Market Memo

To me it was really cruel to have to come back into the office on Jan. 2 and face the onslaught of e-mails and projects that the holidays helped me keep at bay for two weeks. I have honestly not looked up from my computer since I sat down 10 days ago. But… It is that time of year, particularly for remodelers. 

In the eastern half of the United States, remodelers are typically holed up during January, working on indoor-only projects, but the 30-day spate of warm weather has really heated up the market, or so I am hearing. (Denver… not so much. Keep your snowboards waxed.)

Judging from my conversations with remodelers since the new year, leaders from around the industry are flush with resolutions that will help them create more business in 2007. And one of those resolutions that I am hearing from many remodelers is to enter more design comeptitions.

Design competitions have really taken off over the past few years. We are especially gratified by the continued success of our Master Design Awards program. Go to www.qualifiedremodeler.com/awards for more details. Last year we had a record number of entries and we had an amazing turnout at our awards event at the Remodeling Show.

Entering a design competition is a time consuming process. There are the mounds of photography to sort through. Maybe you’re among those who are determined to hire a photographer to get the most favorable “after” shots. You’ve elevated you’re binder entries to a high art form. I am thinking of Modern Yankee Builders in Rhode Island or Silent Rivers in Des Moines, Iowa. These remodelers really take pride in their binders.

It is this time of year when the editors here at Qualified Remodeler — Chaya Chang our managing editor and Jon Minnick our associate editor and I — really get a sense of the loving care that many of you put into your design entries. As they come in, we typically ohh-and-ahh over the photos and marvel at the amazing transformations. We know how hard you and your people work to put these binders together.

Right now, many remodelers are rushing to meet the Contractor of the Year entry deadline for the NARI competition, go to www.nari.org for more details. After that, many will prepare binders for the largest regional design competition in the industry, the Chrysalis Awards. For more details go to www.chrysalisawards.com. Then, we hope, the next pressing deadline for your design award binders is our competition on May 25. 

A couple of years ago we teamed up with Chrysalis to streamline the workflow for you and all the members of your team involved in the creation of your beautiful binders. We aligned our entry categories in such a fashion that all binders formatted for the Chrysalis Award could be forwarded “as is” to our offices for judging. Years before that, Chrysalis did a nice job of aligning its design categories to match up with the Coty Awards. So as you and your team slave over your Coty and Chrysalis binders, take comfort in the knowledge that your efforts do not have to be duplicated for our competition.

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As a side note: presentation really matters in winning design awards. Anything you can do to demonstrate what you have achieved on a project, it is worth going to the extra effort.

1. Get great “After” photography. Don’t rely on your rusty shooting skills. Even the best projects can look bad behind a amateur lens. To keep costs down, I would suggest sending out some feelers to your network of friends to see who among them might actually know what they are doing with a camera. The surefire, but much more expensive route is to hire a pro. If you’ve got the budget, the expense can make sense.

2. Try to remember to take photos before you begin. If not, work with the client to obtain some of their photos of the house. These before photos set the baseline of what is achieveable.

3. Tell a story. There is no better way to bring a story to life than to organize your photography and words in such a fashion as to tell a story about the project. Build some drama. Show your details.

Good luck with your design entries in 2007. And please e-mail me if you have any questions about our Master Design Awards — patrick.otoole@cygnusb2b.com.