Page 32 - BusinessWest March 20, 2023

Tom Cerrato says the pandemic-fueled surge in home improvement is still going on.
inquiries from a professional contractor. “I think there’s value.” Indeed, it seems the value of the Home Show goes beyond in-
person contact. There is a unique human aspect to local clients brainstorming renovations with local home-improvement business- es. That’s where Home & Hearth Remodeling in West Springfield got its motto, “a craftsman who cares.”
“When I interview people, I just look at them and think, ‘is this person a craftsman, and do they care about their work? Do they care about doing a good job? Do they care about getting better in learning? Do they care about the customer who’s home? Do they care about the people they’re working with?’ Those are all impor- tant,” owner Dave Coyne explained. “We have a very low turnover, and we generally have pretty experienced people working for us — and they stick around.”
Coyne joined the Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. of West- ern Mass. (HBRAWM) — which stages the annual Home Show —
“It’s a good-sized booth, and our presence gives us good branding locally. We get to
be top of mind with custom-
Home
Continued on page 33
“We get to be
top of mind with customers in our market, and a
lot of them are making large purchases for their home, decks, windows, kitchens, doors, a lot of stuff. So we like to be in front of them as they start their projects.”
>>
when he moved to the area, and said it has been a great resource. He began at the show as a solo practitioner, but as his company has grown, he’s added more staff, and now has “a proper business,” as he called it, and his company has increased its presence at the show, with its booth becoming “a little bit fancier” year after year.
“We still have just a single booth this year, which we are in the process of refurbishing,” he explained. “Next year, we’re contemplat- ing actually getting two side by side to focus part of the home show on decks and outdoor work, and then the other part on the interior remodeling and additions.”
Captive Audience
It’s a plan that reflects the event’s flexibility and opportunities to showcase one’s offerings to an enthusiastic audience, many of them actively shopping for services.
And many vendors are still seeing that COVID (or, perhaps, post- COVID) bump.
“People are still thinking about staycations, right? That buzzword is still out there,” said Andy Crane, executive director of HBRAWM. “Even though COVID is in the rearview mirror, it made people rethink how they’re going to live. A lot of these companies did pretty well during the pandemic, during the height of it, because people were investing in their homes because they weren’t going away.”
And they’re still investing, said Tom Cerrato, branch manager at Kelly-Fradet Lumber in East Longmeadow. “When the pandemic started, we went back and forth on whether we’d even stay in busi- ness, but fortunately for us, it turned out to be a boom because there were so many people who stayed home, stopped traveling, and had those extra funds to spend, and fortunately spent it on an indus- try that benefited us — home improvement and building. It’s been very good for us the last few years.”
In the years Kelly-Fradet has participated in the Home Show, Cerrato said the event has created strong brand awareness among a receptive crowd.
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