St. Mary’s Road is a unique community of three-plex buildings, each with two two-story town homes and one carriage-unit flat. Each home has its own separate entrance and private garage, providing a sense of privacy usually associated with single-family homes.
With such distinctive architecture to work with, it was the developer’s goal to form a partnership with a major retailer to give the project a unique marketing position. The retailer would furnish the models with furniture and accessories the buyers could walk into the store and buy.
But what sounded like a win-win situation for both builder and retailer didn’t exactly work out that way. Designing three models aimed at a specific target buyer, each with a distinctive and memorable look and under time constraints, was more than the retailer’s corporate office was willing to bear.
Unfortunately for John Laing Homes, the retailer abandoned the effort with only four weeks left to the grand opening, and a new strategy had to be pulled together quickly.
C Is for Challenge
Fortunately, an alternative was already in place. Anticipating that the retail designers would be unfamiliar with model home design — including production needs, finish specifications and optional upgrades — John Laing Homes asked Don Anderson, president of Color Design Art, to guide the process.
With little more than a month to go before the opening, John Laing turned to CDA to fill the void left when the retail strategy collapsed. A team from CDA agreed to take over the merchandising and to create accessible models that would excite demanding young single professionals and couples, as well as move-down empty-nester couples and young families with one or two small children.
C Is for Customize
The approach used three different looks to customize the homes for the different life stages of the prospective buyers, using attainable furniture and wall-to-wall design. Where possible, furnishings from the original retail source were even included. In the two-bedroom carriage unit aimed at a young, single professional man, for example, freestanding bookcases, a contemporary metal desk on wheels and artwork and accessories came from the retailer.
Next was to specify affordable finishes in a range of materials that would enhance the perceived value of the homes.
Each home featured different countertop treatments: a stone-look porcelain tile in the Plan 1 kitchen, a decorative tile in Plan 2 and a solid surface in Plan 3.
Value-priced, hard-surface flooring was used to create the sophisticated look expected by this market and to direct traffic flow. Accent paint was used to highlight walls, establish ambience and demonstrate an effective, yet inexpensive way for the buyers to customize their new homes.
E Is for Enhancing Architecture
To underscore the unique privacy provided by these attached homes, the interior stairways were treated as an important space, rather than just a traffic conduit.
Actually the entryway to the upstairs carriage unit, the stairway in Plan 1 was painted with warm earth-tone accents, and then highlighted with colorful, oversized contemporary poster art. The stairway became an art gallery and a visual invitation for buyers to climb the stairs to see the rest of the home.
In the Plan 2 town home, architectural pot shelves along the stairs were highlighted with accessories and art. More importantly, it was the merchandising recommendation to convert the original bedroom at the top of the stairs to an optional loft that would open this interior staircase and bring in more light. Since this was an empty nester home, it provided a wonderful home office space, made the stairs friendlier and still left a third bedroom to be merchandised as a guest room. The strategy demonstrated all of the home’s usable square footage.
S Is for Success
The re-strategized plan was a success. According to Marianne Browne, vice president of sales and marketing for John Laing’s South Coast Division, “The merchandising for these models hit our diverse market more accurately than any we’ve ever done before. The design reflects their lives and lifestyles in a way that the retail store never could have achieved. That is confirmed by the fact that each floor plan is selling equally well.
S Is for Strategy (and Back-Up Strategy)
Two lessons can be derived from this experience.
First, if you are going to try an innovative approach such as partnering with a retailer to furnish your models, do your homework early on. Make sure they understand your market, can respond to your production needs and have the same ultimate goals and understanding you do. In other words, make sure they are team players.
Second, always have a back-up strategy in case your first plan doesn’t work. Remember that designing for the entry-level buyer is getting more demanding and challenging. The right merchandising strategy can make all the difference.
Ava Carberry, MIRM, is a principal at Color Design Art, with offices located in Pacific Palisades and Thousand Oaks, CA. Color Design Art is one of the nation’s leading model merchandising firms, emphasizing the importance of research-based, lifestyle environments for new home builders. Carberry has been a guest editor of Sales and Marketing Ideas and is a former chairperson of the NSMC publications committee. For more information call 310-459-7844.
A slightly longer version of this article waqs originally published in NAHB’s Sales & Marketing Ideas magazine. ©2003.
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