There is nothing more exciting than seeing that there is a large shade revenue opportunity on a job where you are the integrator, and the homeowner trusts you and your team. If you want the shades, you can likely pull them under your scope due to your relationship with the homeowner. This could increase your revenue on this job significantly, however, you have wanted to get into offering the shades product line, but you don’t do shades yet, or, worse, a shade job blew up on you.
There are few things more unnerving to a custom integrator than sitting down and chatting with a homeowner and their interior designer to discuss shade fabrics. What is the real difference between the Baby Powder White, Snowman’s Belly White, and the Marshmallow Fluff White fabrics? To us, they are just white!
Many integrators won’t touch the shade product line because of a job that went bad or an experience with a mismeasure, wrong fabric, or complex corner situation they didn’t see coming. Mistakes cost money — sometimes a lot of it. For example, we are now helping an integrator partner who came to us after a costly mistake. They ordered the shades at a width of 37 inches, but they should have been 73 inches wide. It was an honest transposition error, but it cost thousands to fix for the client. Many custom integrators want nothing to do with shades.
Design Week: The Design Whisperer
Why Get Into Shades
Before the dawn of motorization, shades were manual and gladly part of the interior designer’s scope. Integrators had nothing to do with shades historically because we didn’t control them. But now they are motorized and we do control shades, so why not own them?
Here are reasons why integrators should embrace motorized shades as part of their scope:
- Integrators are responsible for controlling shades; therefore, the shades should be in the tech package.
- If a motorized shade is not working two years from now, who will get the first call from the homeowner? The custom integrator.
- If we are not careful, the interior designer will specify which shade system is to be inserted into your project. For example, you may have a Hunter Douglas Shade with a Lutron RA3 lighting system that does not integrate seamlessly together. Yes, there are workarounds, but why do that to yourself?
- There is a good revenue opportunity we are leaving on the table if we don’t do shades.
So, how do we get integrators to embrace the shade product line and make a little money from it? Simply put, find “the shade expert” and lean on them. Search around and find the absolute best shade company that does mostly just shades, and recruit them to be your subcontractor on future projects. You would fully expect the shade company to look at your job and be able to handle it all, such as advising architects/contractors on pocket design, electricians on wiring, designers on available fabrics, and so on. They need to handle everything and hand over a complete shade system for you to control. There are several other must-haves to be established as a shade expert that we will cover shortly. If you can’t find a company that meets all these requirements, then keep looking.
Once you have the shade partner, then you must be ready to claim the shades as part of the integrator’s package and place your newly embraced expert in front of the architect, construction team, homeowner, and interior designer. If they are truly an expert, they can handle all these moving parts easily and confidently, which will make your company look good as well.
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The Find Your Shade Expert Checklist
Here is a list of must-haves for your shade expert. There are other smaller items to consider, but this should give you the questions to talk to the shade companies when recruiting a new subcontractor partner. Again, if a shade company cannot match up to these items, then keep looking.
The shade company should be able to:
- Handle all facets of questions from the construction/architect team. There are a few moving parts, but it should be easy for a seasoned shade pro to confidently answer and advise:
- Pocket design if needed on a project
- Shade wire spec and placement of wires
- Transformer power requirements and location of transformer/power panels in the mechanical closet
- If shade wires need to be templated to an exact location
- Must have access to the top-tier manufacturers. There are many shade companies with one line of shades or one manufacturer they sell. If this is the case, what do you expect that they will be installing? One brand. This may not be in the homeowner’s best interest or the dealer’s best interest, especially if it is not a top-tier manufacturer. Insist on having the best of class because it reflects on you and your company.
- The top-tier companies include Lutron, a Somfy solution (such as Draper or a local fabricator), and Hunter Douglas. All three are a must, and no bending on this one point.
- The shade company should have a direct account with all three with maximum discounts. If not direct, then are they getting these shades from a third party? Also, if not a max discount dealership, then you are not creating the opportunity for the best pricing. This will haunt you.
- Shade company should have a dealership with a specialty shade manufacturer. How many times we have been on a project with 20 easy shades and one or two windows with a special need? Your shade company must have experience designing, measuring, templating, and obtaining a specialty shade from a specialty shade manufacturer or fabricator, and installing it properly.
- Special-shaped windows like triangle windows, arched windows, etc., all have unique needs
- This includes motorized bottom-up shades
- Draperies can be a little tricky, but here is how to navigate them: Draperies are their own animal and can be handled slightly differently if need be. This one item in the shade world can fall under the interior designer (fabric and fabrication), but if a motorized track is in the scope, then your shade company should specify the tracks.
- Shade companies should have workroom (fabricator) capabilities in-house or have a relationship with a workroom that has experience with the specific motorized drapery tracks/rods being specified on the job. Either option is fine.
- Often, interior designers want to order their own fabric and ship it to the workroom they like to use. That is perfectly fine as well. The shade company should be responsible for the motorized drapery track/rod and install it. Let the designer’s workroom team buy the fabric and install the fabric on the motorized drapery track that is being controlled by the custom integrator.
Design Week Case Study: High Tech Yet Timeless
The bottom line is that you can safely jump into shades with the right shade partner. If you spend the time upfront finding the absolute top-notch, professional shade organization to become your shade partner, you will benefit. Don’t settle for a company that doesn’t have all the tools. If you find a good partner, then let them chat it up with the designer about which looks best — Snowman’s Belly White or Marshmallow Fluff White.
Need help with selecting a shade expert partner? We are glad to help!
The IUS Shades Business Model
Many years ago, with the dawn of motorized window treatments, IUS Shades (the IUS stands for “International Upright Services”) decided to focus exclusively on motorized window treatments. With a 100% target on this tight niche, the business has grown to be the region’s leader in residential window treatments. The growth was fueled by a simple model of a subcontractor to the integrators/general contractors.
“Our integrators and general contractors hire IUS Shades to come in and handle 100% of the window treatment product line,” says Bob Doolin, president of IUS Shades. “This includes designing pockets with architects, helping electricians determine exact wire locations, walking clients and interior designers through the complex world of fabric selection, and, finally, the installation of a finished window treatment. Our goal is to be seamless and have absolutely no headaches.
“We approach the residential technology market in a simple ‘stay-in-your-lane’ thought. The integrators are the experts on controlling everything in the client’s home. IUS is the expert at window treatments. We don’t try to do what they are experts at, and they don’t take on the world of shades. They push it to us to execute under their project umbrella.”
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The niching-down partnership provides homeowners and clients with the best of both worlds. Obviously, both companies share in the profit of the shade portion of the job. IUS Shades provides the integrator with a discounted price that the integrator marks up to the end client. The upside is it is free money to the integrators with little or no work for them.
“Geographically, we have our shades everywhere from the tip of Maine to California to Florida and the Caribbean,” Doolin says. “I am proud that our technicians are so skilled and professional that clients want us to take on their projects wherever their next home might be. We love talking shades!”
