Fall 2013 Hardlines Strategies

MARKET PREVIEW

Your Educational Advantage

Don’t Miss These Seminars at the Fall Market

The more you understand about the competitive forces in the marketplace, the better equipped you will be to move your business forward. At the Fall Market, Blish-Mize will present three important seminars packed with information to help you build your competitive strategy.

seminar will walk through how to gain the competi- tive edge through product knowledge, driving both transaction sizes and customer traffic. Utilizing real-world data, this presentation will explore the need for project-based selling as a means of increasing retail sales in today’s home improvement environment. This presentation will help you understand how to get started in successful project knowledge training and some of the most valuable training tools available to you today. Jaime Koch is the managing editor of Hardware Retailing magazine and NRHA, where it is her mission to cover business issues that matter the most to independent home improvement retailers. Jaime regularly travels around the country and internationally to visit with retailers and share their stories. Currently, she is working on earning a Masters of Business Administration degree from the University of Indianapolis and hopes it will better help her serve the retail industry. Maximize Your 2014 Advertising Presenters: Chuck Short, Blish-Mize vice president of marketing; and Jody Maude, advertising and communications director for Distribution America. Friday, 10-11 a.m.; Saturday, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. Learn how to maximize every dollar you spend on advertising by reaching as many customers as possible with your marketing message. As more and more consumers look online to research their home improvement purchases, this seminar will help you understand all the ways you can get your message in front of them so they come to you when it’s time to buy. Enhancements to the On-Demand advertising system make it affordable and easy to publish your advertising message to a wide range of both print and electronic media. You’ll learn how to set up AdBuilder and AdViewer, create a circular and publish it online.

The Amazon Effect, How Online Retailing is Changing the Home Improvement Game Presenter: Dan Tratensek, publish- er of Hardware Retailing and vice president of publishing for NRHA Saturday, Breakfast begins at

7:30 a.m., presentation begins at 7:45 a.m. sharp.

Complete with case studies from top home improvement e-retailers, consumer feedback and retailer advice, this seminar will help you better understand the online home improvement com- petition and how it is affecting the overall home improvement industry. Walk away with useful tips for competing with online retailers, deterring the consumer practice of “showrooming,” and integrat- ing online sales tactics in-store. Dan Tratensek is the publisher of Hardware Retailing magazine and the Vice President of Publishing for the North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA). In his position as publisher of Hardware Retailing , Tratensek has the opportunity to visit with independent retailers of all types and sizes and shape the editorial direction of the magazine to meet the needs of the independent retailing market.

Training for Success in Today’s Market Presenter: Jaime Koch, managing editor of Hardware Retailing Friday 3-4 p.m.; Saturday 9:30-10:30 a.m.

As the gap for good customer service closes between the big boxes and independents, this

20 Fall 2013 • Hardlines Strategies