From a young age I was interested in art, though I didn’t want to become an artist. Carpentry interested me more, so I decided to take it up as a profession. My Father arranged for me to become an apprentice with his close friend. Most of my work involved restoring or repairing old furniture.
A few years later, I started working in the cabinetry industry. The bank loaned me money to start my own business. Therefore, I decided to start selling restored wooden picture frames from a showroom downtown. I had the experience and tools required to excel in this business.
Initially sales were slow as I built up an inventory of old frames. But, a year down the line I got a big break when a chain of hotels asked me to redo all their paintings with restored frames. They wanted to give their properties an old-world look and handed me 62 paintings to reframe. After the project finished, I had enough money to expand my store. Somehow, I felt that wasn’t the best option for me and started asking my friends for ideas.
Searching on the internet for café chairs, I came across a website that solely sold cabinet door display hangers. According to their website, I only needed 45” to display thirty cabinet doors. This seemed like the best way to expand my business, since half of my showroom was deserted.
In a few months of traveling around, I collected an array of cabinet drawers. I searched ‘cabinet door display rack manufacturers’ online, it showed a handful of relevant results. Two days later, a courier delivered my cabinet door display rack. The package that arrived contained two 45” aluminium rails, 30 pairs of hinges and 120 pieces of mounting screws.
In a few hours, I had installed the racks along with 30 cabinet doors. My showroom still looked spacious and I realized that if things went well, I could order two more racks to display a larger variety of products without making my showroom look cramped.
Adverts for my new addition to the showroom were posted at several key locations downtown. In a few days, I sold more than a couple of cabinet doors. The customers had walked in to look at some restored picture frames, but ended up buying cabinet doors. Showing my small collection of cabinet doors was easy and the cabinet door display rack allowed me to make comparisons before they could decide on what to buy.
Most of my prospective customers were through word-of-mouth marketing and in a few weeks my base had grown. I ordered two more cabinet door display racks after a cabinet door manufacturer added to my inventory of products. This time I ordered a left swing and a right swing rack with a capacity of thirty each.
When the courier package arrived, I installed the racks and used them for 15 cabinet door displays each. I attached doors for every second hole in the rack thereby giving additional space for displaying each door. Now, I had 60 cabinet doors on display and still had place for more.
Closing my showroom one day, I realized that displaying more than 60 cabinet doors was not a good idea. It was like going to a shoe shop and finding more than one pair that you like and therefore not buying anything in the confusion.
A few years ago, I would have laughed if someone asked me to sell cabinet doors – “where’s the space to display so many options” – I would have probably said. But, now that I know of a highly effective and efficient way to display cabinets, I’m considering opening a small shop on the corner in another metropolitan nearby.
