Page 64 - Lighting Magazine January 2020

Retail Spotlight: Two CiTies
60 enLIGHTenment Magazine | January 2020
www.enlightenmentmag.com
Shane and Trina Hagen
hand, is referred to as the “Rose Capital of America” and has a population of more than 100,000.
Introduced one Dallas Market by a mutual friend, the two couples immediately hit it off. Not only are they roughly the same age with young children, but both face the challenge of following in the footsteps of the previous generation while blazing their own trails. “I call Shane once or twice a week to talk about ideas,” Dru recounts. In fact, the families have even taken vacations together and are contemplat- ing buying a shared vacation home.
What surprised these two showroom owners most is not that they have a lot in common, but the fact that their customers share a lot of the same preferences. In particular, both showrooms have noticed a move away from Traditional and skewing more Contemporary.
“Everything I buy and sell is LED these days,” Dru states. To that point, Dement Lighting features LED prominently. “I think the market is ready for it, but you have to display it in order to make people more comfortable with it,” he remarks.
As homeowners opt for décor that is “lighter and brighter” in color palette along with Contem- porary furnishings, Dru says roughly 50 percent of customers walking in are asking for LED — and they are asking for 5000K. Dru and Crystal believe the desire for this color temperature has to do with the consumers’ thought process of wanting their inte- riors to look even more dazzlingly light and bright. “We started having people coming in and asking, ‘Do you have this in a brighter or higher Kelvin,” Crystal
Dru and Crystal Dement
notes. This is when the showroom personnel step in to educate the customer on LED and the benefits and pitfalls such as glare. Once this occurrence became consistent, Dru alerted Shane about this preference only to find that Hagen’s Lighting was experiencing the same.
Due to the similarities in customer wants, the couples take time to meet up at Dallas Market to ex- change observations and take inspiration from the displays at Lightovation. “We’re taking a lot of our merchandising cues from them,” Trina states. “We also pay attention to the trends we see at market, such as a lot of white ceiling fans and fixtures lately.”
Changing up the product displays more fre- quently has become increasingly more important to both showrooms.
“Nobody wants to see the same thing [hanging there] every time they come in,” Trina comments, adding, “Even the builders who come in with their customers want to see the showroom and merchan- dise mix look fresh.”
Having products that appear unique from what’s available online is another selling point that brings customers coming back. “We consider ourselves a specialty store because everyone who comes in wants something different than what everyone else has,” Trina relates. This is one reason why Hagen’s Lighting no longer inventories as deeply as it has in the past.
Now that we’ve established some common ground, let’s do a deeper dive into the backgrounds and history of each showroom.