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Increasing Your Average Sale – Part IV

The easiest way to increase your average sale is to sell a more expensive product –  

Sounds simple right?

We have touched on this the last couple of weeks with items like flip up doors, under mount slides and oversized handles. 

But what about your panels? 

White is far and away the most popular color in our industry, yet according to Better Homes and Garden white isn’t even top 5 when it comes to kitchen cabinets. 

“We’re seeing a move away from the all-white kitchen in favor of cabinets that are bold and adventurous.”

According the BH&G – the top 5 kitchen cabinet colors for 2022 are 

  1. Nature-Inspired Greens
  2. Bold Black
  3. Warmed Up Grays
  4. Sunny Yellows
  5. Rich Earth tones

We all know that the trends that you see in kitchens eventually flow into closets, so why do we sell so much white?  

Even if your customers are asking for white, could you offer a white woodgrain or linen?  

Don’t want to bust the budget – a couple of accent doors and drawer fronts look great and won’t be much more than white fronts. 

For example – Here are a couple of colors that are getting a lot of traction – 

Richelieu offers a wide variety of premium panels from Italy and Spain.  We also stock Egger and Tafisa in different regions across the US and Canada.

No matter what material you pick, we have the matching banding.

Your turn – what percentage of your installs are white?

Besides white – What are you top 3 colors? 

As always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com

Thank you for reading.

Filed Under: Closet, Closet Design, Increasing Profits Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

Increasing Your Average Sale – Part III


If you were in the closet industry in 2008 you remember how incoming leads slowed down and how competitive every quote became.

About 30% of my closet customers went out of business and those that stayed saw a major decrease in sales. Many smaller customers pivoted and began doing contractor work – painting, building decks – whatever they could do to increase revenue.

In 2008 while still with Eveready Hardware, we decided to develop a sliding door program for our closet customers to give them another item that they could sell to their clients.

By 2009 we built such a good sliding door business that our sales exceeded pre-recession numbers.

With soaring gas prices, people thinking about traveling again and rising interest rates it is starting to feel a lot like 2008 – which leads me to believe it’s time to start talking about sliding doors again.

Richelieu has a complete sliding door division with solutions for every application. We have aluminum frame doors with glass inserts, co-plainer doors and pivoting doors that can hide a complete kitchen. You might come across a client that needs one of these high end options, but the below sliding door systems will work for 85% of your customers.

Hardware For 3/4″ Doors up to 78″ High

Dama sliding door system

The DAMA sliding door system is great for oversized cabinets in a garage, covering a flat screen TV in a wall unit or even building wardrobes.

All of the hardware on the door is surface mounted, recess a top and bottom track in the cabinet and you are done. Sold as a kit, and even can be used for glass doors.

Top Hung Hardware For 3/4″ Doors

Scorri 50 Sliding Door System

How many times do you install a reach in closet behind noisy builder grade by-passing doors?

How many calls do you receive per week to change these doors?

I don’t think you should be a sliding door company – even though one does exist with multiple locations across the US. But does it make sense to offer sliding doors if you are already onsite doing the closet?

The Scorri 50 Sliding door system is a good replacement to builder grade by-passing doors. Just like the DAMA system all the hardware on the door is surface mounted and its a top hung system so you don’t have to worry about the floor being out of level.

It does require a route in the bottom edge of your door but that’s it. For $100 in hardware and a couple of sheets of melamine you can install new smooth running doors for your client.

Bottom Rolling Hardware For 3/4″ Doors

RO 44 Sliding Door System

Our RO 44 Sliding Door System is a bottom rolling system for those of you working in high rises with metal headers.

The top rollers act as a guide with all of the weight being carried by surface mounted bottom rollers. The floor track can be surface mounted too, so you don’t have to worry about cutting into the homeowners floor.

I don’t believe 2023 will be as bad as 2008 but you should be prepping for some type of correction. Or at least developing a plan in the event there is a slow down.

Your turn – are you offering sliding doors to your customers?

Is it a big pain in the neck or are you successful at it?

If you have any questions about sliding door hardware, or how Richelieu can help you increase your profits please reach out to your local rep or email me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com

Thank you for reading!

Filed Under: Closet Hardware, Sliding Doors Leave a Comment

Increasing Your Average Sale – Part II

Last week was the first in series about increasing your average sale. The importance of this number is right up there with your closing rate, and number of service calls.

According to the book Marketing Metrics – The probability of selling a new customer is 5 – 20%, but the probability of selling an existing customer is 60 – 70%.

I know you are booked out 8 to 12 weeks and don’t have time right now to re-invent your company… That isn’t what I’m suggesting.

Below are examples of three really easy upgrades –

Flip Up Doors

The reason that this became such a popular trend with kitchen companies is because the hardware is three times more expensive that a pair of hinges. Flip up doors really don’t make it any easier to access what is inside but you see them everywhere.

At Richelieu we offer almost every brand on the market all at different price points – Blum Aventos, Salice Wind and our import – Atmos Air System.

We even have a step by step video on how to pick the right stay for your door – click here.

Prefer a simple piston or flap stay – we have those too. No matter which way you go, this is very easy to incorporate into the high end walk-in closet in your showroom, or add to a job.

Handles are getting longer

Here’s another trend that will increase your profits without doing any extra work. Many of you are drilling 96mm or 128mm handles but why not offer 160mm, 192mm or even 224mm?

There are many handle jigs on the market that make it very easy to center the drilling. We offer two options –

Part Number – CON35000
Part Number – 1934JIGPRO

Accent Doors

I know white is 50 – 60% of your installations. If you can’t get your client to upgrade their color option, maybe they would be interested in adding a couple of accent doors.

When it comes to accent doors you have many options besides your standard shaker or raised panel.

You can offer aluminum frame doors which come in multiple colors and insert options.

Super matte doors are another option – this is one of the hottest trends right now… you can even see the trend on kitchen appliances. The Samsung Bespoke fridge has multiple color options.

Lastly you can never go wrong with a glossy door or countertop.

Glaks high gloss countertop and drawer front

The beauty of these accent doors is that you can outsource all of these items and not have to worry about slowing down your production.

Your turn – what is your “go to” easy upgrade that you try to offer on every job?

If you have any questions about anything in this post please comment below or email me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com

Thank you for reading!

Filed Under: Closet Hardware, Increasing Profits Leave a Comment

An Easy Way to Increase Your Average Sale

How closely do you track your average sale?

I’m asking because increasing your average sale is the easiest way for you to make more money… Which I’m betting we can all use.

Sure you can do more installations, but you will probably have to invest in another van, maybe more equipment, more people or even a larger warehouse.

Doing all of those things are great but even if you have the money to invest, it could take longer than you like.

Increasing your average sale can be done by working in more rooms in the house, which we discussed last week.  If you missed that post – check it out here. 

Another way to increase your average sale is by offering more expensive options to your customers.

Side note – if you have a showroom you better be showing the best of the best… There’s a reason every car dealer has the fully loaded options where you can see them when negotiating your car purchase.

I was speaking with one of my customers last week and he said since he installed his high end walk in closet in the showroom – that has become his most popular color and his customers “want” the same upgrades in their closets.. He doesn’t have to sell them anything. 

This will be the beginning of a series of posts dedicated to you increasing your profits without having to invest anything or install more projects. 

At Richelieu our mission is to have – good, better, best options for everything we sell.  I know that could be overwhelming for some of you, so I plan to start with the really easy upgrades and move on from there. 

Here is an easy upgrade that you could purchase by the job and your customer will see immediate value in. 

I think most of you offer soft close drawers and doors but if you’re not, I can guarantee you’re losing customers and don’t even know it.  

If you don’t want to stock a different hinge, you could always use a surface mounted soft close adapter that will work with your current hinge.  At Richelieu we stock Blum, Salice, Grass and of course our own brand which will give you the biggest savings.  Our Richelieu hinge is the one I always suggest that my closet customers use. 

Things get a little trickier with your drawers.  Soft close side mount slides are easier for you to install and don’t require any changes to your drawer boxes, but they do have their limitations.

We sell our Richelieu brand slide which is a great value engineer option, and we also sell King slide which is far and away the best side mount soft close on the market – its also one of the most expensive. 

No matter what brand you use I don’t suggest going wider than 30″, if you can keep it to 24″ even better.  Also please don’t use them in any crazy applications – I once had a customer complain because the slides failed in a tile store.  The store was loading all of the drawers up with tile samples – the drawer was 24″  deep by 30″ wide – that’s a service call waiting to happen. 

I also suggest managing the expectations of a side mount soft close slide compared to an under mount.  Most of your customers have under mount slides in their kitchens, there isn’t a side mount on the market that will work as well.  Explaining the difference on the front end, could be one of your easiest upsells to under mounts by just explaining the differences.

Of course using an under mount is the best option.  Many companies have made a complete conversion and use this as a feature to separate themselves from their competitor… Imagine the jobs you are potentially losing if you don’t offer under mounts.

Yes the drawer boxes are different – but you can outsource them and now we have under mounts on the market that come every 2″, just like your ball bearing slides.  

No more 12″ drawers in a 14″ deep closet.  With our 828 slide you can put a 13-1/2″ drawer in a 14″ vertical and our new closet clip makes the drawer construction even easier. 

As I mentioned at the beginning this will be a series of posts dedicated to you increasing profits and making more money.

If you have any questions or comments you can leave them below or email me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com 

Thank you for reading.

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How to Get Out of the Closet Business…

I hope you didn’t think you were going to read a post about selling your business.

Even though this might be a great time to sell I would never suggest it because this is a great time to be in home organization…

Did you catch that – I said home organization not the “closet industry”

Those of you that have been doing this as long as I have know that we have come a long way from white melamine shelving and wooden closet poles.

If you’re new – yes we sold wooden closet poles and if you wanted to upgrade it you added a white plastic wrap so it all matched – boy were we fancy – LOL!!!

Our industry and product offering has matured to the point that we can compete with woodworkers that take much longer to install and are much more expensive.

By the way it’s no longer called melamine – now its TFL (Thermally Fused Laminate) and we refer to our imported panels from Italy as TSS (Thermally Structured Surface).

Need more proof that we have hit critical mass – try to find someone in  your market that installs white wire.  I’ll bet there are one or two companies – maybe – that still do it regularly.  There used to be 4 or 5 in every major market.

Even entry level homes are at least putting closet systems in the primary closets.

What does all of this mean?

With a higher end product that looks and feels like real wood, but is a fraction of the price, you need to be doing more than just closets.

I know what you are thinking – we do offer more than just closets.

I get it, I have been in your showroom.  I know you do laundry rooms, home office, wall beds, etc… but does your potential customer know?

The name of your company is “Custom Closets by… ”

How would Mrs. Jones know that you build and install custom wall units?

I know how easy it is for your crew to do a $4500 closet installation.

I also know that your phone hasn’t stopped ringing and you are booked out 3 months, but we all know this ride won’t last forever.  Even if it is a soft landing as Brian Beaulieu suggests, you need to pay for the new equipment you bought or the additional space that you rented during this gold rush.

Sure you can lay off employees if you had to, but do you want to get rid of good workers in a time when everyone is scrambling for people?

So back to my point – you need to start focusing on other rooms in the home.

Start creating your marketing around these other spaces.

Make sure your designers are explaining the other things you can do on their sales appointments.  Better yet have them leave behind a sell sheet of pics of all the other spaces you work in.

If you have your past clients email addresses – start an email campaign.

It’s no secret that it’s easier to sell more to an existing customer than it is to find a new one.

Start these efforts now so that when the closet space becomes more competitive you are ready.

Need some ideas?

That’s why I am hear –

You need to start positioning yourself now as the leader in total home organization – trust me you will be happy you did.

Let me leave you with one more thought – everyone’s New Years resolution is usually one of these 3 – save money, get in shape or get organized.

Maybe if you are positioning yourself as the home organization expert now – January might not be such a slow month – Have you ever gone to the gym on January 2nd?

Your turn – let me know your thoughts – comment below.

Have a comment or question but don’t want to post below – you can always email me at RDeMarco@Richelieu.com

Thank you for reading.

Filed Under: Closet, Closets, Home Office, Increasing Profits Tagged With: Leave a Comment
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