just wasn’t happy, wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. And through some early experiences, with Skylights through my parents who had built or renovated a few homes where we incorporated Skylights. I knew a little bit about Velux and Skylights and saw that they were hiring a territory representative, applied for that position and had to do a pretty hard sales job on that. The hiring manager asked why a stockbroker turned computer sales guy turned landscaper wanted to sell Skylights for a living, but he took a chance on a kid. and hired me on and I was the Indiana Kentucky sales and territory rep for about four years. So that was kind of my ⁓ humble beginnings in terms of how I came to Velux and the rest is history as they say. Will Hanke (03:15) Wow, it’s always interesting to hear people’s backstories about the random things they did that really had nothing to do with where they landed. Love that. Wayne Feltman (03:22) For sure, for sure. But it really was some early exposures though. mean, had it not been, my parents had built a, well, the first exposure really was a lakeside condo, a real narrow kind of three story condo that we had built back in the 80s, early 80s actually. And they incorporated some skylights, vending skylights. And this was just a summer getaway for my parents. We didn’t vacation, that was our vacation, so to speak. Cause when you’re in retail, you’re seven, 24 seven. Will Hanke (03:49) Yeah Wayne Feltman (03:52) But we’d go up there and you know dad would have us go upstairs and open up the skylights to cool the place down because in the summer when we’d head up there be really hot ⁓ So that was my first kind of all-cott exposure at the time. You know, didn’t realize how relevant that would be in my life ⁓ And then several years later, we acquired a log cabin in southern, Indiana That was my grandfather something he had built back in the 60s And my mom wanted to always wanted to add a sunroom off to the back of it. So we hired a contractor And to his credit, he said, once we had this sunroom off the back of this house, we’re going to cut off the vertical windows going into that kitchen and dining area. And it’s going to get really dark. And to his credit, he said, I highly recommend we add some skylights not only over the kitchen area, but into the sunroom. And of course, we were pretty much on board with it because of our previous experience with skylights. But it was with that remodeling project that I really came to understand the value and power of skylights. it totally, and this is a dark log cabin. And it just totally transformed the space. ⁓ And we went on to add skylights to the boathouse, to a gazebo, to a detached garage. I definitely live and breathe it these days, and we practice what we preach. Will Hanke (04:59) Yeah, so you’ve been with the company more than two decades. What’s kept you excited about Skylights all these years? Wayne Feltman (05:05) Yeah, you know, when I first hired on, like I said, I was a territory rep for Indiana and Kentucky and really enjoyed the job, moved up into a district management role for about 20 years. And then here the last few years, I’ve been in a business development role across the greater Midwest. So I went from a state and a half to six states as a district manager to now about 15, 16 states. So with those roles comes a different focus. But really, it’s just the variety of what we do. We interact with every type of trade. So we interact with roofers, builders, architects, remodelers. ⁓ So when you’re doing that variety of interactions, it just never gets boring, quite honestly. And then Velux, the company, I mean, every few years we’re bringing something new to market. It’s a very innovative company, builds quality products. ⁓ So just as you think you got your head around everything that we make and sell, they throw a curveball at us and introduce something new. I think for all those reasons, know, it’s been 26 years, but I’ll be honest, some of my earlier career or jobs, I should say, seem like they were a lot longer than my 26 years at velux despite only being a year or two. Will Hanke (06:20) Yeah. For dealers that are not familiar, what does ventilation and light really mean in practice? Wayne Feltman (06:27) Yeah, no, great question. Actually, it’s fundamental to our company and our founding. So actually the name Velux is the root of two Latin words, V-E for ventilation, LUX, the Latin word for light. And just to give you a quick snapshot of the background of the company, mean, our founder was actually a glazing engineer by training and was given the task of converting attic spaces to classrooms. So this was back in 1941. There was a war going on. We’re based in Denmark. We’re a Northern European company. And they were trying to utilize all the attic space. A lot of buildings were destroyed. But anyway, he was given the task of converting some attic space to classrooms. And at the time, materials were scarce. Resources were scarce. ⁓ And so he came up with an ingenious way of putting a piece of glass ⁓ in the plane of the roof that would pivot and rotate and ventilate ⁓ and daylight the space, make it a functional space. So those are our humble beginnings. But ⁓ we’ve diversified and grown from just that attic room application. Today we have two core products. have some called roof windows, which are generally within reach applications. So think of like you’re here in the States, the most common applications would be the bonus room above a garage where you got the knee wall and the sloped ceilings. That would be a good application for a roof window that you can walk up within reach. Another one would be like story and a half type home where you’re finishing off your attic space and converting that into space, bedrooms or whatnot. Roof windows can meet egress requirements. But the more traditional application here in the States is what we call a skylight. And you take your typical home that’s got 8, 9 foot, 10 foot ceilings today. And you got that skylight up in the ceiling, up at a reach. And so the product category is a little bit different. They’re designed for up at a reach applications in use. But why you would want to skylight? I mean, it really comes down to a couple of things. First, obviously, natural light. You just can’t beat the value of natural light coming into a home. And if you think about it, where we put our artificial lighting, generally it’s on the ceiling through light fixtures. Why would we do vertical or natural light any different? And so there’s significant power and effect of bringing in natural light from overhead to skylights. But then there’s the ventilation aspect of it. It’s very powerful to utilize a skylight for natural ventilation. And it’s a scientific kind of concept called the chimney or stack effect. But the reality is heat rises. So if you open a skylight up high and a window down low, you get this chimney or stack effect or thermal effect. There’s a lot of different names for it. Where that hot air wants to go up and escape through that skylight, you’re bringing in that fresh air through those lower windows. ⁓ In Europe, they call that air conditioning. when mechanical air conditioning came along, we kind of got away from taking advantage of that natural air conditioning effect that skylights can provide. And the good news is now that you know Will Hanke (09:03) you Wayne Feltman (09:15) society’s becoming more sustainable, we’re getting back to it. ⁓ But so the ventilation aspect is another key reason why skylights are, you know, I think particularly valuable in design and construction. And then the last thing is, is, you know, there’s a lot of areas in your home that you just can’t light with vertical windows, interior spaces, hallways, interior rooms, like closets and whatnot, or you’re trying to maintain privacy. ⁓ And so what’s unique about a skylight, obviously, is you’re bringing in that light from overhead. And even in an interior room or hallway, you can pipe light in through the attic space, if you will, through a traditional skylight or an alternative product called a tubular skylight or a sun tunnel skylight, which is a very quick and easy way just to bring in light into an interior space. So that’s my quick one, too. I I hopefully gave your listeners a kind of a. new perspective on the value of skylights. And like I said, it’s not any one. I think it’s a combination of all of the above. Depending on what the design needs are, the space you’re trying to apply the skylights to. Will Hanke (10:06) Yeah. Yeah. Now I know they were big in the seventies and eighties and then they kind of faded for a while. you mentioned that they’re kind of back in style now. What do you think is driving that resurgence? Wayne Feltman (10:25) You know, that’s fair and I hear that a lot. what I’d like to say is, ⁓ well, velux like I we’ve been in the States, actually, we just celebrated 50 years. So we’ve been in the States ⁓ for quite a while. you know, we ride, you know, the economy, obviously, the ups and downs of the economy. But I think it is fair to say that in 70s and the 80s, Skylights were more popular. There were a lot of other vendors, lot of other manufacturers in the game as well. And our sales have grown year to year. We’ve consistently grown as a company. So daylight and fresh air never goes out of style. And I would argue even skylights really have never gone out of style. What’s changed is a lot of the companies that got into the business in the 70s and 80s that quite frankly were building inferior products that were problematic ended up having problems and they got out of the industry. The quality providers that really designed a quality product. For the most part, they’ve been a quieter, they’re still in the game. And I think it’s unfortunate because, and I’m talking about the old plastic, tar down bubbles. You still ask a lot of people today what a skylight is. Their vision of it, especially if they’re older, is the old plastic bubble that you can’t see through, that’s literally tarred down to the roof. And if it started leaking, they just added more tar and then you this ugly bubble on your roof. And I think that did tarnish the industry a little bit. ⁓ Velux, fortunately, has always made a quality product. We’ve always made engineered flashing systems to ensure that they’re watertight. But even our own product wasn’t as forgiving. Meaning if you didn’t do something right, it could come back to bite you and cause problems. And over the years, technology has greatly improved not only our installation processes, but the product itself. ⁓ is it fair to say that it was popular? Well, I think Skylights and the benefits they bring have always been popular. I truly do feel that way. Will Hanke (12:05) that. Wayne Feltman (12:14) It’s just that the risk reward ratio back in the early days, some of these problematic manufacturers caused people to rethink that, I don’t want to go there. Unfortunately, we’ve been clawing our way back to gain the confidence of consumers and builders, architects, and by and large, most of the folks that are designing today’s homes or building today’s homes ⁓ feel more confident about the product than that earlier generation. Will Hanke (12:23) Yeah. That’s awesome. So Wayne, most of the listeners for our show are window treatment dealers and awning dealers. They focus mostly on vertical windows. Why should they also be paying attention to skylight shades? Wayne Feltman (12:52) Yeah, great question, Will. Well, believe it or not, about 10 to 20 % of homes have skylights. Now, it varies depending on where you’re at in the country. But on average, like I said, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20%, you get into certain areas. It can be as high as 50 % of homes. Florida, my sister lives in Arizona. There’s a lot of skylights down there in Arizona. Here in the Midwest, where I live, Indianapolis, I would say it’s in the neighborhood of about 20%. For your window dealers, when they get into a neighborhood, there’s a good chance that if a neighborhood has skylights, there may be a lot of them. It could be every other home or every home for that matter. ⁓ so if they’re in there doing window treatments and they see that there’s a bunch of skylights and they don’t have some kind of window treatment or shades on them, it’s a great question to ask. Have you ever entertained the idea of adding a shade to your skylights? And quite honestly, Will, it’s been interesting over the years to learn that the average consumer just doesn’t, there’s just not the awareness to know that, ⁓ Velux makes products for their skylights, light control shades and blinds. But also the fact that you can actually just do that. It’s just not intuitive. Being that it’s a sloped piece of glass, you would think it would fall to the interior of the space or hang down and not look very good. But obviously, technology has allowed us to design operable shades that work just fine in a skylight application. And we just need help create more awareness that these shading products exist. and that you can retrofit them into existing skylights. Will Hanke (14:21) love the idea of an easy upsell when you walk into the room. That’s great. What do you think are some of the most common objections or concerns that you would hear from a consumer? Wayne Feltman (14:33) Yeah, well, when it comes to skylights, and like I said, if you got a homeowner that’s had a skylight and they’ve lived in that home for years, especially if it’s a great room application, let’s say, whether you watch TV and whatnot, ⁓ certain times of the day and year, there’s a pretty good chance that the sun is shining through that skylight and to where they wish they could control that light. ⁓ So first is just observing that the home has skylights. Second would be asking a few questions, like are there certain times of day or certain times of year where you would benefit, think you would benefit from having a shade? And I like to start with that because that obviously will probably resonate with most consumers. At some point in time, certain times of the day or certain times of the year, that sunlight’s probably coming in in a way that is making it difficult to see the TV or becomes blinding or whatnot. So I like to start with that. if they’re not really sold on that, I like to change and speak to the energy efficiency side of things. despite the fact and that. Now, that skylight could be quite an old skylight too. And we’ve got product out there that’s 30, 40 years old still. Old clear glass skylights, old bubble type skylights, they’re not very energy efficient. So first thing is they should probably replace the skylight. Let’s start with that. But if it is even one of our newer skylights, there’s significant energy savings that can be had by adding shades. And that’s an argument that applies to any and every skylight out there. Will Hanke (15:51) So Wayne, what is involved in installing a shade in an already installed Velux skylight? Wayne Feltman (15:57) Yeah, great question, Will. So the first thing is we want to identify and verify that it is a Velux Skylight and what model type and size. And the good news is Velux has made thi
Guest Profile: Graig Weiss Graig Weiss brings over 20 years of leadership experience and a people-first mindset that has shaped everything from public schools to personalized service calls. Before entering the window treatment industry, he led Foundation Academies in Trenton, taught in the South Bronx and the Dominican Republic, founded a school in Punta Cana, and consulted with Cambridge Associates. Now, he’s the hands-on owner and operator of Bloomin’ Blinds of BuxMont, managing everything from sales consultations to installations — bringing the same passion and impact to home transformations as he once did to education. Under his leadership, Bloomin’ Blinds of BuxMont was named 2024 Franchise Owner of the Year, earned top national sales awards, and became one of the brand’s highest-performing and most recognized franchises. With a degree in Finance and Accounting from the University of Pittsburgh, two master’s degrees, and a life full of family, travel, and skiing, Graig blends heart, hustle, and hands-on leadership. Other Notes/Links: pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/KPqir3eVOwk Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT Will Hanke (00:00) Welcome back to Marketing Panes the podcast where we dive into real marketing strategies, stories, and shifts happening in the window treatment and awning world. The guest joining us today brings over 20 years of leadership experience and a people first mindset that has shaped everything from public schools to personalized service calls. Before diving into the world of blinds, he led foundation academies in Trenton. taught in the South Bronx and Dominican Republic, founded a school in Punta Cana, and consulted with Cambridge Associates. Now he’s the hands-on owner and operator of Bloomin’ Blinds of Buxmont, where he manages everything from sales consultations to installations, bringing the same passion and impact to home transformations as he once did to education. Under his leadership, Bloomin’ Blinds of Buxmont was named the 2025 Franchise Owner of the Year, earned top national sales awards across multiple categories, and became one of the brand’s highest performing and most recognized franchises. With two master’s degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and a life full of family, travel, and skiing, he’s a guy who blends heart, hustle, and hands-on leadership. Welcome to the show, Graig Weiss Graig Weiss (01:23) All right, thank you so much. Great to be here. Will Hanke (01:25) Yeah, I appreciate it. So quick disclaimer before we just jump into the questions, Graig is a client of ours and has been probably for two years or so now. So we’ve been doing his marketing and just wanted to clear the air there and make sure everybody knew about that before we started. All right, so Graig, thanks for being on the show. Why don’t you give me the 10,000 foot view of what you’ve got going on currently with the business. Graig Weiss (01:51) Yeah, so as Will said, know, Bloomin’ Blinds, Buxmont, we’re up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, just outside of Philadelphia. We cover most, pretty much anywhere within an hour of where I live. Mobile-based business, Bloomin’ Blinds is a franchise system, like a lot of others. and mobile base, mobile showroom. We go out to the customers, we can do consultations in their home and install high-end window treatments. Will Hanke (02:26) Awesome. And you’re located in Pennsylvania. Graig Weiss (02:29) Yes, just outside Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania, we also get over a little bit into New Jersey, over into the Princeton area of New Jersey, but mainly the surrounding suburbs of Philadelphia. Will Hanke (02:41) Awesome, awesome. So what drew you to the window treatment business and what drew you to Bloomin’ Blinds in particular? Graig Weiss (02:49) Yeah, so it’s a great question. If you would have told me five years ago that I’d be doing window treatments, I would have never believed you. I’m a former school administrator. I was running a charter school in Trenton, New Jersey. And after the pandemic, I knew I just needed to do something a little different. I needed to get away from school administration and started researching franchises. And there were a lot of things that I liked about Bloomin’ Blinds and window treatments in general. And that was about three years ago and took the leap and have been growing it ever since. And I think the thing that surprised me most about it is how much I actually enjoy it. Originally it was going to be a side business for me and I was going to hire somebody just to kind of run it. And at the encouragement of the brothers that own Bloomin’ Blinds they were like, you got to get in the van, you got to learn the business. And I was very reluctant, got in the van and then decided, you know what, this is great. You get out there and meet some wonderful people. You know, you make your own schedule. There’s a sense of accomplishment when you do projects and whatnot. And so it’s been a fun ride and we’re continuing to grow it. Will Hanke (04:00) That’s awesome. Now, coming from the education side, how has that background influenced how you’re running your business right now? Graig Weiss (04:08) Yeah, it’s, you know, lot of it, you know, kind of carries over. mean, one of the things that I would say is like, it’s all people first. You know, having run an organization, you’re always focused on the people and our customers are no different. We’re focused on what they need and listening to them and their needs and really delivering a service and a product that are really second to none. That’s the goal overall. Will Hanke (04:35) How do you think customers see Bloomin’ Blinds in your area and how do you want them to see it? Graig Weiss (04:42) Yeah, I mean, I guess the first thing is we want them to see it because, you know, I mean, that’s that’s marketing, getting getting them out there. And it starts with the pink shirts and the pink vans and, ⁓ you know, really just getting that brand recognition out there. ⁓ I think window treatments overall is it’s ⁓ it’s not it’s not an industry that’s necessarily that visible. I know before I got into the the industry, the only place is I kind of. thought of were like, know, blinds.com and, you know, maybe blinds to go because they have their big, you know, red buildings. And maybe walk down an aisle at Home Depot. There are a lot of other, you know, great vendors out there. And so I think that’s that’s first and foremost. But I think, you know, Bloom Blinds in particular, I always try to put myself in the customer’s shoes and what what would I want as a potential customer? And like really just treating our customers that way, showing up on time, doing what we’re say we’re gonna do, delivering a perfect product, non pushy sales, all those things I think contribute to ⁓ what we’re trying to convey to all of our customers. Will Hanke (05:58) Cool, thank you for that. So I want to talk a little bit about customer experience since we’re kind of on that train. ⁓ What does it actually look like in your business beyond even the install? Graig Weiss (06:11) Yeah, so I mean, you know, I would start with first that like 95 % of the customers that we have are really great people. And that’s one of the things I love about this business overall. You get out there and you meet some really great people that would probably have never otherwise encountered in our lives. you know, so the experience is actually, it comes naturally. Like we don’t have to fake it. You you’re going out there, you’re listening to customers, listening to… you know, what their needs are, what are they trying to accomplish? Because window treatments should be both beautiful and functional. And so we’re really trying to listen for and ask the right questions as far as what do they need and want their home to, what do they want their home to look like and what do they want their window treatments to be able to do? And then it’s, you know, basically steering them in the direction and exploring different options. I’m not a believer, we don’t have favorite window treatments. They all have their pros and cons and that’s really what we’re trying to go through and really trying to ⁓ just match up what a customer wants and what’s gonna work best for them. Will Hanke (07:23) I love that I actually had that experience a month or two ago. We had a company come out to do ours and my wife was thinking of Roman Shades and after having a great conversation and getting some consultation, we ended up with Shutter. So totally different than what we thought we wanted. But that consultation piece is really huge. Graig Weiss (07:44) Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, we find that often. you know, sometimes people call away something that they think they, you know, they saw on Pinterest that they think is going to work really well. And maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. And so we’re just kind of like laying out the pros and cons in order to make sure that they’re happy customers. Will Hanke (07:46) Yeah, that’s. Yeah, definitely makes for a better experience. Can you tell me about a time when some sort of customer interaction turned into a great marketing win? Graig Weiss (08:12) Yeah, so we often do, I one of the things that’s really unique about Bloomin’ Blinds is we do repairs as well. And we do repairs not because it’s the highest, you know, profit margins or, you know, anything like that. We do it as a courtesy to the customer because if you have, let’s say you have a room filled with like eight window treatments and one of them needs to be fixed, you don’t necessarily want to buy eight new window treatments. But oftentimes providing that service, you know, getting into the home and, sometimes fixing, some of the window treatments down the road will often lead to ⁓ either referrals, ⁓ which are always appreciated, ⁓ as well as sometimes they’ll come back a year later and say, actually, now I want to replace them or something along those lines. And that just starts with, again, that non-pushy, pushy approach. We’re coming out there and we’re not going to be pushy. We’re not going to upsell. We’re going to deliver services that we know you’re going to be happy with. Will Hanke (09:09) Yeah, I’m a huge fan of playing the long game. I think, you know, being patient and understanding that investing in these repairs, those types of things for you are going to pay dividends down the road. Graig Weiss (09:22) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Will Hanke (09:23) Yeah. How do you build these kind of like wow moments in without breaking the bank, doing just, you know, in a repair where you’re making a hundred, 150 bucks or something like that ⁓ versus obviously your time that you spent to do that as well. How do you kind of build that in? Graig Weiss (09:41) Yeah, I think it’s like you just said, it’s playing the long game. My philosophy the first year was like, if we make no money this year, it’s OK. It’s building that customer base, building that referral program, meeting those relationships, and then results will come. And so that’s really in our philosophy and all of it. mean, we’ll do everything from a small repair all the way up to high-end motorization. jobs as much as $45,000 in one home. So we’ll do everything in between because that small job, might be the van is parked right in front of the house and the neighbor across the street is in the market for window treatments or that customer’s relative needs window treatments. So we’re happy to service all customers even when it’s seemingly in the moment where they’re not high ticket items. Will Hanke (10:33) I love the van idea, just the fact that that is doing work for you while you’re in a home, something like that. And then of course you got the whole Joneses thing going on, right? What’s going on over there? Graig Weiss (10:45) Yeah, for sure, for sure. And the van is hard to miss. I mean, it’s white and hot pink. So it’s a moving billboard, for sure. Will Hanke (10:54) Yeah, yeah. How do you balance being part of that national brand, but keeping your message authentic and local at the same time? Graig Weiss (11:03) Yeah, mean, it’s a combination of both. mean, in the Northeast, Bloomin Blinds is not as well known as like, you know, in the South and some of those different areas. So it is about getting the word out there. I mean, at the end of the day, even though we’re a franchise system, we’re still family-owned business. ⁓ You know, my wife and I are 100 % owners in the company. ⁓ It’s one of the things I like about Bloomin Blinds. We don’t push any one product or any one manufacturer in particular. We carry four or five manufacturers and so really looking for the products that offer the best value to our customers. So if a customer is looking for a specific name brand, we’re happy to pull those out. Otherwise, we’ll pull different manufacturers out based on our experience and the value that they bring. But it’s always putting that local touch on it. Everybody that works in our market is local and community based. And so we really are that family owned business even though we’re part of that larger franchise. Will Hanke (12:08) Yeah. Now with you being in the Northeast, are there any brand decisions that you think work especially well in your area? Graig Weiss (12:16) ⁓ Not really in particular. mean obviously, you know, we recently started offering Hunter Douglas. Hunter Douglas is, you know, probably one of the most known window treatment products out there. So we were happy to add that to our repertoire and, you know, be able to offer that. But a lot of it is just, again, based on the products. We kind of have our favorites that we kind of steer in the direction depending on the product. So if it’s shutters and faux wood, it might be one manufacturer. If it’s cellular honeycomb shades, it might be another manufacturer. Just on our experience with those various products. And again, that’s one of the things I love about. know, Bloomin’ Blinds is that they don’t push one thing over the other. They’re really open to, you know, it’s your franchise. You decide what you are going to sell and work with on an ongoing basis. Will Hanke (13:07) I know that you’ve been expanding and really kind of building out your area. So I’d like to talk a couple of questions about that. ⁓ What resources or structures helped you feel confident in growing your location and expanding? Graig Weiss (13:23) Yeah, I mean really, as far as resources go, it’s just, know, it’s really about people. I mean, this is really very, very much a people business and having the right partners in place like Window Treatment Marketing Pros, a little commercial there. But, you know, that’s a big piece to expanding, you know, just getting the word out there about the services that we provide and, you know, things like that. It’s… I don’t want say it’s happened completely organically because there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, but this isn’t coupons or things like that that helps us expand. It’s reputation, making sure that that reputation is building online and things like that. As far as confidence go, a lot of it’s experience. You do things and the more that you do them, you get more more comfortable with both… products and things that you’re installing in homes and knowing what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. ⁓ But again, you know, finding those vendors and those installers that are really going to knock it out of the park and, you know, deliver that perfection that we’re after. That’s really the key. And so it’s been somewhat, you know, slow and methodical. I mean, in some respects it’s been fast, but in some respects, you know, it hasn’t happened overnight. There hasn’t been a light switch that went off. with the expansion, just, you know, it’s a snowball effect. Will Hanke (14:45) Yeah. Are there any common traps that you see from business owners that try to scale up their brand presence maybe a little bit too fast? Graig Weiss (14:54) Yeah, I would say again, it kind of comes back to people. mean, you know, we’re really particular in the people that work with us and, you we have high expectations and we need that to deliver. And I think that’s what our customers expect. I know that’s what I would want from, you know, from a vendor for them to come in and deliver on the promises that they’ve said and make sure that everything is perfect. I mean, our customers are paying for perfection and that’s what we’re trying to deliver every single time. Will Hanke (15:22) That’s awesome. So Bloomin’ Blinds has earned some strong recognition lately. And you yourself has as well. A couple different things that has gone on. You won 2024 franchise owner of the year. That’s pretty awesome. 2024 top overall sales for Ulta. 2000 top sales for Cellular Shades, Ulta again. Top product sales for Bloomin Blinds Cellular Shades and Soft Treatments. Graig Weiss (15:37) Yeah. Will Hanke (15:52) With all these awards, obviously they build trust, right, with your brand. ⁓ How is that for internal motivation? Graig Weiss (16:04) I would just say it’s incredibly gratifying. obviously when you start a business, as anyone who’s ever started a business, it’s a very nerve wracking experience and it’s more a mental game than anything else. When you start a business, I know for the first six months I pretty much woke up every day and be like, this the right decision? Am I making the right moves and things like that. Eventually you start to gain traction and that confidence builds and things like that. But yeah, I I gave up a steady job with benefits and a pension and sort of took this leap of faith. And so when we got that award, was sort of like that moment where like, wow, we actually made this work and we can actually make a living out of it. So that was a really nice moment and some nice recognition for us. Will Hanke (16:58) Yeah, as I mentioned, great trust factor. Just having those types of awards from a consumer standpoint, these guys must be the best if they’re winning awards, right? ⁓ That’s always great. I think as entrepreneurs, we’re more likely to take crazy risks than maybe the average person would, ⁓ hoping that it pays off down the road. Graig Weiss (17:22) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that was, you know, when I got into this, I was like, I’m just going to bet on myself on this one. You know, used, I used retirement money and it’s like, well, I can either put it in the stock market and let it ride or we can bet on ourselves. And, and, you know, you take that again, it’s a risk, but, you know, I think, you know, that entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial mindset is that now that, now that we’ve done it once, we can do it again, you know, so, you know, we continue to take those little risks and. continue to the business. Will Hanke (17:52) Yeah, it’s highly motivating too if you’re that type of personality. My coach always says you eat what you kill, right? You got to get out there and make it happen or you can’t complain about it. Yeah, cool. So I know that you started in just a small service area. We kind of talked about your expansion. What was the mindset or what led you to wanting to start the expansion? Graig Weiss (18:02) Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah, so it’s like really just being opportunistic. You know, I wasn’t really looking necessarily to expand. There was another Bloomin’ Blinds colleague that he had, he had several different businesses that he was running. He called me up at the end of last year and he said, hey, you interested in buying, you know, my territories? And so, you know, no matter what the case, I’m going to have the conversation. And
Guest Profile: Joe Estrada Joe Estrada, Account Manager at Coulisse Distribution, serving the Northeast and Midwest regions of the U.S. Joe partners with custom window shade fabricators to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions—especially in smart shading technology through MotionBlinds. With a focus on responsive service, long-term relationships, and empowering trade professionals, Joe helps clients stay competitive in a fast-evolving industry Special Invite to Sun Shading Expo 2025 Heading to the Sun Shading Expo in Indianapolis this November 5–7? We’ve got you covered! Use code SSENA25WTMP when registering to claim your FREE admission ticket. Don’t miss this chance to connect with top industry leaders, see the latest innovations, and experience hands-on demos — all at no cost with our exclusive listener code. Other Notes/Links: pssst.... want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Sun Shading Expo: Visit Website Video https://youtu.be/Z08Ym54aw3E Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT Will Hanke (00:00) Welcome to another episode of marketing panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about their marketing, innovation and business growth. I’m your host, Will Hanke. And today we’re diving into the world of smart shading and innovation with guests who knows this space in and out. Our guest today is Joe Estrada, account manager at Coulisse distribution, serving the Northeast and Midwest regions of the U S. Joe partners with custom windows shade fabricators to deliver innovative, high quality solutions, especially in smart shading through technology called MotionBlinds, which we’re gonna dig into a little bit today. With a focus on responsive service, long-term relationships, and empowering trade professionals, Joe helps clients stay competitive in a fast evolving industry. We’ll be talking about how technology is reshaping the market and the evolution of modular systems, and what’s next for dealers and fabricators in the smart shade era. Joe, thanks for being on the show today. Joe Estrada (01:07) Absolutely. Thanks for having me Will. Will Hanke (01:09) Yeah, glad to have you. So for listeners who don’t know yet, can you share a little bit about your background and what you do at Coulisse Distribution? Joe Estrada (01:19) Yeah, yeah, so you touched on it. So I’m a sales rep for Coulisse . I’ve been with the company just a little over a year and a half, coming up on almost two years now, serving primarily the Midwest and parts of the Northeast. So our team, we have coverage throughout the whole country here in the U.S. as well as Canada, and then making our way down to Central America and South America as well. So we have local representation in kind of every corner of the country. and my portion is the Midwest and a few accounts of the Northeast as well. Will Hanke (01:50) Nice. I heard a rumor this was your first podcast. Joe Estrada (01:54) It is, it is. think I was joking with you. I, I’m about a daily listener of some kind of a podcast, especially when I’m traveling. but this is the first one that I’m on. So you’re you’re kind of like an adult Santa Claus, you know, Santa Claus for adults making my, little dream come true here. So thanks again. Will Hanke (02:08) ⁓ too funny. What made you say yes for joining us today? Joe Estrada (02:12) Yeah, so ⁓ obviously having the opportunity to share some of the exciting things that we’re doing at Coulisse , especially in evolving landscape in our industry right now. And you guys, the R+T group, you yourself, have always been really, really ⁓ kind to us at Coulisse So when the opportunity presented itself, we felt we had to jump on top of it. I guess you guys are stuck with me. So. Will Hanke (02:35) Yeah. Well, it’s great having you here today. So let’s talk a little bit about Coulisse . I’d love to know what sets Coulisse apart from the other component and fabric suppliers in the window treatment space. Joe Estrada (02:49) Yeah, yeah, so I would say one thing that’s kind of unique about us is we are a global one-stop shop. So whether it’s components, hardware, our collections, and our own motors, we are a true, we sell a true system. So obviously you can take the parts that you like if you don’t want or need the full system, but really the beauty in what Coulisse offers is our system approach. ⁓ And we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into that, but I would say that’s something that’s unique. and then I think our look, our feel kind of our marketing, our branding is a little unique to us. I’m obviously a little biased, but I think we do that part of, the business really, really well. so yeah, a few things that we offer that are unique in that sense. Will Hanke (03:30) Yeah, as a marketing guy, always paying attention to that and I see you guys everywhere. So you’re doing a great job there. Yeah, yeah, very good. Well, let’s jump in. I want to talk about the absolute roller. What is it? How does it serve as the foundation for your product lineup? Joe Estrada (03:35) Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Yes, so we are absolute roller 2.0 system. That is it’s a modular concept, right? So the terms that our engineers like to use is it’s kind of like working with Legos. So interchangeable components and hardware. You don’t have a right and left bracket, for example. And you can go from our essentially what, you know, for lack of a better term, our dumbest system, our chain manual operated system to our smartest motorized. motion blind system just by removing the mechanism, the chain clutch mechanism or what some people would call a clutch and replacing it with our motor. So the tube sizes are the same, the deduction sizes are all the same. ⁓ So obviously that’s handy if you’re upgrading a shade that maybe somebody bought years ago or maybe they’re going to buy now if they’d like to upgrade at some point in the future. But it really makes it easy for the manufacturers to work with as well. So a lot less SKUS and components to work with. ⁓ And obviously we have different sizes, whether it’s a small, medium, large size, depending on the configuration and the control. ⁓ But the modular concept of it makes it user friendly, not only for the fabricators or the manufacturers, but also the installers and then eventually the end users as well, especially when you’re talking motionblinds. Will Hanke (05:04) Yeah, and I can assume with that modular approach, the inventory management side of things is easier as well. Joe Estrada (05:10) Yep, yep. actually an introduction into our space last year, I got an opportunity to work on a bid for a company and they sent me the existing system that they were using and had said, hey, here’s all the components and hardware and everything that we buy, tell me what your equivalent would be and kind of how that would look differently. And that’s when I really, the advantage of the modular concept kind of sunk in for me because we talk about it a lot internally. But when you’re looking at a list of you know hundreds of components and SKUs and I’m using the same 30 40 50 SKUs essentially for the whole thing That’s when it really sunk into me like wow if I was owning the fabrication business ⁓ Especially everybody has a limit on space some some really big some small But everybody’s trying to make the most of the space that they have and they’re in their facility That’s a real big advantage to using a modular concept like what Coulisse offers Will Hanke (06:04) That’s great. What are the benefits for like dealers and workrooms when it comes to the system? Joe Estrada (06:11) Yeah, very similar. for dealers, it’s easy to install. So if the dealers are paired with the installers or have their own installers, our hardware is very, very easy to use. Again, you’re not worried about a right versus a left and having any errors or issues there that you have to fix. ⁓ For workrooms, it’s similar to a fabricator, right? Depending on where the workroom gets it or starts working at it on the product in the process. Again, fewer SKUs. the tube sizes are all the same. ⁓ so yeah, you don’t have to familiarize yourself with a bunch of different series or systems all under our umbrella. You get used to that system and it’s a little bit easier to work with from there. Will Hanke (06:54) that’s great. I love that approach. I think it’s a lot easier for the end users, as you said, when it comes to figuring out what they need. And you’re probably cutting down on the amount of things that they have to order as well. Joe Estrada (07:05) Absolutely. Yep, just because there’s fewer SKUs ⁓ and then yeah, you really notice it with our motorized products because we have a QR code kind of system to set them up. So you don’t have to familiarize yourself with these elaborate, you know, softwares or apps. So if you’re not super techie, as long as you know how to use the camera on your phone and a QR code, which most people by now are pretty familiar with. Will Hanke (07:30) Yeah. Joe Estrada (07:31) You should be okay setting them up yourselves if you choose to do so. Obviously any installer that has a little bit of experience in our industry, it’s going to be easy for them too. So yeah. Will Hanke (07:42) That’s awesome. I’d love to kind of jump into the motorization since you mentioned that ⁓ it’s tech that’s turning heads across the industry, especially the motionblinds. So tell me a little bit about those. Joe Estrada (07:56) so anywhere you see Motion, it’s funny, so my first introduction to the industry was really at R+T Stuttgart last year....
Guest Profile: Will Hanke Will Hanke has two passions: supporting our US veterans and helping window treatment and awning businesses tell their story online – providing them with increased exposure, more customers, and higher revenues. For over twenty-seven years he has helped mom & pops, startups, and multi-million dollar companies with their digital marketing strategies. Will hosts monthly online training events and has spoken at conferences across the US on a wide variety of topics from analytics to lead generation through his company, Window Treatment Marketing Pros. Special Invite to Sun Shading Expo 2025 Heading to the Sun Shading Expo in Indianapolis this November 5–7? We’ve got you covered! Use code SSENA25WTMP when registering to claim your FREE admission ticket. Don’t miss this chance to connect with top industry leaders, see the latest innovations, and experience hands-on demos — all at no cost with our exclusive listener code. Other Notes/Links: pssst.... want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Sun Shading Expo: Visit Website Video https://youtu.be/1QKpW0qHuJQ?si=RNktQVGug-43YXaf Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00.046) Today, I’ve got a bowl full of questions. I’m going to pull them out one by one and we’ll talk through them. It’s time for another episode of marketing pains. The podcast about marketing for window treatment and awning companies. Hey everyone. Welcome to Marketing Panes. The podcast where we dive into real marketing conversations for window treatment and awning pros. I’m Will Hanke and today we’re doing something a little different. So instead of a guest, I’m pulling questions straight out of real conversations I’ve had this year. Some came up during discovery calls, others from pros who are following along and just trying to figure out their marketing. These are real things people want to know whether they’re about to hire or they’re still running things themselves. So today I’ve got a bowl full of questions. I’m going to pull them out one by one and we’ll talk through them. So, all right, I’ve got my fancy Home Depot bucket here, paint bucket. I were remodeling the bathroom downstairs. So I just thought I’d use this before I filled it with paint. So what I want to do is obviously just pull out some different questions and see what they are, answer them lives. By the way, I’ve got 27 different questions in here that we’ve identified over the course of this entire year that are the most common questions. So, all right, let me just pull one out. See what we got here. How should I deal with negative or low star reviews? All right. Throw that in the trash. So low star reviews. The first thing that I would do is not reply. So I would write a reply to a one or two star review, but don’t publish it. You need some time to kind of chill and relax and get over that initial anger. So we tend to tell our clients, take a day or two to relax, write the review. And then after those 48 hours or so, go back and rewrite it. And maybe even consider using chat GPT to help you make it a little bit less angry and a little bit more factual. I think people respond well to one star reviews if a very good reply comes along with it. So listen, people understand we’re running a business and sometimes customers just aren’t great. But if you have a great written review, a reply after that, then William Hanke (02:23.885) A lot of times that makes people think you’re more real, more legit. And I’ve even heard people comment that 0.8 stars is better than five only because it makes you look more like a real company. So we all have those customers. We all get those kinds of one-star reviews from time to time. Take some time before you reply. Make sure you craft a reply and make sure you do reply for sure, but just, you know, don’t do it fully in anger. Do it very factual. And hopefully that will actually help your business down the road. All right, let’s grab another one out of here. Put that down. Can I spend $10 a day on Google ads? Sure. I wouldn’t recommend it. That is $300 a month. For our clients, we recommend that they start at $1,500 a month, which is what? 50 bucks a day. Um, the reason is a couple of things. $300 a month is going to get you one or maybe two leads in a new Google ad campaign. You should expect to pay between 160 and $210 per lead. So by recommending 1500 as a starting point, you should expect to get seven or so leads out of that money out of that spend. If you’re decent at sales and you close four of those seven. If the average job is, let’s say four grand, that’s about the average for, for a room that’s a $16,000 in revenue for $1,500 spend. Pretty nice return. If you’re spending $300 a day, one of the problems is early on in a Google ad campaign, Google puts you into a learning phase and that learning phase is learning who is going to engage with your ads. Who’s going to convert into an actual customer. And at $300 a month, when you are getting, let’s just say $200 cost per lead, that one lead per month is not enough for Google. There’s not enough meat on the bone for Google to really do a good job of getting you in front of the right people. If you only want to spend $10 a day, I would probably recommend doing some good SEO on your site, the best you can. We’ve got a great SEO masterclass that you can go through for free. William Hanke (04:47.053) and then run Facebook retargeting ads. So basically people that have already been exposed to your brand in some way, you can follow them around on Facebook, probably have a hard time spending $10 a day on retargeting ads on Facebook. That’s probably where I would put my money. if you want to do Google ads, you’re going to need to be spending closer to that 40, $50 a month or a day, which sounds horrible, but. Listen, if you can put a dollar in and $10 comes out, how many dollars do you want to put in? Now the other piece to that is the cost per lead doesn’t stay at that 160 to 210. If we can drive that cost per lead down to 150, 140, even a hundred dollars or lower, that would be fantastic, right? We’re not asking you to spend more money, but you’re getting more leads for the same spend. So that’s a better approach. Than just trying to spend a couple hundred bucks a month on Google ads probably save that money and put it elsewhere Alright next question. Is it better to do SEO or ads first? So good aunt good question the Correct way to do this is you need to start on SEO right away And I saw one of the other questions in the bucket that was how long does SEO take SEO can take eight months nine months twelve months to really start to gain momentum And depending on how many other people in your town are also doing SEO, you know, that could really stretch out. So you have to run ads while you’re working on your SEO. Both of these have to work in tandem. Ads are going to get the phone to ring now. SEO is going to get the phone to ring later. The idea is as your SEO really starts to gain momentum, maybe you can pull some of that ad budget back. or divert some of that ad budget to next door or Facebook or Instagram, some of these other places and just really start to increase that momentum as things go on. But they really need to work together. All right. Let’s grab another question. Let’s see what we got here. How much time do I need to invest each month into a valuable marketing campaign? William Hanke (07:01.299) So this depends on if you’re able to hire a company to do it. If you’re able to hire a company like mine to do your ongoing marketing, you don’t have to spend a whole lot of time working with the marketing company monthly strategy calls or quarterly strategy calls. Make sure that everybody is working in the same direction is always a great thing. after initial onboarding and sign up, which can get a little time intensive, ongoing can be pretty small. Now, if you’re not able to hire a marketing company, then it really just comes down to how much time can you put in? You’re busy running a business, which takes a lot of your time. Do you also have time to do the marketing piece of that as well? We provide a lot of resources to help people with that so that you can get to the point where you can actually hire a marketing company like us. But early on, it’s a lot of guerrilla marketing. getting out there and pounding the pavement, optimizing your site, getting a well-built ad library going. There’s a lot of moving pieces to it, but it is very possible to do yourself. It’s just going to require a lot of time outside of actually running your business as well. It just depends on what that trade-off is. Is it better to spend that money and have somebody doing that? If you have that revenue, obviously, if you don’t have that revenue, then it’s a pretty much a no brainers. All right, let’s grab another one. this is a short one. What is geofencing? So geofencing is basically drawing a fence around a specific physical area on the globe and showing ads to that area. An example could be, let’s say you got a budget blinds in town and you want to run ads to people that are in their parking lot. Is it the best use of your spend? Probably not because if somebody has already gone to budget and decided that’s where they’re going to go or Home Depot or Costco or wherever, most likely that’s where they’re going to make their decision, right? If they suddenly see an ad for ABC blinds in town, they’re probably not going to engage with that business. So maybe not the best use of your money, but you know, if you can get it really cheap, there’s, can run geofencing. William Hanke (09:19.867) ads without,...
Guest Profile: Joseph Cloute Joseph Cloute is the owner of Bumble Bee Blinds of Madison, Wisconsin, bringing over 20 years of customer service and hospitality experience to the window covering industry. Known for his people-first approach, Joseph is passionate about delivering a seamless, worry-free experience from consultation to installation. With a background inspired by his father’s craftsmanship and a deep love for design, he’s committed to quality, integrity, and helping people love where they live. Whether you’re in the window treatment & awning industry, exploring franchise ownership, or just curious about what it takes to build a business from zero, Joseph’s story is packed with insights and inspiration. Special Invite to Sun Shading Expo 2025Heading to the Sun Shading Expo in Indianapolis this November 5–7? We’ve got you covered!Use code SSENA25WTMP when registering to claim your FREE admission ticket.Don’t miss this chance to connect with top industry leaders, see the latest innovations, and experience hands-on demos — all at no cost with our exclusive listener code.Other Notes/Links:pssst.... want to be a guest on the show?Listen to other episodesSubscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry.Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8sSun Shading Expo: Visit WebsiteBooks MentionedThe 4-Hour Workweek by Tim FerrissBlue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee MauborgneUnreasonable Hospitality by Will GuidaraThe Road Less Stupid by Keith J. CunninghamOutgrow by Alex Goldfayn Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzdtqDDIQyk Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPTWill Hanke (00:00)Welcome to another episode of marketing panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. I’m your host, Will Hanke. And today we’re talking with someone that brings a fresh perspective and a whole lot of range from biotech labs to culinary kitchens, to building a business from scratch.His career is anything but typical. He’s now the owner, operator of Bumble Bee Blinds in Madison, Wisconsin. We’ll talk about what made him choose to be in the window treatment niche, why he bet on a franchise, and how he’s approaching growth in a saturated market with a brand new name and a ton of drive.If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to start from zero and build fast, this one’s for you. My guest today is Joseph Cloute He’s the owner of Bumble Bee Blinds. He brings a strong background in project management, operations, and customer success to the window covering industry. With a proven track record in driving efficiency, fostering client relationships, and leading teams to exceed expectations,Joseph combines operational excellence with a passion for delivering outstanding results for his customers. Joseph, thank you for being on today.Joseph Cloute (01:21)Will thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here today.Will Hanke (01:25)Yeah, no problem. So as I mentioned in the intro, you started kind of in the biotech world. Let’s start with that story. How has somebody who’s a microbiology grad and a chef, from what I understand, end up in window treatments?Joseph Cloute (01:42)That’s the question I continue to answer in every networking group, et cetera. One of my answers is always, well, the guidance counselor in high school didn’t quite have window treatments franchises, like one of the options that you pick, right? So here we are.Will Hanke (01:46)YouJoseph Cloute (02:02)at the age of 44 starting a business. I’ve had 26 jobs throughout my lifetime. Yeah, and so…you know, kind of what led to this was just not quite being fulfilled in each of those circumstances. And so this was, you know, not only a venture that I took to try to integrate myself and be more a part of the community, but I’m also looking for that fulfillment. And part of that is through serving others and serving others through providing them window treatments and window covering solutions.Will Hanke (02:37)I likethat I had a similar path. No matter how many jobs you take, you feel like there’s just something out there. I ended up reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and that’s really what kind of spurred me into action to, okay, how can I actually quit my job and start this thing for real? ⁓ Yeah, good stuff.Joseph Cloute (02:47)Tim Ferriss, absolutely.You’re aftermy heart when you start talking about, you know, reading books, continuing to discover yourself, finding, you know, your skill set and what personality traits, you know, you can utilize to the best to serve others, right?Will Hanke (03:12)Yeah, forsure. I’ll have to ask you at the end about your favorite books or the ones you’re reading lately. So we’ll do that. ⁓ So tell me what attracted you to Bumble Bee specifically. There’s a lot of different franchise options out there. ⁓ How did you land there versus all the other ones?Joseph Cloute (03:29)Yeah, ⁓ was an interesting journey that started with the Entrepreneur Source. So they reached out to me and I actually utilized them and we looked at a number of franchises and part of that journey is some personality tests, some like…get to know you with your coach and stuff like that. And I won’t lie to you, the first three that he put on my discovery center, one of the first ones was Bumble Bee Blinds and I just looked at him and I was like, I thought we got to know each other. ⁓ You put blinds on here? Like, what are we doing? And he’s like, trust the process, be curious.ask questions and be open to new opportunities. And honestly, the more I learned about each franchise and their model and, you know, what the franchisor, you know, is doing with you and the partnership that they were creating, this just made more and more sense. And, you know, on the day that I signed the franchise agreement, Dwayne called me and he was just like, so do you trust me now?YouWill Hanke (04:46)great. I love that. ⁓ You mentioned this was your fourth career out of 26 jobs. What lessons from those past lives are helping you now?Joseph Cloute (04:51)Yeah.Yeah, absolutely. I would say the…Finding control in the chaos of being a chef and working in kitchens It has been a big one because things get a little chaotic and you know I will never forget being at training with Bumble Bee and they were like, you know, all right Are you ready for this like journey? And you know, they’re trying to prep people who have like, you know lived in corporate life and lived in this you know, little bubble that they create in corporate and I was like Yeah, so like I was a cheffor seven years and they’re like you’re gonna be fine. We don’t think you’re gonna be gonna struggle here at all. So you know that was a big part of it and with working in customer service whether it was in project management or whether it was in the culinary you know that level of hospitality right culinary school they were like if you are you gonna choose to be a cook or you’re gonna choose to be a culinary?Like, you gonna be a master of your craft or are just gonna come here and put in the time and collect a paycheck? And that is my approach to my business now. It is, I wanna be master of my craft. I wanna be the go-to person who knows not only the systems, but the products and the operations and any of the, you know, accounting and business portion and how to network, how to grow, all of the things just full circle.I want to be a master of it all and you know part of that is that background that came from through kitchens and through project management as well.Will Hanke (06:38)while you’ve had a pretty wild ride, if your next move wasn’t blinds, what would it have been?Joseph Cloute (06:45)Great question. I think about that often. ⁓ I would say it would be my 27th job, which would have probably led to my 28th job, which would have led to my 29th job. So I was happy to find this.Will Hanke (06:53)Great.Yeah, makes sense. So I know that you just recently started with the Bumble bee franchise. How far are you into that?Joseph Cloute (07:08)Yeah, we just celebrated 100 days.Will Hanke (07:11)100 days, okay. So how’s it going so far? Any surprises, anything that you didn’t expect?Joseph Cloute (07:19)⁓ I think Bumble bee Blinds set us up ⁓ with at least expectations. Has there been surprises? Well, well. ⁓ I don’t know if you’ve lived in America since January, but there’s been a couple of surprises that have occurred. ⁓ So those were unexpected. ⁓ I signed paperwork on January 6th.Will Hanke (07:32)youtell me more.Joseph Cloute (07:43)I don’t know that any of us could have predicted some of the economic and tariff volatility that we’ve had. ⁓ I would say unprecedented, but you’ve been in the business longer than me, so maybe you can chime in on that one.Will Hanke (07:57)There’s always ups and downs in the world of pricing. hahaha More ups than downs.Joseph Cloute (07:59)That’s a good blanket statement. like that. ⁓But yeah, I would say outside of that, ⁓ the biggest surprises would be, you know, firing ⁓ my design consultant on day one and taking over that role, ⁓ learning a bit about myself and the fact that I can execute.as a salesman at a high level. ⁓ That was unexpected to me. ⁓ Even my family when I’m like, yeah, so I do all the sales and they’re like, okay, and how’s that going? And I’m like, actually, it’s awesome. I like, I really enjoy it. It’s one of my favorite parts of the business is being out there with the clients, ⁓ helping them find solutions, solving their problems and that kind of stuff. ⁓ But overall, it’s been going better than expected. ⁓I am hitting the corporate franchise KPIs that they set out. So meeting their expectations, I would say,...
Guest Profile: Bert BoltonBert Bolton - Blind Cleaners NetworkBert’s been in the business for over 20 years, and he’s built something that’s part training center, part network, and part powerhouse support system for people in or entering the blind cleaning space. He has blended his expertise in the fields of education and cleaning to support a growing network of professionally minded blind and drapery cleaners.His facility is one place major fabricators like Hunter Douglas and Springs Window Fashions send new products or fabrics for testing, cleaning, and evaluations. Students from as far away as Australia also come to learn this niche of the cleaning world, whether it be ultrasonics or OnSite Fabricare.When not working, Bert and his wife Miriam enjoy time on the water in their kayaks, fishing (water or dirt) or sneaking away to visit their Idaho grandsons who are not quite old enough to do any of the above things unsupervised yet.DescriptionWhat if blind cleaning and small repairs could unlock thousands in repeat business — or even lead to six-figure design projects? In this episode of Marketing Panes, host Will Hanke sits down with Bert Bolton of the Blind Cleaners Network to uncover the hidden potential in cleaning and repair services for window treatment businesses.You’ll hear real-world stories, including:How a simple cord repair turned into a $2,000 cleaning job:white_check_mark: The decorator who turned six blinds into $100K of work in her first year with a clientWhy cleaning is one of the most overlooked yet powerful marketing tools in our industryHow repeat commercial contracts (like schools) can bring in thousands every few yearsThe role of the Blind Cleaners Network in training, credibility, and creating new business connectionsWhether you’re a window treatment pro, workroom, or designer, this conversation will help you see blind cleaning and repair in a whole new light, as a pathway to long-term, high-value clients.From Dust to Dollars: Is Blind Cleaning a Secret Sales Engine?Blind cleaning may not sound glamorous, but it can be one of the most powerful sales and marketing tools in the window treatment industry. What often begins as a simple cleaning or repair can open the door to long-term, high-value client relationships, repeat contracts, and even six-figure design projects.In a recent episode of Marketing Panes, Bert Bolton, founder of the Blind Cleaners Network, shared how blind cleaning has become a hidden sales engine for dealers, decorators, and cleaning professionals alike.SummaryBlind cleaning and small repairs are often dismissed as “low-margin” work. But for forward-thinking window treatment businesses, these services create a gateway to stronger client trust, repeat business, and new revenue opportunities. By combining credibility, expertise, and the right partnerships, blind cleaning can transform into a growth strategy—not just a service add-on.The Overlooked Power of Blind CleaningWhy Dealers Often Skip ItMany window treatment dealers hesitate to offer cleaning services because the immediate profit margins appear smaller compared to selling new products. However, this view can overlook the bigger picture. Cleaning provides more than income—it creates opportunities to enter homes, build relationships, and position yourself as the trusted go-to provider.Cleaning as a Door OpenerA minor repair, like fixing a cord, might only take minutes but can lead to thousands in additional work. As Bert shared, one decorator secured a $100K project that started with cleaning just six blinds. Another example: a school district that first engaged through a small repair ended up providing recurring cleaning contracts every few years, creating steady revenue.Turning Service Calls into SalesTrust Leads to Bigger ProjectsOnce inside a client’s home or business, a cleaning job often uncovers more opportunities. A customer who starts with a single blind cleaning may later request quotes for replacements or upgrades, all because they’ve already built trust with the provider.Marketing Value in High-End HomesCleaning provides entry into homes and spaces that dealers might not otherwise reach. In luxury markets, this can be the perfect introduction to clients who value quality and are likely to invest in larger projects down the road.Building Credibility Through Training and NetworkingThe Role of Blind Cleaners NetworkThe Blind Cleaners Network equips professionals with the tools, training, and credibility to deliver quality service. From hands-on workshops to manufacturer partnerships with Hunter Douglas and Springs Window Fashions, the network helps raise professionalism across the industry.Why Certification MattersBeing part of a professional network communicates reliability and expertise. This credibility not only reassures clients but also makes it easier to build partnerships with decorators, dry cleaners, and restoration companies who may pass along referrals.A Hidden Sales Engine Worth ExploringBlind cleaning isn’t just about maintenance—it’s about positioning your business for repeat contracts, high-value projects, and long-term relationships. By reframing cleaning and repairs as a marketing tool, window treatment professionals can unlock a steady stream of new opportunities.Ready to Explore New Growth Opportunities?If you’re looking for fresh ways to expand your window treatment business, consider blind cleaning as more than just a side service. At Window Treatment Marketing Pros, we help businesses uncover hidden revenue streams, build credibility, and attract long-term clients.Learn more or connect with Bert at: https://blindcleaners.biz/ Special Invite to Sun Shading Expo 2025Heading to the Sun Shading Expo in Indianapolis this November 5–7? We’ve got you covered!Use code SSENA25WTMP when registering to claim your FREE admission ticket.Don’t miss this chance to connect with top industry leaders, see the latest innovations, and experience hands-on demos — all at no cost with our exclusive listener code.Other Notes/Links:pssst.... want to be a guest on the show?Listen to other episodesSubscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry.Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49Apple Podcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/0WjqzBvBhqI Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPTWill Hanke (00:00)Hi, welcome to another episode of marketing panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers and business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. I’m your host, Will Hanke. Today we have another fantastic guest joining us for an interesting topic. Let me tell you if you’ve ever written off blind cleaning or repairs as low value work.this conversation might change your mind. From turning repairs into long-term clients to why cleaning is one of the most underused marketing tools in the industry, we will cover all of that today. My guest is Bert Bolton from the Blind Cleaners Network. Bert ‘s been in business for over 20 years and he’s built something that’s part training center, part network, and part.powerhouse support system for people in or entering the blind cleaning space. He has blended his expertise in the fields of education and cleaning to support a growing network of professionally minded blind and drapery cleaners. his facility is one place major fabricators like Hunter Douglas and Springs Window Fashions send new products or fabrics for test cleaning evaluations.Students from as far away as Australia also come to learn this niche of the cleaning world, whether it be ultrasonics or on-site fabric care. When not working, Bert and his wife Miriam enjoy their time on the water in kayaks, fishing, or sneaking away to visit their Idaho grandsons, who are not quite old enough to enjoy any of the things mentioned above unsupervised quiteyet.Bert, thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it. I love the outdoors thing. ⁓ I’m an outdoors guy myself ⁓ and waiting on the grandkids to get a little bit bigger as well.Bert Bolton (01:50)Thank you.Yeah,it’d fun to teach them to fish and do those things.Will Hanke (02:05)Yeah,yeah, yeah. Well, thanks again for being on the show. I want to dig into the blind cleaners network a little bit later on, but for now, can you give us, tell me about your journey into the blind cleaning industry? How’d you get started 22 years ago and what drew you into this specialized niche?Bert Bolton (02:27)Well, at that time I was ⁓ leaving education. I was kind of at a crossroads looking for something to do in the area locally. So I was looking around for different opportunities and this little blind cleaning business was for sale. ⁓ Somebody just started it and they were going to retire in a few years. So they put it up for sale and I started investigating this little niche business and the more I kind of investigated it, the more intrigued I got bythis specialty niche business versus just a bigger business like carpet cleaning or window cleaning or something that had a lot of competition.Will Hanke (03:07)Yeah, so when you started investigating it a little bit more, I guess you figured out it was a viable business model. ⁓ How did that evolve for you?Bert Bolton (03:17)Well, as I mentioned, it was just a small business they had started. At that point, you know, I saw the possibilities that, you know, you could build it into and grow it into a viable business. so, you know, I took a few years learning the tricks of the trade and taking the knocks in business. But, you know, that ramp to success isn’t straight line. It’s got ups and downs, but, you know, it’s been a good ride.Will Hanke (03:39)YouYeah. And then along the way, I guess you documented things, figured out what worked, what didn’t work....
Guest Profile: Susan WoodcockSusan Woodcock is an entrepreneur, educator, and one of the most recognizable voices in the custom window treatment world. She owns Home Dec Gal, a to-the-trade workroom, and is the founder of Workroom Tech—the only trade school in the U.S. dedicated to custom home decor sewing professionals. She and her husband also produce the Custom Workroom Conference, an annual gathering that draws passionate small business owners from across the country. Today, we’re diving into her journey, what it takes to train the next generation of fabricators, and why education is more important than ever in our trade.The Journey Into Custom WorkroomsSusan Woodcock’s path into the window treatment industry began in her mother’s drapery workroom and quickly grew into her own business in the late 1980s. From English drapery styles to modern fabrications, she developed her skills through real projects and long-term relationships with designers. Today, Susan is recognized as one of the most influential voices in custom fabrication and education.Why Education MattersHands-On Training vs. Online LearningWhile online tutorials are convenient, Susan emphasizes that hands-on experience is irreplaceable. Fabrics require physical interaction—draping, measuring, and managing large cuts—that can’t be fully captured in a video. That’s why her school, Workroom Tech, offers small in-person classes with direct mentorship, complemented by interactive online sessions that expand access worldwide.Training the Next GenerationWorkroom Tech attracts students from all walks of life—young parents seeking flexible careers, professionals transitioning from healthcare or law enforcement, and retirees looking for creative encore careers. What unites them is a shared passion for fabric and craftsmanship.Starting and Growing a Successful WorkroomTools That Matter MostAccording to Susan, the most important investment isn’t a machine—it’s a professional work table. Large-scale projects like draperies and Roman shades require space to spread fabric, cut precisely, and assemble with ease. With a table and basic sewing tools, many successful businesses have started from home-based setups.Building Value Through CraftsmanshipSusan encourages fabricators to highlight the handcrafted, custom nature of their work rather than competing on price. High-quality window treatments last decades, and clients—whether affluent or budget-conscious—value the uniqueness and durability of custom pieces.Branding and Marketing That WorkEstablishing a PresenceSusan credits much of her growth to building websites early on, which helped past clients reconnect. Social media, particularly Instagram and Facebook, has since amplified her reach, giving her a direct way to showcase projects and connect with future students.Consistent BrandingFor Susan, branding is about more than visuals—it’s about consistency. She avoids discounts to reinforce the value of craftsmanship, teaching students to maintain pricing integrity. Her strategy is simple: quality, authenticity, and confidence in the value of custom work.The Role of Conferences and CommunityThe Custom Workroom ConferenceBeyond the classroom, Susan co-produces the Custom Workroom Conference, an annual gathering that combines education, networking, and community. Attendees gain exposure to new methods, connect with peers facing similar challenges, and build relationships with suppliers and mentors.The conference is known for its welcoming atmosphere—something many small business owners in this niche industry deeply appreciate. It’s less like a trade show and more like a family reunion for fabricators.ConclusionSusan Woodcock’s journey shows that the custom window treatment industry thrives on a balance of education, craftsmanship, and community. From equipping new fabricators with essential skills to fostering collaboration through events, her work highlights the importance of building a trade on both tradition and innovation.Show NotesGuest: Susan Woodcock – Founder of Workroom Tech, Home Dec Gal, and co-producer of the Custom Workroom Conference.Topics: hands-on education, starting a workroom, branding and marketing, and the role of community events.Learn more about the Custom Workroom Conference: customworkroomconference.comOther Notes/Links:pssst.... want to be a guest on the show?Listen to other episodesHome Dec Gal: Visit WebsiteWorkroom Tech: Visit Website Video https://youtu.be/r3whm90EDpY Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPTWill Hanke (00:00)Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. I’m your host, Will Hanke. Today we’re joined with Susan Woodcock, entrepreneur, educator, and founder of Workroom Tech. the only trade school in the U.S. for custom home decor sewing pros. She also runs Home Dec Gal and produces the custom workroom conference, fabricators together from all over the country. In this episode, we’ll talk about her journey, the importance of hands-on education, and how workrooms can thrive in today’s industry.Susan Woodcock is an entrepreneur, educator, and one of the most recognizable voices in the custom window treatment world. She owns Home Dec Gal, a to-the-trade workroom, and is the founder of Workroom Tech, the only trade school in the US dedicated to custom home decor sewing professionals. She and her husband also produced the Custom Workroom Conference, an annual gathering that draws passionate small business owners from across the country. Today we’re diving into her journeywhat it takes to train the next generation of fabricators and why education is more important than ever to our trade. Susan, thank you so much for being on the show.Susan Woodcock (01:24)Hello, Will, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today.Will Hanke (01:27)Thank you. So let’s jump in and talk about custom work rooms. What exactly are they? And tell us a little bit about the story of how you got into this side of the industry.Susan Woodcock (01:39)Okay, well a custom workroom is ⁓ usually a small business. There’s also some larger commercial workrooms that do custom work, but works directly with interior design trade to create those beautiful window treatments and custom upholstered pieces. And then some workrooms work retail and work directly with customers, helping them with their interior design. So it’s an industry full of people that work with their hands and are actually making things in their businesses.Will Hanke (02:14)I like that. So before focusing on the fabrication and teaching students how to sew, did you do any other types of sewing like for a different industry that moved you towards this?Susan Woodcock (02:28)No. I think I’ve made one dress in my life, no garment sewing, dabbled in quilting a little bit. My mother had a drapery workroom in her home, and that’s how I learned. And then I started my own drapery workroom. When I left college, I was an art major, fine arts. And ⁓ there were so many jobs for fine art majors out there, right?Will Hanke (02:30)Okay.I bet. ⁓Susan Woodcock (02:56)So I started a drapery workroom in 1988 and been doing it ever since.Will Hanke (03:04)wow. What do you guys focus on mostly in the workroom?Susan Woodcock (03:08)draperies, round shades, slip covers, that sort of thing.Will Hanke (03:13)Okay, okay.What did the early days of getting started out of college, what did that look like?Susan Woodcock (03:19)Well, I started out with one designer and she was very busy and very successful and she really directed the style of my work. So she did English drapery method which is bump interlining and ⁓ back then in the late 80s it was chintz fabrics and silks and valances and trims and ⁓ a lot of things that we’re seeing come back now which is exciting.But it really gave me an opportunity to learn on the job, but just hand methods, hand sewing. And I worked with her exclusively at the beginning of my career. We had an exclusive contract and did that for three or four years. And it was a great way to learn. And it really set me off on the path that I’ve done for the rest of my career.Will Hanke (04:13)i love that. Has the audience changed over the years of who you’re serving?Susan Woodcock (04:18)No. As far as my custom workroom, no. In fact, I’m still working for some of the same customers that I worked for back then. But now it’s their children and their grandchildren. Yeah, that’s pretty exciting to see.Will Hanke (04:26)wow.That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s awesome.I love to hear that the 80s prints are coming back. I doubt some of the crazy ones are coming back, but still, that’s exciting to me.Susan Woodcock (04:38)I know.Yeah,the grand millennials are trending us towards the fashions of years ago and it’s fun to see.Will Hanke (04:53)That’s awesome. Awesome. So I know you’re really busy. You have Home Dec Gal, Workroom Tech, and the Custom Workroom Conference. Why do you think it’s necessary to separate them in the digital space, and how do they intersect?Susan Woodcock (05:08)Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s difficult when you’re self-employed to separate yourself from the businesses. The Home Dec Gal is definitely me. I’m fabricating. The customers are hiring me because they want me specifically doing their work. But for the conference and the school, we started the conference first. And it was one of those things where I said, you know, I want something to sell in the future.and my workroom business is really tied to me. So the conference, one of the reasons we started it, one of the small reasons was to have something to build and sell later. And the same thing with the school. We do try to keep it somewhat, not neutral, but so somebody else could take it over in the future....
Guest Profile: Randy and Andy Randy Meppelink runs a 4th-generation family business based in Michigan that doesn’t just sell machines, they also teach fabrication. Whether it’s building roller shades from scratch, improving your current workflow, or launching new products like outdoor shades, Randy and his team help window treatment pros go from retailer to full-on fabricator. He brings a rare perspective: real-life experience in fabrication and hands-on product knowledge. His facility doubles as a working fabrication space where businesses can test machines, learn the ropes, and get hands-on experience. Andrew Meyer is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Indiana Coated Fabrics, a U.S. manufacturer of high-performance textiles. With over 20 years in sales, marketing, and brand development, he now focuses on serving the window shading industry through ICF’s U.S.-made blackout and light-filtering fabrics. Known for pairing market insight with a hands-on approach, Andrew helps fabricators, distributors, and designers navigate supply chain challenges and design trends. Outside work, he’s a devoted husband, father of three, and active community volunteer. Other Notes/Links: Window Products: Visit Website Indiana Coated fabrics: Visit Website Sun Shading Expo: https://sunshadingexpo.com/ pssst.... want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Video https://youtu.be/pt4lc2Hsh2M Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT Will Hanke (00:00) All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. I’m your host, Will Hanke and today we’re joined by two industry leaders helping dealers cross over into the world of in-house fabrication. So first is Randy Meppelink. Randy runs a fourth generation family business based in Michigan that doesn’t just sell machines, they also teach fabrication, whether it’s building roller shades from scratch, improving your current workflow or launching new products like outdoor shades. Randy and his team help window treatment pros go from retailer to full on fabricator. He brings a rare perspective, real life experience in fabrication and hands-on product knowledge. His facility doubles as a working fabrication space where businesses can test machines, learn the ropes, and get hands-on experience. Andrew Meyer, meanwhile, represents Indiana Coated Fabrics, one of the last U.S.-based manufacturers of coated-shade fabrics. While they’re known for blackout materials, ICF goes far beyond that. They work with some of the biggest names in the industry, providing custom converting and finishing services for companies that want to apply ICF’s precision to their own textiles. For 60 years, ICF has supplied everyone from massive commercial brands to independent dealers. Andy’s mission is to help more US fabricators, big and small, access top tier materials and stand out with local made quality. Together, they’re showing us what it really takes to bring fabrication in-house, adapt to industry shifts, and build a more resilient, profitable window treatment business. Guys, thanks for being on today. And I’m a… Yeah, and I’m out of breath now, right? Randy Meppelink (02:03) Yeah. Thanks, Will. We appreciate the invite. You bet. Andrew Meyer (02:03) Thank you. Yes. Randy Meppelink (02:08) Hahaha! Andrew Meyer (02:08) That was quite the intro. ⁓ Will Hanke (02:12) Yeah, so, so let’s jump in. Randy and Andy, could you each introduce yourselves briefly and tell us a little bit about things that maybe we don’t know yet? Randy Meppelink (02:23) Well, thank you very much. And like you said, I am fourth generation. My family immigrated from the Netherlands. they went from Holland to Holland. So real original, right? We went from Holland, the country, to Holland, Michigan, the city. So place they felt comfortable. But a lot of people may not know a couple of things. I’ve been in the industry really a long time since I was a child, you know, picking up or helping my grandfather. You know, we were fabricating drapery rods and, you know, shades way back in the 70s and stuff. but fast forward a little bit. One of the things that some people know and maybe a lot of don’t know, but there was a mini blind that was sold by a company called Leveler. for years, and they had a paint system on there that was a dust guard paint that repelled dust. And I was the inventor behind that. And so that was ⁓ one of mine. so that’s something that you asked of people may not know about me. That’s one. It’s not really out there. You’d have to do the research to find it. yeah, that’s what it And I’ve been involved in a lot of product development with companies that are, whether it’s Will Hanke (03:19) nice. Have a cool. Randy Meppelink (03:39) Hunter Douglas, Levolor, Comfortex, used to be Comfortex. Over the years, where I’ve contracted and done individual engineering products for them. So there’s many products that are out in the industry today that I have touched in one way or another in that product design. So yeah. Will Hanke (03:58) That’s awesome, awesome. Very cool, how about you Andy? Andrew Meyer (04:01) ⁓ Yes, so my name is Andrew Meyer here with ICF. While Randy and I do share the same barber as well as facial barber, I didn’t realize we’re both sporting the go-to today. I’ve been with ICF for about five years now. Tim Foster, whom a lot of the industry folk know, brought me into kind of… ⁓ kind of reinvigorate how our approach was and how we’re going to market with what we do. A lot of people in the industry know ICF and we’ve been kind of doing this blackout material for a long time. However, we do a lot of other things. Outside of shading, we do an art and entertainment ⁓ materials. We do converting work for various shade fabrics as well as other industry materials. ⁓ And we work in the industrial sector as well in making fabrics that get used in various applications. know, everything from tarmacs at the airport to your fabric HVAC materials. So lots of different things that we touch. The bulk of what we do is in the shading world. So which is why we’ve got great relationships with people like Randy and many others out there. And as you kind of mentioned in the intro, we work with some of the biggest names in the shading industry, all the way down to the small mom and pops. And that’s what’s a lot of fun, is to be able to kind of work with both ends of the spectrum in what we do in providing fabrics to the industry. Will Hanke (05:27) that. love that. Randy, you mentioned that your company is four generations strong. What does it what does keeping it in the family, you know, kind of mean and for how you serve the industry today? Randy Meppelink (05:39) So family dynamics are extremely unique when you’re dealing with four generations in the business. Me being the third, but the fourth generation now working in the company and managing. One of the things that we did, and we ran out of kids, my wife and I, we created different divisions within the company so that they work together, but they don’t really cross over. Andrew Meyer (05:58) You Randy Meppelink (06:06) And that way it helps with the family dynamics piece of that because they’re directly responsible for their own division, whether it’s on the machinery side or whether it’s fabrication side or whether it’s supply, the different things like that involve. So that’s one of the important pieces with a family business, I think, is to have some separation for each of the members. Will Hanke (06:27) For sure. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. My daughter works with me and she’s, it’s tough to keep the two things separated sometimes between dad and boss. ⁓ But so I know about the family dynamics a little bit at least. So ⁓ Andy, you mentioned that your business is, or that the business is 60 years, been around for quite a while now. Randy Meppelink (06:41) Yes. Will Hanke (06:52) How has it evolved over the decades? Andrew Meyer (06:55) Yeah, so ICF actually started by Bill Haldowing. He worked at a very large, just not gonna name him, very large company that did some window shading, but they also did movie screen projection screen fabrication. they had started to slow down the shading side of their business, so he actually started ICF to kind of fill that void. And… ICF started as our name says in long format, Indiana Coated Fabrics, we coated fabrics and we made various coated textiles to service, like I said, shading industry and then morphed into projection screen industry. And then somewhere in the 90s, early to mid 90s is when we actually got our first laminator. And that opened up a whole new world of shading, shading material opportunity. So we went from just coating fabrics to then going into being able to provide a blackout material that was laminated and not go the coding route. Now, fast forward even further, we actually do various textiles that use both of those practices. So we’ve got materials that are both laminated and coated to provide different textures, different approaches to the shading industry, as well as the projection screen industry, and as well as some of the other other ⁓ sectors that we service. So we started with this one idea and we’ve kind of really morphed based on the needs as well as our capabilities. And so now we run ⁓ two laminators. We run a narrow width and a wide format width. And then we also have our coating oven, which has different ways in which we can apply coatings to fabrics. Will Hanke (08:32) Yeah. Very interesting. One thing that we’ve seen a lot lately, obviously, is motorization and exterior products really are kind of trending....
In this episode of Marketing Panes, we sit down with Ryan Murray, the visionary CEO who acquired a 29-year-old shutter factory—and scaled it by 20% in just one year. Ryan shares the behind-the-scenes strategies that transformed a legacy window treatment manufacturer into a booming modern business. Discover how Ryan leveraged local manufacturing as a unique advantage. Hear how automation and tech upgrades reshaped his operations—from payroll to customer experience. Learn why follow-up is more than just a sales tip—it's a growth engine. Get the scoop on SBA loans and funding strategies that helped fuel their expansion.
In this episode of Marketing Panes, we sit down with Ryan Murray, the visionary CEO who acquired a 29-year-old shutter factory—and scaled it by 20% in just one year. Ryan shares the behind-the-scenes strategies that transformed a legacy window treatment manufacturer into a booming modern business. Discover how Ryan leveraged local manufacturing as a unique advantage. Hear how automation and tech upgrades reshaped his operations—from payroll to customer experience. Learn why follow-up is more than just a sales tip—it's a growth engine. Get the scoop on SBA loans and funding strategies that helped fuel their expansion.
In this episode of Marketing Panes, we sit down with Mike Stolte, founder of 406 Blinds—Montana’s top-rated window treatment company. Mike shares how he pivoted from a declining satellite TV business to build a thriving local brand, starting with just a $5 Craigslist ad. Discover how grassroots marketing, community involvement, and a relentless focus on customer service helped Mike scale his business without big budgets or flashy tech. From securing a Lowe’s contract early on to expanding into North Dakota with a strategic Costco partnership, Mike's story is packed with real-world lessons for any entrepreneur. 🎯 Learn how to: - Build trust through local connections - Keep overhead low while scaling smart - Blend traditional and digital marketing effectively Use closing ratios to measure growth and pricing power Whether you're a small business owner or marketing pro, this episode delivers insights on resilience, hustle, and building something that matters. 🔗 Don’t miss it—tune in now!
Guests Profile: Joe Kendall President - Made in the Shade Eastern Shore Owns Kendall furniture , Made in the shade dealer went from 58th place, to 5th place, to second place and in 2024 #1 Volume dealer in North America Ryan Gilberts Owner of Shaded Window Coverings With over a decade in the window covering industry, Ryan launched Shaded Window Coverings in 2022 to bring his vision to life. Starting as an installer and moving into sales, he quickly mastered the business and took the leap to entrepreneurship. Now, nearly three years later, his company is thriving, recently securing a six-figure project for 1,900 shades in a new apartment complex. Other Notes/Links: To learn more about Joe Kendall visit: MITS Eastern Shore Ryan Gilberts visit: Shaded Window Coverings pssst.... want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhI2cJpxIu8&ab_channel=WindowTreatmentMarketingPros Click here to display Transcript Transcript Will Hanke (00:00) All right, everyone. Welcome to another episode of marketing panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their strengths, about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. Today is our Q2 preview. We’re going to talk about what happened in Q1. We’re going to talk about what we think is coming up in Q2. I’ve got two guests with some great insights that I’m excited to interview. First of all, we got Joe Kendall, president of Made in the Shades Eastern Shore. Joe owns Kendall Furniture, a Made in the Shade dealership. He went from 58th place to fifth place in the Made in the Shade franchise, then second place, and in 2002, 2024 became the number one volume dealer in North America. Joe, thanks for being on the show today. Ryan Gilberts (00:31) Okay. Joe Kendall (00:40) you You’re very welcome. We’re happy to be here. Will Hanke (00:57) Thank you. We’ve also got Ryan Gilbert’s Ryan owns Shaded Window Coverings in Montana. Shaded Shaded Window Covering started in May 2022 after Ryan was working for some other businesses in the window covering industry over the last 10 years. He wanted to. He first started in the industry as a part time installer, then moved to lead installer position and eventually a hybrid role of installer and salesperson. Ryan Gilberts (00:58) you Will Hanke (01:27) Now almost three years later, there’s really no turning back. He’s just started his largest sixth figure project, 1900 shades for an apartment building under construction. Ryan, thank you for joining as well. Ryan Gilberts (01:39) Thanks, Will. Will Hanke (01:40) 1900 so you’re going be a little bit busy I guess for at least the next couple days right? Ryan Gilberts (01:44) Fortunately, it’s being built out in stages. Will Hanke (01:46) Awesome. Yeah, that’s great. Congrats on that. So I want to start by talking about some different industry trends. What emerging trends are you guys seeing in the industry right now? And how can other window treatment dealers kind of align with these trends to stay competitive? Joe Kendall (02:02) Ryan, think what you’re doing is, Ryan and I spoke a little bit beforehand, Will, and we really love that the exterior market is exploding. you need to make sure you’re talking to your clients because they don’t know all the cool things you know as far as that goes. I was talking to Ryan and we were discussing how you might go into a customer wants to get some roller shades up on four windows that are consecutive. Ryan Gilberts (02:12) Yeah. Joe Kendall (02:28) And you leave the house with an exterior roller shade motorized. their beautiful in-tort, their trim on the inside is left alone. It’s gorgeous. And they can have that true builder look, but yet get the results they need when they need them. I think the exterior, and people, great too. I think they expect to pay more for exterior blinds. And it’s with the warranties that some of these manufacturers are offering, it’s really a great way to go. Ryan Gilberts (02:55) Yeah, I got to agree on that too, but. Will Hanke (02:57) Yeah, I like that. Ryan, are you seeing something similar? Ryan Gilberts (02:59) So yeah, I mean I like the exterior products They’re definitely a little bit more sleek, but they’re definitely a touch more expensive than some people anticipate But the cool thing is there’s a vast majority of dealers or I should say vendors that are starting to manufacture those and get into the market so I Don’t think price points all gonna be all that Will Hanke (03:21) I know when we talked with some of our guests on the Q1 podcast that we had talked about, they mentioned the luxury buyers are really popping up more. Are you guys seeing that as well? Ryan Gilberts (03:32) Absolutely. Joe Kendall (03:33) yeah. Yeah. Our average ticket for the last six months is up about 15%. Will Hanke (03:38) Okay. Joe Kendall (03:38) You know, we were in the $4,400 average ticket. We’re now in that a hair over 5,000, 5,200 area, which I think is just people are buying nicer stuff. Will Hanke (03:48) Yeah, I think that’s a great point. when I started in this industry as the marketing guy, about seven years ago, we niche down specifically just to the window treatment and awning industry. The average job was 2,500, 3,000. So obviously part of that is, I guess you could say inflation, but also I think it’s just people are buying better quality stuff. Ryan Gilberts (04:03) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Joe Kendall (04:11) And, you know, there was always… Go ahead, Ryan, I’m sorry. Ryan Gilberts (04:11) Absolutely. no, I was just saying absolutely. But I would probably say a year ago, I kind of crossed over that bridge with Hunter Douglas and became one of their dealers. But I will say that going into that bridge and are going into that realm of the market and being able to offer those very high quality products, my ticket sales have definitely increased tremendously. And I’m also getting a lot of those larger ticket deals and showing them. The cool stuff, I guess you can say. Joe Kendall (04:40) You know, and I train, we have two full-time salespeople. I still train them and remind them of the famous, you know, Bloomingdale’s three bread maker stories about a good, better, best versus just a good or a best. And, you know, I encourage my people that when they’re presenting a product, and let’s say they’re talking about a Roman shade or they’re talking about a roller shade, and you pop out a Hunter Douglas vignette, you know, I’m a big believer in telling the client straight up, hey, this is a more expensive product. There’s a decent chance, you the average salesperson might think, God, they’re going to be bummed. But really they go, cool, this is what I want. And I always like to tell people, because obviously if a roller shade was $49, we’d sell everybody we talked to. But not being afraid of the more expensive products and sharing with your customer, hey look. Ryan Gilberts (05:18) Okay. . Joe Kendall (05:32) This is a more expensive product, but let me tell you why and what you get. And then it’s like, well, this makes perfect sense. selling higher up, it takes work. But if you do it right, it really, really can pay off. Ryan Gilberts (05:37) Okay. I gotta agree with you on that. Definitely education with your customers or clients is I think gonna make you stand above the crowd and definitely show your worth and then also get those larger ticket items. Joe Kendall (05:56) Definitely, definitely. Will Hanke (05:57) I love the idea of upselling, right? You already got them on the hook. Now if you can walk out with 10 % more than you thought you’d get or something like that, it’s a fantastic growth strategy for your business. Joe Kendall (06:08) You know, I’m going to share a quick story if I could, Will. When I first started selling 30 years, 35 years ago, I was selling roofs and my closing ratio was excellent, but my gross profit was just barely average. So the owner says, Joe, I want you to go out to dinner tonight with Zeke, who’s our highest profit guy. makes a thousand dollars or more than you a week. He’s going to teach you how to sell higher. And I was like, my God, this is going to change everything. We go out to happy hour drinking, long story short, we get to midnight, we’re at 7-Eleven, we’ve had some cocktails. And I said, Zeke, we’re gonna be in deep trouble, you didn’t train me tonight. And we ran up the owner’s credit card. So Zeke can barely stand up and he asked the cashier, says, for a napkin and a pen. And I said, sure. So Zeke goes, here you go, on a 20 square roof, what’s your opening price? I said, well, I usually start around 4,200. Zeke burps up some beer and says, okay, try it again, but this time instead of writing a four down, write a five. And the moral of story is just open up a little higher and you’ll get more, it’ll make a higher sale. It’s that simple. Just start a little higher. And I always remind people you can’t go up, but you can go down. So that’s one of my favorite training stories. Will Hanke (07:17) I love that you were able to write the night off on the. Joe Kendall (07:19) You So. Will Hanke (07:20) Draining Cool, that’s great. I love to hear that so Quick disclaimer both of you guys are clients of window treatment marketing pros So you guys are obviously, you know doing the SEO stuff doing the paid ads. I wanted to talk a little bit more about professional connections Local networking those kinds of things. What are you guys doing in that area to help generate leads and maybe even longer-term relationships? Joe Kendall (07:49) Go ahead, Ryan. Ryan Gilberts (07:50) To generate leads, mean, I’m talking to the sphere of people that I hang out wi
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