lol! I am working on the beard thing. Seriously thanks guys this is what I was leaning towards, just wanted to make sure that it made good business sense. Thanks Again!

This thread has me thinking. A lot of you guys are saying that it is not necessary to have a showroom. Where do you guys run your business?

Do you guys have commercial office or warehouse space or are you running your business out of your house or garage.

We have been in business for 28 years. For the first 5 years I had to start the business from the ground up and ran the business out of my house. After we grew I moved it to some commercial spaces for the last 23 years. We are currently in a ofice/warehouse space that we pay $1,200 plus utilities for rent. I am in Northern Virginia where rent is very high and I doubt that I could find anything for much less.

We currently have a small showroom, one projector, one plasma and surround sound systems and like most of you guys have mentioned very few people visit the showroom. Most call and we go to their house to see the situation. We do always let the customer know that we do have a showroom and even if they don't come by I think that helps raise our status with the customer.

I am curious to know what you other guys are paying for your rent. I know that prices vary with the region of the country but does $1,200.00 sound like a lot to pay for rent?

When you say that it is not necessary to have a showroom do you mean a nice retail store front in a shopping center? That would be thousands of dollars rent each month and I could see that would be hard to justify the cost.

You guys are great I appreciate all the ideas that I get from you all.

Dave T

Uh, didn't Gerhardt go "Banko" a few years back?
I recall taking his cources at CEDIA, and he had a Texas company, and was going to take over the world of CI... then (and I apologise if I'm thinking of someone else), but I think he went under, even though he was the "Authority on How to Run a Successful Custom Biz"... Isn't he kind of short and balding and always wears a lot of black???!
Anyway... just wonderin'

not to beat this into the ground but once upon a time one of our best salesman was only 25 but he was already almost completely bald and a tad chunky. Everyone thought he as 40. The moral of the story is to shave your head, eat lots of pizza and drink a lot of beer.

Yes, you've mentioned this before. What of it? I would expect he would have learned a thing or two from that experience, and is willing to teach that to those that have listened.

If I were going to climb Everest, I would want to talk to someone who has done it before. Let's say for the sake of discussion I could choose between two climbers. Climber 1 was sucessful, his climb happened to occur on a great weather day, his partners were all in great shape, there were no equipment failures, and it was picture-perfect. Climber 2 didn't make it, but came back alive. He chose poor partners, didn't plan well, had equipment failures and weather problems.

I know who I would want to talk to. If you planned on surviving Everest, where ninety some bodies lay to this day, you would too. Think about it.


What does his appearance have to do with anything?

If you want a demo room you may want want to think about is using the whole house as a demo room (talk to your accountant first).

Other than that, my only comment is to think about a building a meeting/conference room. This room could then be used for client meeting, staff meetings as well as business/sales meetings.

My 0.2 cents


Cheers

I think showroom is still important, I have 2 showrooms and when customers come in and see the system they usually change their mind and go for better system than they were planning to since they can see where the extra money can go.
We have 2 multiroom systems, one basic and another more advanced and 4 HT systems 1 of them with plasma.
At this moment I am thinking of renting house in commercial area to have as showroom and offices since rent is cheaper than renting a showroom but I am doing this because I have been in business for almost 10 years and I have established good relations with clients and companies including interior designer.
If I am starting new I would try to get as much exposure as I can at the beginning and maybe offer more discounts to some of the clients with High End system in exchange of using his system for demo to some selected customer say once a month, it worked great for us especially in the large scale HT system.
I hope this help and good luck