Showrooms: Beyond Sample Boards

Even those wholesaling their wares find it helps to have some space – large or small – devoted to showing off their goods for their clients (and, sometimes, their clients’ clients).  But, what happens when the samples-and-vignettes model grows stale, or it doesn’t really reach a particular group of would-be buyers?

Here’s a look at stone companies choosing to think outside the box and the shop to find new customers and better serve current clients.

IT’S ABOUT VISION

Click to enlargeRICHMOND, Va. – When it comes to Luck Stone Corp., redoing the showroom became only part of changing the public image of its products.

Although the quarrying part of the business has been separate from material sales for a quarter of a century, the company decided in 2008 to totally rebrand what had been its architectural stone division. The end result: the Charles Luck Stone Center.

The highlight of the stone-center concept is its three standalone studio locations –Richmond and Dulles, Va., plus Charlotte, N.C. – giving the company the opportunity to showcase its products and services in higher-end spaces striving to be both creative and inspiring.

“A great deal of our business comes from the architectural and design community, and before the studios, we had really limited resources to educate and display what our options were for them,” says Michael Weiss, the company’s director of studios. “Stone can be customized in a number of ways – the finish, the cut, and the way it’s installed. To be able to really pair the needs of the design community with what these materials can do, we developed the studio concept.”Click to enlarge

Weiss estimates that each of the studio locations displays more than 250 products, divided into five categories. Outside the studio are examples of various applications. There are also pallet displays that show the material in its raw form, including how it’s delivered to a jobsite.

“That provides us the opportunity to tell the story of what the craftsmen need to do with it when it arrives,” he says. “It doesn’t just arrive in its finished form.”

Education is a big part of the studios’ function. Weiss says designers and architects seem to enjoy hearing about where the material comes from, what it’s been used for in the past,and all the various functions it can provide.