Guest Profile: Bobby Nakamura
Bobby Nakamura is a third-generation business owner under the Naka's business name. The business started back in 1957. Bobby has a lot of experience on what works in the industry, particularly on the Hawaiian islands.
Other Notes/Links:
To learn more about Naka's Drapery visit Nakasdrapery.com
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Video
https://youtu.be/7ZQhMpP4xNU
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Transcription
Will Hanke 0:06
Hey everybody, welcome to episode number three of marketing pains. My name is Will Hanke II thank you for joining us today. I’ve got a fantastic guests in the very comfortable state of Hawaii and Maui to be particular while it’s getting ready to snow and do some craziness here, I’m sure he’s not preparing for snow. Bobby, nice to have you on. Thanks for having me.
Bobby Nakamura 0:31
Yes, actually, it’s actually a little rainy right here today. So it’s bad for us is so bad.
Unknown Speaker 0:39
you for saying you don’t have you can’t go outside, right.
Will Hanke 0:45
It’s great. Well, thank you so much for jumping on today. I really appreciate it. I’m interested. Do you prefer Bobby or Robert or what do you
Unknown Speaker 0:53
buck Bobby’s? I like Bobby. Yeah.
Will Hanke 0:57
Okay. So, so why don’t you go ahead and listen Jump in. Tell me tell me your name, your business name and give me the kind of the two minute elevator pitch about your business.
Bobby Nakamura 1:06
Okay, my name is Bobby Nakamura, I’m an owner knockos drapery and it’s a family run business. It’s it started out 62 years ago, my grandfather say we do all kinds of window coverings drapery shutters. We do some flooring to complement that. And we have our own drapery fabrication shop in house and so that’s that’s our bread and butter. Do it.
Will Hanke 1:37
Okay, how what is the percentage of Window Treatments versus flooring?
Bobby Nakamura 1:44
It would be about 90% window treatments and 10% flooring. Yes, it’s it’s not even close.
Will Hanke 1:52
Okay?
Is the flooring just something that you know and it’s easy to kind of pick up that business once your house
Bobby Nakamura 1:59
It’s it’s Yeah, it’s a it’s an extra business that we we have on there extra money maker. It’s we’ve previously um my father used to do a lot of flooring you would just flooring flooring flooring, but since the market changed, you know, big box stores came in and so they took over a lot of flooring stuff. So we we focus more into window coverings now and when the treatments and the flooring is to complement to that, you know a lot of old time customers, they they still know us and they still want you know, the services we provide them.
Will Hanke 2:32
Okay, and how many employees how many trucks
Bobby Nakamura 2:36
we have three employees including me and two trucks ,
Will Hanke 2:43
okay, and obviously you only serve Maui, you can’t really drive any further. I’m assuming.
Bobby Nakamura 2:51
I’ve been asked to go to other islands and do work several times and I’ve actually I’ve gone over too long. Done measuring a site the logistics of you know getting everything done in a. But you want people want me on this.
Will Hanke 3:08
Yes. Crazy though. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. And you mentioned that your business about 60 years old so I think you said your grandpa started your grandfather.
Unknown Speaker 3:18
Yes. My grandfather started. He actually started as a poster in mini blinds. So but basically the Naka’s name is it’s been transformed over the years. I mean, with, of course with the, with the market and how the how it goes and yeah, so about 60 in 19. Oh, it’s 63 1957 you started, actually before Hawaii became a state.
Will Hanke 3:39
Oh my gosh,
Bobby Nakamura 3:40
yeah. When you’re in for Hawaii became state.
Will Hanke 3:43
Wow. Wow, that’s awesome. And was it always on Maui?
Bobby Nakamura 3:47
It was always on Maui. It was three different locations on Maui though.
Will Hanke 3:51
Okay. Okay. So, kind of the way that I wanted to do this today is to talk about the the three pillars of marketing which is the market the message in the media. So let’s talk about those a little bit. We’ll start with the market Who is your ideal customer
Bobby Nakamura 4:13
my ideal customer actually means everybody’s ideal customers who has a lot of money wants to wants to give it to me. But uh, basically ideal customer target. Our target market is become local customers repeat customers that we have, you know, we don’t a lot of people for a lot of years. And we do target a lot of vacation rentals because of the high turnover rate. And property managers and new builds are always in there but it’s hard because a lot of new first time owners, they don’t have a lot of money to spend at the end of the process which is when the treatments but so a lot of us that are local and Vacation Rentals that we Protect dealing with.
Will Hanke 5:02
Okay. And those are people that are not probably residing on Maui. Correct?
Bobby Nakamura 5:09
Yeah, not residing there part timers, isn’t there the rest time to rent the rent out their properties as vacation rentals.
Will Hanke 5:17
Okay. Okay, that sounds like a position I need to be in. I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s, that’s where I need to be right.
Bobby Nakamura 5:23
Definitely a lot of my clients, I look at them and I get jealous because some of them have like, three or four properties and say, Wow, I want that.
Will Hanke 5:33
Yeah, definitely. Um, what about your unique selling proposition? Or how do you position yourself in the eyes of your of your customers?
Bobby Nakamura 5:43
Um, well, that’s pretty easy. I’m being that we’ve been here for so many years. I use that to the advantage of, you know, we know our clientele, we know our client, our climate, we know what works and what doesn’t work, right. There’s there’s a lot of things that are Aren’t you scientists that do not work here, you look beautiful. But things do not work here. And we’re very knowledgeable in that. And you know, we can pass it on to the customer and you know, we feel comfortable with that. So
Unknown Speaker 6:13
what are some of those particulars for that area, I would assume solar shades,
Bobby Nakamura 6:18
solar shades, a lot of the our treatments are have to be able to withstand the elements, because we do have a lot of trade winds here and I’m not very many people what there is central errs, but not very many people using the left there in Hawaii, they want to have the breeze and things come through. But along with that there’s problems with bugs and insects. We’ve had incidents where insects eat certain materials, like termites and stuff coming in the eastern materials. So there’s certain materials that we don’t we don’t recommend or sell out there. And even if customer you know, they really want it, we let them know that you know, we’re not going to do it because of this factor. You know, there can be like bugs and, and things and you know, it’s just going to ruin your whole, your whole experience. So, yeah, it’s, it’s good knowledge for us to have and
Will Hanke 7:09
yeah, that’s interesting. I would never even think about that, you know, our house in St. Louis is of course always sealed except for, you know, two weeks in the spring two weeks in the fall.
Bobby Nakamura 7:20
Yeah, it’s it’s very unusual and it’s it’s surprising sometimes when I when I go out to job and I see they call me and ask me there’s there’s holes in my this and data treatments and I go out there and and tell them you know, you can you can tell by the perfectly round hole, you can tell what it is a termites and certain. And bugs and geckos we have a lot of geckos here so Oh, yeah. geckos like to make homes or nest in certain areas and products. Hmm,
Will Hanke 7:51
do you guys do any outside, work on you know, awnings, shutters?
Bobby Nakamura 7:57
Not so much awnings, we do exterior shades, though.
Because it’s always sunny out here so there’s a lot of
people want to have like, blocking from the sun think so we do I would say cheat exterior shades and the simple rule roller shades I’m dude they work really well. Yeah situations.
Will Hanke 8:16
Okay, okay, good. So let’s switch a little bit over to the the marketing side what you’re doing and let’s talk about what kind of marketing you are doing. I should go ahead and put in a quick disclaimer that you are one of our clients. I appreciate that. And so that’s kind of in the mix in that and i and i don’t definitely don’t want it to turn into a window treatment marketing pros commercial. But I want to make sure that disclaimer was out there. So tell us what kind of marketing you’re doing and how you’ve kind of watched it progress over the years.
Bobby Nakamura 8:57
Okay, um, I actually took a It is the business in 2011. So I’ve been to then No, my only training was through a to my father. We did a lot of local newspaper, never anything online, we never had a website or anything. It was just newspaper, word of mouth. And
you know, it worked for time before.
But I’ve been noticing that, um, we we’ve been losing customers to a lot of other companies that have, you know, more of an online presence. So that’s where we, we switched over to getting a website and getting that done. So a lot of our marketing now is is on the internet and some kind of website marketing. We do still have newspaper I still deal with the newspaper because we do have leads still coming in through them. A lot of the old time customers, you know, the ones that We all want our target customers sometimes, you know, because they’re the ones that they come in and they’re 100% going to buy. So we want to make sure date they have you know, our number our information out there. So,...
