Congratulations to Las Vegas Market (Part 2)

In my last post I told you about Las Vegas efforts on a national consumer campaign. Today I want to talk about their second initiative that I believe is also very smart in helping them generate more traffic. This second initiative is directed towards the furniture reps. That’s right guys and gals, someone finally recognized that reps are an important part of the communication process with the retailers.Las Vegas Market has developed a rewards system - bribe if you will - for reps to go out and tell their retailers to come to the market. This is a very smart ploy if the reps get excited about it for both the rep and the retailer.

First of all retailers should be going to markets and many do. But for those sitting on the fence trying to decide, if they hear from their friendly rep about the great new offering their factory will show, then that might be enough to push the retailer to come out for a day or two. If a retailer is dead set against going to the market, it won’t make any difference. But if he is at any point considering it, the rep can offer a positive reason why the retailer should go.

It’s smart for the rep as well. There are two reasons for this. First rather than complain about going to markets, reps should relish the opportunity to get in front of living and breathing customers with actual physical product to show them. This allows a rep to make an impassioned pitch to help the retailer freshen up his floor with new product from the rep. Second, if a rep is already spending the money to go out to the market, why wouldn’t he want to have as many retailers out there to work with as he could. His interests are aligned with Vegas insofar as the more retailers he gets to go the better it is for everyone.

For full details or further information on Rep Rewards, interested reps should visit www.LasVegasMarket.com or email RepRewards@lasvegasmarket.com to obtain their ID.

There’s an insider deal on this program as well. If you are a member of the International Home Furnishings Representative’s Association (IHFRA) and you get a retailer to go to Vegas that would not have ordinarily gone, you will end up with extra points. So if you are going to do this program, you should be a member of IHFRA (www.furniturerep.org) because you get the extra points and because IHFRA has a special rate to join before the Las Vegas market.

As reps, we should get behind this program. This is a win win for us to get in front of more buyers. It’s also very complimentary to our repping profession that an organization such as the World Market sees fit to acknowledge our valuable role in the furniture industry.

If you would like to see a video I did about what you can learn from the two furniture markets check out www.MikeRoot.com.

As always, let me know your comments.