This opportunity originally presented itself as a request from a major home center to review the shower door category for possible entry given significant dissatisfaction with their incumbent supplier. At the time the incumbent had an 85% market share across all home centers, but had become complacent and showed little initiative beyond maintaining what they had.

We knew immediately that taking on a major competitor with a “me too” product would not be scalable or sustainable and would likely result in a significant competitive response to block our attempt to enter the category at either of the major home centers. In order to compete and win, we knew we would have to reinvent the category – which we did.

The initial project team included a product manager, a project manager, and me. We began thinking about how we could leverage low cost Asian glass suppliers in order to better compete with the domestic supply base of our competitor. The thought of importing glass separately led to the “ah ha moment” of, “why not just package the glass in retail packaging ready for sale”. Our move forward strategy was to “decouple” the product into its base components (glass panels, aluminum track, and towel bars) to be sold separately. By doing this, we completely changed the way retailers think about shower doors and how consumers shop for shower doors. We provided the consumer a component-based program, whereby they are able to mix and match glass designs with track finishes and towel bar styles in order to meet their specific style and design needs.

Previously consumers were being forced to make concessions based upon the incumbent's “all in one box” program. In the same retail footprint where there were originally 24 skus, we were able to provide the consumer in excess of 160 unique combinations, while satisfying the consumer’s need to customize their purchase, and providing them the opportunity to walk out of the store with exactly what they were looking for. Additionally, our patent and IP strategies, while solving consumer pain points, also made it impossible for our competition to react, which paved the way for a massive expansion of the Delta shower door program across the United States.

From the start, our program was deeply rooted in consumer needs and pain points that were identified using market research and consumer ethnography. Prior to launch, we used several consumer shopability research projects to make refinements to our packaging, graphics, signage, and our display. These changes took the consumer shopping time down from the incumbent’s 22-minute shopping experience to a 7-minute shopping experience with our new program. We were also able to improve the consumer satisfaction rating from the incumbent’s dismal 13% satisfaction rating to an 83% satisfaction rating with our new program. This resulted in a reduction in product returns due to buyer’s remorse from 14% to a return rate below 4%. This was especially important to the retailer given that the incumbent’s return allowance was only 5%.

After an initial 50 store test we rolled out our program to over 1,970 stores making us a sole supplier with a retailer that rarely allows full categories to be managed by a single vendor. The results for the retailer have been astounding. Year over year 13 week comparative sales are up over +31% with weekly peaks in excess of +40%. Our performance has resulted in millions of dollars in incremental profits for the retailer. Consumer “walkaways” have all but been eliminated resulting in incremental adjacent “add on” purchases and a more loyal consumer. Retail sales are up, consumer satisfaction is up, profits are up, and returns are down, making the power of this program undeniable.

Patrick Boehnen

336-453-1922

pat.boehnen@gmail.com