Page 34 - BusinessWest March 20, 2023

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Tony Witman, owner of Witman Properties, says the Home Show offers an immediate response to customer questions and needs.
She went on to note the large volume of contacts Modern Kitch- ens has made as a result of being a vendor at the Home Show over the years. The company has followed up with all of them, converting many into customers.
“We’ve met some really nice people who were at the Home Show with some project in mind,” Kelly said. “It’s like talking to qualified leads, really.”
Get Out There
Crane said the Home & Garden Show is a per- sonal experience in another way: many attendees turn it into a social gathering with family or friends.
Before he was actually in charge of it, “we would go all the time to the Home Show, spend two or three hours, then go to some local restaurant. Peo- ple consider it a social event.”
The vitality of the Home Show — booth sales are way up (see sidebar on page 33) — accurately reflects the booming prosperity of the industries represented at the show. However, substantial busi- ness often means substantial wait times, one down- side to this ongoing surge. Clients may find them- selves disappointed with long wait times before they see their renovation plans come to fruition — but so far, that hasn’t seemed to deter their willing-
ness to book projects far in advance.
Over the past few years, Kelly said, “people were
willing to wait; I think the industry was busy, so people could accept a timeline that was a little fur- ther out. When you want to do a project, you’re a little antsy, you make the decision — ‘yes, let’s move forward with this, we have the money, let’s do it’ — and many people who normally would want to have a start date within a couple of weeks have been willing to wait because the industry is busy.”
As a result, Modern Kitchens has been able to schedule a full year’s worth of business from the Home Show. Coyne echoed this experience, having also received large amounts of business from previ- ous shows.
“I get enough business from the Home Show to carry me through the year. We always get plenty of good leads,” he said. “After this last Home Show
... I’m not joking, we were probably still following up with leads four months or more afterwards. We have jobs that we are starting in April — we actually have a job that we just started today — that I think came from the Home Show last year.”
The 68th presentation of the Western Mass. Home & Garden Show will take place in the Better Living Center building at the Eastern States Expo- sition, with displays in the outdoor area. This year’s show hours are Thursday and Friday, March 23-24, noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday, March 25, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, March 26, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
General show admission is $10 for adults, and children under 12 are admitted free. A coupon reducing admission to $7 can be found on the show’s website. Active military and veterans will receive free admission on Thursday, March 23. Parking on the Eastern States Exposition grounds costs $5 per vehicle. BW
Continued from page 33
improvement inspiration online, clients often come to the Home Show prepared with ideas and visions of what improvements they would like to achieve.
“I think one unique aspect we have is this — a lot of times people have images in their head of what they would like their kitchen or bathroom to look like,” Kelly said. “Many will walk in with their phone starting to scroll and show me things they’ve researched, that they’d like to try to accomplish in their own home.
“That’s where we sit down with them and pull together all those puzzle pieces, and actually physi- cally lay them out on the tabletop — ‘here’s your door, here’s your countertop, here’s the paint color, here’s your tile that we’re going to use,’” she went on. “It really allows them to pull the whole project together and turn it into more of a reality instead of just a pretty picture they found on their phone.”
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34 MARCH 20, 2020
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