Slippery Rock Gazette

Michele Farry

Humblestone

It is exciting to see stability and positive projections for 2017 in the recently published global stone and tile research reports. Companies are positioned to accomplish great things ahead with the anticipated solid industry growth, a stabilizing housing market, dramatically dropping foreclosure rates and steady positive economy. Stone and tile companies should assume fair or high growth as the overwhelming expectation through 2021. Whether you are a business owner or fabricator, you should be excited to hear this news!

In my previous series of articles starting in February 2017 through May 2017 in the Slippery Rock Gazette, I focused on the basics of small business development concepts, understanding what market strategy is and why how you view your company in the marketplace is important. What we learn about our market position enriches our understanding of how and why our customers behave they way they do. Ultimately, many different aspects of the stone and tile industry affect our consumers. This market knowledge is the most critical information for any company that wants be sustainable long term. Given the state of expansion in our industry, we can only imagine that many market strategy influencers, like the push and pull positioners, will continue to be very active with their overall impact on consumers. 

Anticipating the tends by keeping up with trade magazines, communicating with sales reps and paying attention to manufacturer’s advertising campaigns always help us stay in touch with what’s next, and maybe even ahead of what consumers are seeing and will ask for. We explored this last month with an interior designer and tool manufacturer with their fingers on the pulse. But who is putting this visual cue in front of our customer? A push company pushes product messages to the stone fabricators or the tile contractor’s clients and the result is the customers drive demand by pulling the product back when they ask for it. Here is a chart of market positions and an example of how they fit together.

Speaking with business development industry expert and college professor Brett Golann, who just published the book Navigating the Whitewater Rapids of Entrepreneurial Success (now on Amazon), said, “The strategies of push or pull can really help to clarify what the company needs to do to go after new customers.  A push strategy is the traditional marketing sales approach where a company sells directly to customers with various forms of advertising. That is often effective but it takes time and generally you may only reach a few customers at a time.  

“As an alternative, the pull strategy means getting many different customers interested enough that they will go to companies and ask for the product. So the customer ‘pulls’ the product through multiple companies by asking for it, and hopefully, companies will sell it as part of their regular inventory.  The idea here is that companies will listen more to their customers than to a company’s sales reps trying to place new product in your shop. Plus, because more customers are asking for it at different businesses, the pull strategy helps get products sold in multiple locations throughout the market faster, rather than making just one sale at a time to individual customers.  

“So in a way, the customers help you define what product you retail with less effort from you.  Often some type of promotion efforts is made by the new product companies advertising, visibility with early adopters in commercial settings and social media placements and celebrity endorsements. You’ve heard those advertisements that tell you to go to your local store and ask for a certain product. 

“Sometimes when introducing a new product to the market it makes sense to use both strategies.  Push to explain what the product is and why people would want it - and build initial sales.  Then, use pull strategy to get customers to ask for it at multiple retailers and quickly expand sales throughout the market.”  

We can see why the push and pull market position may work together by how often they overlap. It is also possible for a company to be a trendsetter and a push company as well. 

We see this especially in luxury product stone and tile manufacturers, and urban or commercial marketplace early adopters of new products. 

In July, we are going to hear from a business owner on how they utilize their market position and what good or bad t impacts this can have on understanding the marketing efforts motivating consumer behavior. We can learn a lot about how product companies reach our customers and what approaches are most effective. 

Michele Farry co-owns Humblestone and is passionate about entrepreneurship and small business growth. Michele has received awards for her work with profit-based and non-profit charity organizations.