Show Time : Lifestyles: Home and garden extravaganza has something for everyone in an atmosphere that is part carnival, part bazaar. And it all begins today.
At Pella Products in Corona, they’ve been gearing up for weeks. This is it, the big one.
Every person on the window company’s sales staff has been put through a refresher course on how to greet customers, how to work crowds, how to sort out potential buyers from the looky-loos. Sales contests have been established. A complete “window store on the road” has been set up in the Anaheim Convention Center.
When the doors open this morning at 10 for the 36th annual Southern California Home and Garden Show, Pella will be ready to make the most of being part of the biggest, longest-running, best-attended show of its kind in the country.
Pella won’t be alone.
More than 1,200 other companies, from giants such as Southern California Edison down to solo woodcarvers, will have spread out their wares in booths covering almost 13 acres in the center.
Between today and the close of the show on Aug. 26, more than 125,000 people are expected to wander through the cavernous halls. They will be bombarded by the sounds, sights and smells of a spectacle that is part carnival midway, part bazaar and, oh yes, part home and garden show.
This event is the place to be seen if you are a seller of anything even remotely connected with the home, from liquid fertilizer to perfume.
Under one roof are collected vendors hawking the usual building materials--windows, doors, skylights, garage doors, spas, patio covers, paint and plaster. But wait, there’s more: ginsu knives, candy, food dehydrators, trash cans, car wax, encyclopedias, T-shirts, cowboy boots, coat hangers, insurance, jewelry, washing machines, Persian rugs, sunglasses, stir-fry spice and bug spray.
And that’s just the beginning.
The show is crucial for Robert De Palma, owner of the Horticultural Institute of Southern California in San Clemente. About 15% of his yearly business is in selling gardening aids such as automatic flower arrangers, self-watering African Violet pots and soil conditioners.
To attract customers, he will display more than 200 flowers--lilies, carnations, mums, daisies and roses--and about 400 African Violets grown to bloom during the show.
“Each violet has 20 flowers on it, compared to the ones in the supermarket that might have three. It’s quite a sight. We’re relying on aesthetics to draw people in. And, of course, it’s testimony to how well our products work,” De Palma said.
Kurt Krumes wants the long-term benefits of exposure at the show. Krumes, president of Anaheim Door, a maker of sectional garage doors, uses the show not to sell on the spot but to build name-recognition for his company. “I don’t think it would enhance our image to try to close a deal in the high-pressure environment of the show,” he says.
Krumes has been exhibiting sectional garage doors at the show for seven years. He began with a minimum 10-by-10-foot booth. This year he will have operating doors and a mini-garage set up in a 20-by-50-foot area.
His display will be staffed with at least two of his salespeople at all times, with as many as seven on hand for the heavy evening and weekend crowds.
“It’s a big burden for us in time and effort and money, but we want our display and our presentation to be in keeping with the quality of what we sell. We want our booth to be something worthwhile for people to stop and see.”
Krumes said he is bothered by the proliferation of what he calls the “slice-and-dice people, the hawkers who want you to buy and take it home today. Some of that is fine; it makes the show kind of like a fair. But too many and you start to take away from the real theme of home and garden.”
Krumes is especially concerned about distractions, in part because exhibiting in anything more than a minimalist booth at the show is not cheap. The space rental, supporting newspaper advertising, display preparation costs (for props, photos, working models) and overtime for employees staffing the booth can easily top $10,000.
Ed Stotereau, general manager of the Home and Garden Show, said that as the show has grown larger (there will be several hundred more exhibitors this year than last) and more varied, exhibitors are going to greater lengths and expense to make sure they stand out.
For many exhibitors, the high cost of exhibiting is worth it because they come to the shows looking mainly for instant sales.
Bo Baele,vice-president of Accent Spas in Westminster, says the Anaheim show accounts for roughly 10% of his company’s yearly business.
“This is real important to us. It’s right in our own back yard,” he said.
Most of that is sales during the show itself, Baele said. “Some people walk in and know exactly what they want, make a decision and purchase the product. Others know they want a spa but have no specific concept in mind.”
It’s the latter who are the targets for Accent Spas’ elaborate display strategy. Baele said he wants as many of those vaguely interested people as possible to peer into its spas and hot tubs, so the company transforms its 20-by-40-foot booth into a back yard. “We bring in plants, gazebos, enclosures for the spas. We want people to be able to visualize instantly what the spa they want will look like,” Baele said.
When it began in a single hall at the Orange County Fair in 1955, the show was much narrower in scope. “It was all Orange County then and pretty much patio stuff. Very strictly a home show,” show manager Stotereau said.
To expand the appeal of the show, and to help it weather ebbs and flows in the building industry, founder George Colouris added flower and garden exhibits in 1969. Through the next decade, Colouris further broadened the definition of home to include the constellation of products seen today.
This year’s Southern California Home and Garden Show also offers an antique show; an arts and crafts fair; a Dixieland band, and guest speakers on earthquakes, toilet-cleaning and ecologically sound living. “It’s safe to say there’s something for everybody,” Stotereau said.
The Wheeler Sewing Machine Co. of Santa Ana was the first exhibitor to buy a booth at the first show in 1955, owner Walter Hunt said. The company has been back every year to exhibit.
“This is the most important show to us,” said Hunt, who bought two booths at this year’s show. He said he welcomes the variety of products.
“We go to sewing shows, but there you’ve got people already interested in sewing. We need new customers, and this show is the place to get them. If a manufacturer has a new product, this is where we introduce it to people.”
Hunt said his sales staff will lure people into the booths for a pitch by running continuous demonstrations of sewing machines, presses (ironing is passe, he said) and sergers (machines that sew seams, overcast the edges and trim the fabric in one operation).
“We catch their eyes and make them stop,” Hunt said.
Pella, a major maker of windows for new construction and remodeling jobs, does a lot of business during the nine-day run of the show, said Wendy Williams, advertising and promotion manager for the company.
“New construction is down right now, so we’re making a big effort to go for the remodeling market,” Williams said.
Every one of the roughly 25 salespeople on the Pella staff will work the show for at least two shifts of four to five hours. The action will be most intense on Saturdays and Sundays.
“We’ll have 10 people gathered around one sliding door and still have people tugging on our sleeves. We’ll pass out between 7,000 and 10,000 pieces of literature,” Williams said.
“We’ll make some sales right away, but some we’ll make two years later. People will be thinking about a remodeling project, and they go through a long looking phase. Research shows that most sales from a home show are made from 9 to 12 months after the show.”
