Dealers and Manufacturers: Are You Taking Market Share—or Taking Another Meeting?
AI will create opportunities in the kitchen and bath industry. Execution will determine who wins them.
Bureaucracy, arrogance, and complacency. Three things that can take down a company—and somehow never appear on the agenda.
We examine the problem, admire its complexity, discuss possible solutions, and agree that someone should look into it.
Then everyone goes back to work.
Apparently, the meeting was the solution. Amen.
With AI changing what businesses can do, dealers and manufacturers need to ask a harder question:
Can we actually execute the changes we’re talking about?
Manufacturers: Better at Making What?
Ask a manufacturer about its goals, and you’ll probably hear about fewer defects, better quality, and more efficient production.
Good. Those things matter.
But does becoming a better manufacturer make your dealers more successful?
Does it help them win customers? Quote faster? Avoid mistakes? Grow profitably?
A well-built cabinet is essential. It isn’t an entire growth strategy—especially when the manufacturer down the road also makes a pretty good cabinet.
Using AI to catch a missing filler is useful. But if that’s the full ambition, we may be aiming a little low.
What if you became the easiest manufacturer to do business with? What if dealers could get accurate answers immediately, submit cleaner orders, and spend more time selling because they spent less time chasing information? Maybe just maybe you could give them a link or digital file with your specs, list pricing, door images, or whatever they might need. Huh? Oh yea, you don’t have time because you are inspecting doors for knotty bark pockets, bird pecks, or some shit like that.
Help a dealer build a better business, and you give them a reason to choose you beyond product and price.
That’s a market-share conversation.
Dealers: The Goat Trail Is Not a Business Model
Dealers have their own version of this.
A problem appears. Somebody finds a workaround. Everybody follows it. Ten years later, that workaround is an established procedure.
Nobody knows why it takes fourteen steps, but Susan knows how to do it, and we cannot afford for Susan to go on vacation.
That’s the goat trail: a path created by repeated use, with very little discussion about whether it’s the best route.
Our industry gets excited about new products. New finishes. New door styles. We’re quite comfortable with change when it comes with a sample and a fashion trend.
But the process of moving that product from manufacturer through dealer to consumer? Too often, the same handoffs, disconnected information, and workarounds remain underneath.
We’ve updated the display. Have we updated the business?
Starting Is Easy. Finishing Takes Practice.
This is exactly why we created Elevate, a leadership and business development program that brings kitchen and bath dealers and manufacturers together to challenge conventional thinking, exchange ideas, and learn from one another. It's not about sitting through another presentation. It's about having the conversations that help leaders make better decisions and actually put those decisions into practice.
Execution is a capability you build. So is Leadership!
If your company rarely works through new initiatives, your team gets little practice turning an idea into a result. Assigning responsibility. Changing a workflow. Measuring progress. Fixing what isn’t working. Making the improvement stick.
Instead, initiatives get announced, generate some enthusiasm, and then, without much fanfare, move into the “Retired Projects Community” drawer, and never seen again.
At some companies, that drawer turned into a storage unit….
This is why adopting AI requires becoming a change leader: someone who gives people clear direction, room to experiment, and accountability for following through.
You don’t need twenty projects running at once. You need a repeatable way to move worthwhile ideas from discussion into everyday operations.
“We’re too busy” cannot be the permanent answer. You can keep all those other things going on—right up until a competitor finds a better way to serve your customers.
Start With the Business You Need to Become
Before choosing tools, start with the end in mind. What will your business need to succeed?
Clarity on your numbers. Know your financials, referral & closing ratios, margin erosion, turnaround times, and other Key Performance Indicators. (KPIs) “Everybody seems busy” is not a performance metric.
Connected systems. Information should move through the business without someone retyping it at every stop.
A culture that can handle change. People need encouragement to question old routines, suggest ideas, and learn from practical experiments.
Partners committed to shared success. Manufacturers, Dealers, fabricators, installers, and technology providers should be helping one another build stronger businesses.
Then bring the questions to your team:
How could AI improve the customer’s experience? Reduce mistakes? Free up time? Help our trade partners grow?
And the questions that turn the conversation into execution: What will we do first? Who owns it? What does success look like? When will we review the results?
The winners will build the ability to keep answering those questions—and following through.
Everyone else can go schedule another meeting.
I’m sure the agenda will be excellent.
I share these thoughts not because I enjoy delivering hard truths-far from it, This is a “wake the hell up!” call for those that are willing to burn their egos, choose action over complacency, and destroy the bureaucracy that lives in both large and small companies.
The chances of someone reading this blog and starting a new journey are probably slim and none. And Slim? Well, he grabbed the closest horse and left town.
Why? Because transforming a business takes more than one person with a good idea. It takes people willing to challenge one another, share experiences, admit what isn't working, and do something about it.
Some will continue going it alone because they're convinced they already have all the answers. Toodles to them.
For everyone else, that's why we created Elevate. We bring kitchen and bath dealers and manufacturers together to tackle the challenges facing our industry, develop stronger leaders, and turn good ideas into real improvements.
Imagine what could happen if dealers and manufacturers stopped having separate conversations about the same problems and started working on solutions together.
We're not interested in another group that talks about problems and goes home. We want people willing to challenge the status quo and help each other build better businesses.
If you're a dealer or manufacturer who believes collaboration beats complacency, we'd love to have you join the conversation.
Let's chat.
Thad
