Positioning Your Firm as ‘Luxury’ or ‘Premium’

We can no longer rely upon the “easy button” to generate sales or traffic in our showrooms. Housing remains mired in a slump likely to continue because of overstocked inventories and more rigorous lending standings. We can sit by and wait for the good times to return, or we can become proactive.

Chip Conley, CEO of Joie De Vivre Hospitality, understands the current economic environment. The keynote speaker at DPHA’s Seventh Annual Conference, to be held Oct. 24-26 in Phoenix, he faced similar market conditions in 2001 and was not sure if his chain of northern California boutique hotels would survive. Conley discovered that the same old tactics and business approaches were not going to pull Joie De Vivre from the brink of bankruptcy.

Conley says, “We need to restock our collective toolboxes and recall the reasons why we entered the decorative plumbing and hardware industry.”

I’ve heard from numerous industry peers that they became involved with the industry to carve out a niche, to capitalize on opportunities to perform better than what was currently available in their marketplace or to introduce new products and services to a market area that was not served or was under served. Many of us entered this industry to capitalize on opportunities and we discovered not only could we penetrate new markets, we could make a healthy living doing so.