Designer Connection - June 2022
BKBG’s Designer Connection is written exclusively to benefit members of the BKBG Designer Alliance. Each month, Connection will relate trends, profile a designer, offer product updates and share professional development opportunities. Most importantly, Connection is another tool to bring the BKBG design community together, to share best and successful practices and to enable you to build your network of peers who face the same challenges and opportunities that you must address daily. We welcome your comments, input and suggestions for improvement. Post your comments on the Design Alliance TEAMS platform or send them to BKBG Director of Membership and Engagement Jennifer Swenson.
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Has Gray Had Its Day?
By Nellie Ondrovick, Nellie Christine Design
In the past few years, we were surrounded with everything gray, gray and gray. The ever-popular gray trend is tapering off in favor of the return of warmer tones, leaving us to determine how to strike the right balance with our clients. Gray is a neutral and defiantly has its place.
In the last decade, we have seen and sold an abundance of gray stained wood and painted finishes from cabinets to flooring to walls and accessories. Mixing warm and cool tones together creates the look and feel that a kitchen or bath is well thought out and put together.
Many are not ready to ditch the idea of losing all the gray that they have in their home, so it is helpful to understand how the warm and cool grays work together. Gray is a neutral and defiantly has its place.
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Warm colors and pallets are on one side of the color wheel while cool colors are on the other.
Warm colors generally include: Red, orange, yellow, olive shades of green, many browns, beige and creamy whites. These colors tend to be energetic and cozy.
Cool colors generally include: Purple, blue and teal greens, blue-grays, blacks and whites. Cool color pallets often include shades of blue and purple, pinks and violets, black, and blue-whites. These colors tend to be calm and relaxing.
Now that you understand how to determine warm and cool colors, here are a few tips to use them together:
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- Determine if the primary tone of the room is a warm or cool color.
- Think about keeping the largest elements either all warm tone or all cool tones.
- Consider using an element in the space that has a mix of both warm and cool tones. A great way to do this is by finding a countertop or backsplash that has both.
- Add opposite undertones through secondary materials or accessories. Mixing a warm leather or rattan barstool in a cool kitchen could be just enough to balance out a cool gray kitchen.
- Add complimentary colors in a space. These are on opposite sides of the color wheel so they easily can tie in and add interest.
- Consider mixing metals in the same space. For example, using warm brass hardware with a cool brushed stainless faucet.
- Do not force something that just doesn’t feel right.
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Congratulations to BKBG's First NKBA Badge Recipients |
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BKBG congratulates Meagan Davison (Cabinet S-Top, Medina, OH) for obtaining her NKBA Cabinetry Badge through the BKBG Designer Alliance. Meagan is a Design Assistant at Cabinet S-Top working under the direction BKBG Past President and current Board Member Betty Nairn. She has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Supervision and Management from Florida State College at Jacksonville and holds an ICOES certificate for Fen Shui Interior Design. She views the kitchen as the heart of a home and is intrigued with the concept and process of creating a space that reflects the wants and needs of customers so that they feel more balanced and harmonized with the functionality and aesthetics of their home. With her passion for decorating and management skills, Meagan is excited for the opportunity to help customers transform their space.
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BKBG also congratulates Willesa Cummins for earning the NKBA Floor Plans & Specifications. Willesa joined the Cabinet S-Top team in February 2016 as a Kitchen & Bath Design Assistant. With a Bachelor of Science degree in Interior Design from Westwood College and a passion for home remodeling, Willesa spent the next two years learning the trade and is now one of Cabinet S-Top’s junior designers.
Her interest in home remodeling started at a young age. After several years of experience, she views this job as a career she can grow in and be passionate about. Willesa enjoys the entire process, from picking out materials and coordinating colors to seeing the client’s reaction when their home is transformed.
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How to Take Advantage of the BKBG-NKBA Badge Program |
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BKBG has partnered with NKBA to offer Designer Alliance members continuing professional development and skill set enhancement opportunities through the NKBA Specialty Badge Program.
Specialty Badges are the NKBA’s latest concept in professional development. This new micro-credentialing program is a form of personalized learning that recognizes and displays the acquired knowledge of our members across all segments of the kitchen and bath industry. It affords our members the ability to stay current with the latest information in this ever-changing industry.
BKBG is offering 50 badges at a discounted price of $65/badge. Any designer who is a member of both BKBG Designer Alliance and NKBA, can take advantage of this professional development opportunity.
Once registered, you will receive a number of emails from NKBA including the study guide for your course. You will have 90 days to complete the exam and will then be eligible to register for an additional course while supplies last. You will receive a Specialty Badge Certificate upon passing the exam.
The courses will go fast so please register today.
Drive personal and professional success by expanding your knowledge base. Click here to learn more.
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Showroom designers and sales professionals that know how to ask the right questions move the sales process from a features and benefits emphasis to creating emotional connections. The ability and skill set to ask the right questions of prospective clients cannot be over emphasized. New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink in his book, To Sell Is Human, writes, “being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers.”
Famed management consultant Peter Drucker stated, “the importance and difficult job is never to find the right answers, it is to find the right question.”
Former CEO of Proctor and Gamble AG Lafley advised his team to ask the following questions:
- Who are your target customers?
- What does she want?
- What do you know about her?
- What kind of an experience does she really want?
- What does she think is missing today?
- What are their biggest desires that are not being met?
- What are they most unhappy with today?
Lafley was great at asking counterintuitive questions. Instead of asking how can we help customers get floors and toilets cleaner, he would query, “How can we give consumers their Saturday mornings back? That thinking led to the introduction of the Swiffer.
Effective questioning focuses on two goals. The first is to determine how things are by asking who, what, when, where and how questions similar to an investigative journalist. The other is to explore what might be. These are the counterintuitive questions that Lafley asks when he challenged his team to find a way to provide customers with their Saturday mornings.
Two main reasons why sales consultants don’t ask the right questions? One they don’t want to look uninformed and don’t want to appear aggressive or confrontational. This starts at an early age. In school, kids don’t want to appear that they don’t know something in front of their friends in a classroom by asking questions so they stay quiet.
The way to overcome being viewed as too aggressive or confrontational when asking questions is to ask customers for permission to ask questions. Our goal here is to develop a solution that best suits your needs, desires and budget. Do you mind if I ask a few questions to get a better idea of your goals and interests? That way you can ask questions such as why do you want to do that if the direction a customer is taking makes little sense.
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Designer Spotlight: Nellie Ondrovick
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The Connection Spotlight will provide a profile every month of a BKBG Designer Alliance Member to share their stories, talents and career accomplishments. If you would like to be profiled for an upcoming issue of Connection, contact Jennifer Swenson.
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Nellie Ondrovick is the founder and principal of Nellie Christine Design. Nellie serves as a reliable and talented freelance design partner for BKBG Shareholders who assists with overflow projects, provides design review suggestions and offers showroom space planning/design services. Nellie also shares her experience and expertise by authoring the trends columns that appear in the Design Connection and Nellie’s Narratives that appear in BKBG’s weekly e-letter the Buzz. Nellie also conducts webinars and hands-on training to help designers keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s trending in the industry and offers guidance to help designers and showrooms capitalize on those trends.
Nellie brings nearly two decades of kitchen and bath design experience to showrooms having spent most of her career as a staff designer for a major cabinet manufacturer. Her portfolio includes designs for builder plans and model homes, dealer showroom space planning and display design, trade show design and consumer design. Nellie brings a strong sense of color, shape and balance to every project.
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Peer-to-Peer Calls Return June 15 |
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The next Designer Alliance Peer Group Call is scheduled for Wednesday, June 15, 1-1:45pm ET. The main discussion topic is trends. Learn from best-in-class designers what’s trending in their markets, how they are responding to those trends and actions they are taking to capitalize on them. Click here to register.
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Remarkable is a remarkable word. For designers to be remarkable, it must prompt customers to want to talk about them and share their experiences with others either through conversation or social media platforms that allow them to reach a much broader and diverse audience. What does it take for your customers to want to talk about the experience that they had with you in your showroom? What would be the hot points? Would they be the wonderful products that you introduced them to that they had never seen before? Would they run out of the showroom and go to work the next day telling their colleagues about before and after images you projected for them? How many of your customers would want to talk about the number of tile boards on display? Is there anything on your showroom floor that would spur your customers to pin, post on Facebook and upload to their idea book on Houzz?
Most likely the answer to the aforementioned questions is probably not many and most likely the number of customers who are going to become raving fans of a single product will be a small percentage of your customer base, because most customers are not purchasing single products. They are buying kitchens. It’s a good bet that your customers have seen most of what you have to offer before they come in the front door (see the Houzz article below that found homeowners spend more than 7 months researching between the time they decide to start a renovation project and the project actually begins). Most showrooms do have unique lines and a few red cows. They may be different and exclusive, but do they generate an emotional response that would cause someone to talk about them? Maybe. The truth is that the products that you feature in your showroom may be among the finest kitchen and bath products in the world. However, they have become less remarkable because of the Internet’s ability to provide customers with access to infinite amounts of information.
Does that mean there are no remarkable showrooms among BKBG members or remarkable products produced by BKBG manufacturers? Absolutely not! What makes a showroom remarkable and something that a customer would want to talk about and share with friends is its ability to take the wonderful and unique products that the showroom features and assemble them in a package that meets the specific needs, desires, wants and budgets of its customers. It’s the designer’s ability to enable customers to press an easy button, to stage projects, to troubleshoot problems, to surprise and delight by asking the right questions and using customer responses to exceed customer expectations. The experience, knowledge and design savvy of professional showroom designers is what makes a showroom remarkable.
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Häfele Tag Hardware ENGAGE Closet System
Häfele's TAG Hardware ENGAGE Closet System is one of the most flexible, comprehensive storage and organizational solutions on the market today. Designers who use this system know they’re getting quality, stylish, easy-to-install products, which will coordinate perfectly with closet fittings used throughout their design. Due to popular demand, Häfele is now stocking matt aluminum ENGAGE products with slate fabric to ship immediately.
Available in four additional finishes – matte nickel, black, matte gold and slate – and standard closet widths, Häfele's ENGAGE Closet System is the ideal storage and organizational solution for closets, laundry rooms, mudrooms, craft rooms and beyond. It features aluminum frames on soft-close, undermount slides that fully extend for easy access. Clothing storage is handled by flexible options like fabric drawers, laundry hampers and matching storage boxes. Coordinated shoe organizers, dividers, jewelry trays and folding stations are also available to keep accessories arranged and stored in the designer-level style they deserve.
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Design Improvements from Weatherstrong |
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Weatherstrong has made several design improvements that make their cabinets easier to sell, install and use.
Grill Vents
Grill cabinets will no longer have grill vents, instead, they have three 5/8in x 5.75in slots in the floor of the cabinet.
Grill toe kicks will have 3 matching slots centered in the toe kick.
All base cabinets will come with a 1.75in x 1.75in square cut out in the end panel.
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Dual purpose holes: Weatherstrong has heard on multiple occasions cases that installers forgot to drill for electrical and gas lines, resulting in upset customers. These holes solve this issue 100%
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Gas ventilation: We placed these holes in the center for Liquid Petroleum and Natural Gas. With every end panel having holes in the same location, we have the ability for gas to travel from cabinet to cabinet and eventually escape. If required by code, the installer would need to drill a few holes in the HDPE after installation of the finished end to allow for gas to completely escape
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Solid back cabinets: As of June 1, all cabinets will have solid (full) backs. We will no longer offer open-back cabinets
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Mini Base: The mini base will now be offered in Dark Ash instead of Reef Blue.
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Daltile Stagecraft Collection
Daltile introduced its Stagecraft Collection of ceramic wall tile that features a Mediterranean color palette that includes, gray, blue, green, black and white. The Stagecraft Collection includes 3 by 12 inches picket wall tile available in five solid colors and two blends and 3 by 12 wall tile and 6-inch kaleidoscope mosaics in five solid colors and matte and glossy finishes.
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Bath & Kitchen Business Group
Tom Cohn
Executive Vice President
301-799-7401
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