Wanted: Early Adopters K & B Dealers

Rare Sightings of These Have Been on the Rise

This headline may not be big news to you, but I find it more than exciting! As a child, I remember sitting around the campfire and listening to the elders tell stories about the Truth Seekers of old that had foreseen their coming! It was meant to scare us but in reality, all the children would gather afterwards to laugh and joke about the idea of Kitchen and Bath Dealers shedding their natural skin and transforming themselves into “Early Adopters.” Just the thought of that type of metamorphosis taking place in the wild…well, it was beyond our capacity to imagine.

Now I see that we may have been short-sighted when it came to the ability of a Dealer to change! The reason behind my excitement is the chance that the disruption that is coming to our industry may have a very non-traditional outcome. Something that resembles a bunch of David’s beating the tar out of Goliath’s in the marketplace. Boy, what a welcome sight that would be ??

I thought it might be a good time to share what is about to take place. It’s related to something I read recently that stated it quite eloquently, and it goes like this: “One day the owner of the Dealership walks into the showroom and notices that what used to be the ceiling is now the floor.” They are flabbergasted about this and are trying to grasp what happened. How in the world has the ceiling of their service now turned into the floor of the industry?

To be sure they can return to their comfort zone, they close their eyes, wish it away, and then open them again, only to find that nothing has changed, and their service level is still at the bottom. Aarrrggghhh!

Now, I can already hear non-believers protecting their time-tested model of success and coming to the conclusion that a certain blog writer has lost their mind. Well, that is true, but let me ask you what your competition might look like not too far down the road.

1.????? Embraces KPI’s as the type of metrics that tell a story. One that can be improved upon by the team and the use of process improvement methodologies and AI Analytics. Maybe this will resonate…you are now a cabinet manufacturer that has 10% of your product either damaged, defective, or wrong. The replacements are at the same rate. You know you have a problem but with no data, it’s very hard to fix it. Competing with the cabinet manufacturer down the street that has a rate of less than .3% and an exceptional replacement program because they are not spending all their time on tons of mistakes is going to be difficult.

2.????? Virtual Showroom-an immersive experience that makes the on-line journey for a customer nothing short of exciting, convenient, and effortless to do business with them from start to finish and everything in between!

3.????? Culture and Team – one of the biggest moves that these early adopters have done is to remove the “Cultural Inertia” that has always resisted change from anything that was not the “long established way of doing things.” This has attracted a number of up-and-coming talent in the area. Bingo!

Let’s stop here for a breather. There is a lot more to this story, but it will have to wait until next week. I had a strong feeling that a return to any discussion about change wasn’t going to be covered by one cheesy blog. It is absolutely one of the hardest things to do in a business, especially if you have existed in an industry that moves at a snail’s pace.

I will leave you with a prediction about the market:

????????????? Rates may go down in September (and it’s a big maybe) but the increments will be set at a quarter point. It’s not going to be enough to move the housing needle much. I would plan for slower times until the market reverses course in the third quarter of 2025. I think the one big reason for this can be explained in one word…employment. On the bright side, after mid-2025, we should see a heyday for at least the next 5 years or more.

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Please register for our online seminar on August 15th at noon EDT on “Business Eco-systems”. We are going to discuss how all these things might start coming together in a powerful way!

Sign up for a KABS demo or at least a 20–30-minute jam session with me. I would love to hear how you are seeing things. Click to Schedule

Kris in Colorado – It was great talking with you! Get fired up! The opportunities are going to be endless! Thad