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Q3 Outlook with Russ & Rory: Surviving Slowdowns and Seizing Shading Opportunities
In this episode of Marketing Panes, host Will Hanke sits down with Russ Elinson of Arjay’s Window Fashions and Rory McNeil of Shading and Automation Solutions to unpack what’s really happening in the window treatment world as we head into Q3 2025. It’s not all bad news despite economic headwinds, dealers are finding smart, strategic ways to stay profitable. From industry trends to overlooked tools and lead sources, this episode offers real-world insights for professionals navigating a shifting landscape.
Guest Profile: Russ Elinson
Arjay’s Window Fashions
Serves as Principal of Arjay’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Inc. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry.
Rory McNeil
WindowShading.Pro
Seasoned leader in the window coverings industry and founder of WindowShading.Pro. With decades of experience, from launching Eclipse Blinds in the U.S. to co-founding TechStyles, He now heads Shading & Automation Solutions (SAS), continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation.
The Reality of “Survival Mode” in 2025
Many window treatment dealers are adjusting expectations this year, shifting from aggressive growth to business stability. As consumer spending softens and buyers delay home upgrades, staying flat is considered a success. Russ describes it as “flat is a win,” and this mindset is helping dealers focus on internal efficiencies, consistent lead flow, and retaining talent.
Why This Isn’t a Bad Thing
Survival mode pushes dealers to double down on what works. From hiring in-house installers to improving scheduling control, it’s about building a resilient, self-reliant business that can weather slow quarters and bounce back stronger.
Import Duties and Industry Shake-Ups
One major challenge in Q1 and Q2 of 2025 was the rapid increase in import tariffs—jumping from 10% to 50% without warning. This has created a cashflow crisis for many fabricators, especially those with goods already in transit.
Who’s Gaining an Edge?
Surprisingly, manufacturers based in Mexico or sourcing outside China are gaining traction. They can avoid steep U.S. duties while still offering competitive pricing, giving them an advantage in a tight market. Domestic fabricators are also seeing opportunities, especially if they can offer shorter lead times and stable pricing.
The Tech Tools Closing More Sales
Technology is playing a big role in helping dealers stand out and close faster. One standout mentioned in the episode is Sunseeker, a sun-tracking app used to visualize how sunlight moves through a room. It’s a powerful tool for convincing skeptical homeowners that window treatments aren’t just a luxury—they’re protection for their floors and furniture.
Automating Quotes and Simplifying Installs
Top dealers are using laser measuring tools and quoting software like Solatech to speed up the sales process, reduce errors, and close deals on the spot. Even simple app control for motorized shades is becoming the norm, with clients expecting remote or phone-based operation.
More Than Just Homeowners: Diversifying Your Lead Sources
With residential leads slowing down, forward-thinking dealers are expanding into commercial work, partnerships, and media opportunities.
Russ’s Lead Generation Advice
Show Notes
A solar tracking app used during consultations to show sun path and help clients understand the value of solar protection and proper shading.
Curated by Rory McNeil, this free newsletter has been around since the 1990s and provides industry updates, product highlights, and business insights.
Sign up here: Windows Shading Pro Newsletter
Other Notes/Links:
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Arjay’s Window Fashions: Visit Website
WindowShading.Pro: Visit Website
Video
https://youtu.be/nW9WEe0xOaA?feature=shared
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TRANSCRIPT
Will Hanke (00:00)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. My name is Will Hanke. Today is a special episode. We’ve got not one, but two industry leaders joining us and we want to talk about Q3, which is just around the corner.
And maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Q2 as well and see how well it went. But we’ve got some great guests today. So Russ Elinson serves as the principal of Arjays’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Incorporated. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry. And Rory McNeil, who’s been with us before, he’s a seasoned leader in the window coverings industry.
And founder of Windows Shading Pro. With decades of experience from launching Eclipse blinds in the US to co-founding TechStyles, he now heads Shading and Automation Solutions, or SAS, continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation. Gentlemen, it’s fantastic to have you here.
Rory McNeil (01:13)
Thanks for having me.
Russ Elinson (01:13)
Thanks for having us.
Will Hanke (01:15)
Appreciate it. So let’s jump in. want to I don’t want to spend too much time bantering back and forth, but let’s talk about what pulled you into the industry. Maybe we’ll start with Russ. What kind of pulled you in? Was it love at first sight or was it more of a slow burn?
Russ Elinson (01:30)
Well, my situation is perhaps a little different. I was born into the industry, so that could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I grew up in a window covering manufacturing business. So from five years old, running around a warehouse and assembling brackets and sweeping floors and counting rolls of fabric. I never thought I would wind up in the industry. Coming out of school, wound up in the family business.
I was there for 10 years and been moved on into my own business venture on the retail side of the business that was 14 years ago.
Will Hanke (02:03)
Okay. long time ago. Rory, what about yourself?
Rory McNeil (02:03)
Long time ago.
Russ Elinson (02:06)
To be 45 and have 25 years plus experience in the industry full time is a lot.
Will Hanke (02:13)
You
Rory McNeil (02:14)
The wild thing is Russ that back when Russ was running around the floors in that fabricator, I was visiting them from the UK. That goes back a long way. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (02:23)
well
Will Hanke (02:25)
You’re dating.
Russ Elinson (02:26)
So needless to say, Rory and I have known each other a long time.
Will Hanke (02:29)
Yeah, yeah. Rory, what kind of pulled you into the industry first?
Rory McNeil (02:33)
Nepotism just like Russ. Yeah, my father and uncle had started a window covering business in the UK. That was called Apollo Blinds was first this retail franchise operation and been Eclipse Blinds applied the franchisees with Apollo branded product. And they also supplied every other independent fabricator of blinds in the UK. And been I got involved in the company in the mid 80s to start the export department because we we’d grown so much in the UK.
Will Hanke (02:35)
Okay.
Rory McNeil (03:02)
Only 65 million people to work with, you it’s not a big market. And so within about five years, we were selling to 36 countries around the world. A lot of fun.
Will Hanke (03:11)
Yeah, wow, what a journey that’s been. Thanks for sharing that. Russ, I know you guys, Arjays’s is doing quite well in the Southwest, I guess is where you guys are at. What was the point when you thought, know, okay, we’re not just surviving, we’re leading?
Russ Elinson (03:28)
I think the big change happened once we started hiring full-time installation technicians. Stop relying for the most part on subcontractors and just building a full team that would be with the company for a long time. That allows us to pivot our installation team almost daily if we need to when schedules are behind or ahead of schedule, just to control our own destiny in that regard.
Will Hanke (03:50)
Love that there is definitely something to be said about an entrepreneur that has to, you when you get to that point where you start hiring and you’re like, wow, this is incredible. It’s scary at first, but been it’s also quite freeing, you know.
Russ Elinson (04:01)
Yes, for sure.
Rory McNeil (04:04)
Will, do you notice that with some of the more successful retailers that they do employ their own installers? Because it’s quite important.
Will Hanke (04:13)
Yeah, think for most clients, think early on, they’re the ones running sales and installs. And finding installers a little bit tougher than it has been in the past. But yeah, absolutely. If they can start to find their own installers or somebody that’s moonlighting maybe two or three different window treatment companies in the same city, that seems to work out well.
Rory McNeil (04:33)
Russ, how have you been able to find new installers? Do you train them from within?
Russ Elinson (04:39)
It’s a kind of a mixed bag. Some of them we found with just construction experience and brought them on and been they’ve trained from a more master seasoned installer. Others we’ve been fortunate that as our businesses have grown in each of the markets, it’s been a good source for recruiting where people just wanted to come work for our company because they’ve heard our reputation of building a team and the cool projects that we were going after and the continual flow of work that’s been happening with our company.
So it’s definitely a mixture.
Will Hanke (05:08)
That’s nice. Always nice when you have people coming to you and raising their hand versus you having to go find them, right? Yeah, that’s fantastic. So I want to talk about 2025, been obviously another strange year in the window treatment world. What do you guys think is driving growth right now? Let’s start with Rory.
Russ Elinson (05:13)
It does happen.
Rory McNeil (05:27)
Well, I would say that most retailers in the marketplace and most fabricators are just hanging on for dear life while they’re watching people pause their decision making and hold on to their earnings and the importance of pause of non-essential purchases. People can put off window covering purchases if they think that there’s trouble ahead. And we’ve been looking at six months worth of trouble.
Will Hanke (05:52)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (05:53)
I have to say I agree. That’s what we found. I don’t know that this has been a year of growth. It’s more a year of being stable, hopefully, or minimizing your decline. ⁓ Certainly, the fear of tariffs had a little bit of a spike towards the end of the first quarter, where everyone rushed to buy beforehand. But once the tariffs hit and it impacted so many businesses in our industry, whether or not price increases moved down the
Will Hanke (06:03)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (06:19)
The supply chain homeowner’s mentality is like, hey, I’m going to be paying too much. I better pause for a second as Roy was saying and wait. I think it’s flat is a win for any dealer.
Will Hanke (06:34)
Definitely same thing we’re seeing from the marketing side. A lot of our clients had a pretty good Q1, but it’s been, I don’t know about downhill, but it’s definitely been trending not as uphill, I guess would be a good way to say it.
Rory McNeil (06:49)
Yeah, there was definitely
Russ Elinson (06:49)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (06:50)
A lot of business optimism in Q1, but that’s been tempered a little bit by just not knowing what’s going to happen next. mean, I know fabricators who have a container on the ocean with, you know, $100,000 worth of aluminum in it. And at one point they knew that there was 10 % duty and now there’s 50 % duty. So that’s the difference between paying $10,000 and $50,000. It’s a cashflow nightmare.
Will Hanke (07:17)
Yeah, that’s interesting to hear about it like that, but definitely makes sense. So do you think it’s also affecting manufacturers like Made in the USA, where they kind of say, don’t have to pay tariffs, but I guess they have to pay on the actual hard products?
Rory McNeil (07:33)
Russ?
Russ Elinson (07:34)
Well, I I think they’re paying the tariff to some degree on components, right? Very limited amount of actual window covering components that go into the finished product actually come from the U.S., right? So there’s some level of tariff. think some of the smaller fabricators that build in the U.S. have held off perhaps too long, raising pricing from their perspective, thinking that that would generate more market share growth for them. I don’t know whether that’s happened or not. We’ve seen some modest price increases with domestic fabricators. It’s been more extreme with those that are manufacturing in overseas or across the border in Mexico, for sure.
Rory McNeil (08:11)
Yeah. And Will, what’s interesting is that if you’re a manufacturer like Springs or Hunter in Mexico, been you’re able to bring in goods to Mexico with very minimal duties and been sell into the U.S. without the same duties that U.S. manufacturers have to pay on fabrics and aluminum coming from other countries. So it gives Mexican manufacturing an advantage over U.S. manufacturing, which is kind of, unfortunately, the opposite of what was was hoped to have been created.
Will Hanke (08:40)
Yeah, we’ve also seen an increase in phone calls from manufacturers in the marketing world because suddenly they’re thinking they have an advantage that they need to get out in front of dealers. know, hey, by the way, we make this right down the road from you. You should buy it from us.
Rory McNeil (08:58)
Yeah. Well, Russ knows as well as anybody else that there’s certain extruders of profiles for shutters that manufacture in Taiwan and not in China. And that gives them a big advantage in the market until there’s a Chinese tariff deal reached, which apparently is imminent for the last six months.
Will Hanke (09:15)
Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (09:17)
And been it’ll get moved to another country, which will be hit with that same thing and another and another. So the cycle continues, unfortunately.
Will Hanke (09:25)
Yes, it does. Let’s talk about emerging trends. What are you guys seeing in the window treatment industry in the last couple of months? And how can the listeners kind of start to align their businesses to stay competitive?
Russ Elinson (09:39)
From our perspective, I think there’s a growth of people interested in both exterior product and also a continued growth in automation, motorized projects. But something that simple app control from their phone, it doesn’t have to be tied into a third party automation system. It doesn’t have to be in a huge mansion. Just regular homeowners are looking for convenience and timer scheduling. Certainly outdoor living spaces is a big area of growth in our part of the country in Southern California and the Phoenix market where we service. retractable awnings, retractable exterior screens, that’s an area of growth for us, certainly.
Rory McNeil (10:18)
Will, you deal with lot of retailers who are dabbling with exterior shading and awnings. It’s not always that easy to see a retailer who’s typically in the interior window covering business make the transition into exterior. But the best retailers understand that that’s the business they’re in. They’re in the business of shading all of the areas of the home inside and out. It’s just that they have to go to seminars, they have to train their installers, they have to do the work that’s required to train staff.
And Russ has been doing that at least for 10 years. When’s the first time you sold a exterior shading job, Russ? Yeah.
Russ Elinson (10:49)
Years. that’s probably 10 years ago.
Will Hanke (10:54)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I’d say two or three years ago, we probably had less than 10 % of our clients that did exterior stuff. And now that number is probably creeping up towards 30%, 35%. Yeah, they’re all looking at the exterior stuff. What I hear is it’s a different breed of installer that they have to find. So that starts almost all the way over, finding those kinds of installers as well.
It’s definitely an uphill battle for some of these clients, but a decent amount of them have started to transition.
Russ Elinson (11:25)
The nice thing with exterior sales is the average invoice is going to be higher typically than the average interior window covering invoice.
Will Hanke (11:32)
Right, for sure. Yeah. On the marketing side, getting those leads is not as difficult or not more difficult than getting a window treatment lead. But like you said, the average ticket value is a lot higher.
That’s really nice. Yeah. Is there is there any since we’re talking a little bit about marketing, is there any marketing thing that you’ve done, Russ, maybe that has completely flopped?
Russ Elinson (11:56)
Yelp from many years ago, that was a terrible flop. ⁓ I think that company is extortionist. So, I mean, that’s pretty well known, but that was definitely a failure years back.
Will Hanke (12:01)
Okay.
It’s interesting you say that because you’re in California. The one thing that I’ve learned is Californians love Yelp for some reason. Most of the rest of the US doesn’t, but it seems like our California clients seem to want to advertise on there and they use that. Like we, we don’t even think I have Yelp on my phone. But interesting that you say that. I have heard people call it mafia style tactics on Yelp.
Russ Elinson (12:38)
for sure.
Will Hanke (12:38)
And they’ve also been kicked out of Google a couple times because of those unscrupulous tactics.
Rory McNeil (12:43)
Yeah,
daughter went to UC Davis and went to school with a guy who became a sales rep in Yelp. the stories were pretty horrific. How they incentivize the sales guys, know, basically extortionist Russ is talking about, you know, we have Arjay’s on our system and they’re getting all the leads should be you should be paying into our system. You know, that’s just fear and fear and
What was the word? Fear? forget what the acronym is, just FEE? Yeah, something like that. FOMO? Yeah. Pretend FOMO. Yeah.
Will Hanke (13:08)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (13:12)
We are missing out.
Will Hanke (13:15)
Yeah.
I also spoke to a guy the other day who was using or was spending money on Yelp. I think the minimum seven fifty a month. In the meantime, he got a one star review on Yelp and now he’s afraid to stop spending the money because that one star review is being suppressed because he’s an advertiser there. And so he was he was spending the seven fifty for the one star not to show up.
Rory McNeil (13:37)
Okay.
Russ Elinson (13:42)
What’s so scary about all of that is that people do look at Yelp and our ratings on Yelp are lower because they hide any five-star review if you’re not advertising with them. So our design consultants, when they’re in the home, will try to get ahead of that and direct the homeowners to look at our Google reviews, which your company, has been so instrumental over the last year in helping us grow that review base ⁓ and seeing all the five-star reviews that come out of Google hopefully wash out.
Will Hanke (14:05)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (14:11)
Yelp and can be explained away. That’s a business that only generates money when you’re paying for advertising.
Rory McNeil (14:17)
Yeah, I think it’s clear that Google’s gonna eat their lunch on restaurants and businesses reviews for a long time to come.
Will Hanke (14:26)
Yeah, yeah. So as we look at Q3 and maybe even into Q4, are there any tech related shift things that business owners should be prepared for? Whether that’s product availability, pricing, customer demand, what do you guys see in there?
Rory McNeil (14:42)
Russ, do you see that more of your customers want their window coverings wired into the home through a central control system or are they still kind of looking at them as different motorized solutions, smart home solutions?
Russ Elinson (14:56)
I think it’s different motorized solutions. The challenge becomes most people that have existing homes aren’t going to be willing to have an electrician rip open their walls to pull wiring. Does it happen? Sure. Did I do it at my house? Yes, because I didn’t want to deal with charging batteries. But for the most part, I think that’s not the case. So an existing home is getting a retrofit rechargeable battery solution and new construction. That’s when you have the opportunity to get in and recommend wiring.
Rory McNeil (15:25)
Do you ever have any homeowners who say to you, I’m trying to standardize around matter? Are you guys offering matter compatible motors?
Russ Elinson (15:32)
Matter actually has not come up at all with any homeowners. Zigbee barely has come up with any homeowners. I think the homeowners mentality generally is, can I have a remote? Can I have a switch on the wall? Can I operate it from my phone? And beyond that, they haven’t thought much further. Occasionally you’ll have an engineer that’s done some research and requests a Z-Wave system or a Zigbee system. But in general, it’s
I just want to operate it from my phone and a remote.
Will Hanke (16:01)
I’ll say that would be me. I wouldn’t want to be able to have Alexa do it all for me just by me raising my right hand or something, right?
Russ Elinson (16:08)
Yeah,
Rory McNeil (16:09)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (16:09)
I mean, it’s definitely a mixture for sure. We’ll see.
Rory McNeil (16:12)
And how many go ahead, we’ll try.
Will Hanke (16:12)
Russ,
you see a difference in the type of customer that’s asking for those things, maybe like an age difference?
Russ Elinson (16:20)
I think people that like automated, I should say motorized shades may tend to be those with more discretionary income, perhaps more on the retirement end or later in their career path, where they just don’t want to walk over and pull chains. They’ve lived in homes where manual shades just stay down most of the time. There is a trend though in I would say millennial and end of generation X where they’re more comfortable with automation.
and having an app control. And so to them, it becomes less about having a remote and more about being able to control it from their phone and being able to set scenes or timer scheduled events. I think that’s important to the couples that are getting closer towards retirement or are there. Maybe the app control is not so important, but just having the ability to operate the shade with a button as opposed to pulling the chain.
Rory McNeil (17:09)
What about periodic or scheduled opening and closings? Do most of your installers set up those schedules for consumers, Russ, when you do installation?
Russ Elinson (17:19)
We don’t generally set them up because we found that they will keep our installers there for hours after the installation has happened. So they’ll pair the motors to the app system. Generally, we’re using Bond for most of our RTS controls. We’ll show them how to operate the shades, how to set up a scene, how to set up a schedule, perhaps one, and been that’s it. And there’s plenty of YouTube videos that walk them through that process if they struggle.
Will Hanke (17:46)
yet.
Russ Elinson (17:46)
We’ve also had to recommend to our design consultants to perhaps not offer app control to those homeowners they can see up front or perhaps not technologically savvy.
Rory McNeil (17:57)
Yeah, makes sense.
Will Hanke (17:59)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. Are there any tech tools on the sales side that you guys think dealers should be using right now?
Russ Elinson (18:08)
I mean, I think there’s a movement of dealers towards automated quoting systems. There’s several obviously out there, Solitech being one and a few others using those type of automated systems in the home to quote while you’re there, minimizes mistakes. I think anyone who’s not using it or something like that is missing out for sure. The days of pricing jobs by hand out of a giant product reference guide should have long been terminated. So for anyone getting into the industry or someone who’s been in the industry a long time but isn’t using one of those software packages, I would highly recommend researching which one would be right for their business.
Rory McNeil (18:49)
Russ, do you see anybody using like disto measuring tools with Bluetooth capability? Do any of your design consultants do that?
Will Hanke (18:49)
Agreed.
Russ Elinson (18:57)
I think there are some, I mean, we have laser measures for all of our design consultants. We choose not to integrate it directly into the quoting software. Things change while you’re in discussion with the homeowner. So I’d much rather walk in with a yellow legal pad, take my notes, I shoot my measurements with a laser, those that are inside mount at least, and been record everything. So that way I have a firm idea if something changes from inside mount to outside mount, or it goes from a cellular shade to,
maybe a natural shade or something where the height measurement matters more, just so you have a clear written idea of what you measured. It’s my preference.
Rory McNeil (19:33)
Do think it makes
a difference if you’re the only retailer calling on this customer who’s using laser measures and everybody else is in there with the foldable bendable tape measures?
Russ Elinson (19:45)
I’m sure there’s some positive response that you get out of it. Wow, what’s that? I’ve never seen one before. And been we just explain how precision measuring is something that’s a part of our business model.
Will Hanke (19:56)
So we had, we actually wanted to get some windows done. have some faux wood blinds that we’ve had since we moved in 15, 16 years ago. So we actually had a window treatment dealer out to our home this week. And Russ, you’re spot on because my wife got involved and we went from roller shades to just regular pull down shades to shutters all in the matter of 20 minutes. And the guy visiting, that’s basically, he just wrote everything down because she was
Russ Elinson (20:21)
Yep.
Will Hanke (20:26)
going through all these different decisions, obviously guided her in a direction. And once we decided, been he popped open his, I guess he maybe had an iPad with a keyboard on it or something, plugged everything in and I mean, took our credit card and we were done. It was fantastic.
Russ Elinson (20:42)
Yeah, and measuring for a faux wood blind is very different than measuring for a shutter. There’s more critical measurements at many different points, so that’s why I like writing things down.
Will Hanke (20:52)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (20:52)
From a sales standpoint, the quoting software you’re talking about Russ, if you’re in the home and you’re not able to close the sale while you’re in the home, been you’ve increased your chances of losing the sale.
Russ Elinson (21:05)
Absolutely.
Will Hanke (21:07)
Yeah. On the other side of this, is there any tech trend or product that you guys think that has been overhyped and not really delivering the ROI?
Rory McNeil (21:15)
Russ, do you want to handle that?
Russ Elinson (21:17)
I don’t know of one specifically that I’m thinking of. there something that comes to mind for you, Rory?
Rory McNeil (21:23)
There was something earlier, but now I can’t remember. I’ll come back to that. That’s what happens when you get too old, I guess.
Will Hanke (21:26)
no.
Russ Elinson (21:30)
I mean, just on perhaps one end, I think there’s a large marketing effort towards Zigbee automation motors and it’s a very good system. I agree. I don’t think it’s applicable at this time for the typical homeowner. I think what’s tried and true with RTS that’s been out for 20 plus years still works really well. Certainly we’re going to all be pivoting towards a Zigbee or matter or some solution as it’s related to that.
But from my perspective, I’m gonna wait a little bit, continue with what works for us and see how the market hashes itself out technologically wise and what communication protocol wins over the next few years.
Rory McNeil (22:09)
Russ, do you have any design consultants who use any kind of azimuth solar range or solar movement apps to show how the light changes in the house?
Russ Elinson (22:19)
I mean, I do for sure and a couple of hours do there’s a wonderful app called Sunseeker. I don’t remember what yeah, I don’t remember what that one costs at the time. Maybe it’s $15 or something. But it’s always interesting when you get a husband and wife that are arguing over whether or not they should put shades in a certain room and you look down at their beautiful flooring and realize that you’re south facing or west facing and the amount of sun that’s going to come through and they say
Rory McNeil (22:26)
Yeah, I have it.
Russ Elinson (22:47)
No, no, no, there’s no sun that comes through here. And been you pull out an app and you show them in 3D the path of the sun during the summer and winter, winter when it’s lowest and can penetrate in the deepest or summer when it’s higher and they don’t notice it as much. And been quickly the attitude changes of, they start thinking about how much it’s gonna cost to refinish that wood floor and the shades quickly become back on the table.
Rory McNeil (23:11)
Yeah, curiously, well, Lutron basically created an app around that kind of technology and guys like Russ’s business partner, John Edwards, who you’ve communicated with. John is kind of an expert in that area. So he’s an expert in, I guess you’d call it a fenestration, right?
Will Hanke (23:30)
right. Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know about that app, but we’ll look that up and make sure to link that in the show.
Russ Elinson (23:30)
Yes, and he could explain it incredibly well.
Rory McNeil (23:34)
He
Russ Elinson (23:38)
Yeah, it’s a great tool. John actually found that app many, years ago, introduced it to me, and it’s been so useful in many regular design appointments with homeowners and also in commercial projects where perhaps the architect doesn’t think they’re going to have a sun problem, but they certainly do.
Will Hanke (23:54)
Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. So we talked a little bit about the maybe the economy slowing down. People are not making as many spending choices or not in our favor, at least right now. What would you advise as we’re going into Q3 for window treatment business owners really to put their focus on as we move through the rest of the year?
Rory McNeil (23:55)
Cool.
Russ Elinson (24:16)
I think continuing to diversify customer base, if they can at all. For us, what’s helped us, whether the ups and downs of the economy is just targeting different groups. So we work with regular homeowners. We’re heavily involved in the Costco window fashions program. We go after small commercial projects where we do work on schools, multifamily housing, like apartment buildings, small commercial tenant improvements.
So we’ve built a relationship with a number of general contractors, both on the commercial side and the custom home residential side. So just trying to build your business and diversify your customer base so it’s not all reliant on the phone ringing from Jane Doe that found you on Google or Facebook. Trade partnerships with interior designers or real estate agents, those are all good sources of leads that
continue to pay dividends for years to come.
Will Hanke (25:08)
Good points. Rory, anything on your radar that you see?
Rory McNeil (25:11)
Yeah, I I was going to ask Russ if he’s doing more email marketing to his existing customer base to try and mine the customers who are already familiar with you.
Russ Elinson (25:21)
The reality is we haven’t yet. That’s an area we’ve not done a very good job at. We are going to be moving more towards that. It’s part of our plan for third and fourth quarter of this year. We’ve done the old style of postcard marketing to our past customer base, and that’s always generated a good return, or at least a decent return. It’s not very expensive, obviously, to market to past customers. But certainly going after a more digital approach is better for a long-term perspective.
Rory McNeil (25:49)
The biggest mistake there is I see retailers just deluging their customers with weekly emails and it’s just too much. Once a month, once a quarter.
Russ Elinson (25:59)
Yeah, I think once a quarter is probably appropriate because those that email me regularly, I just delete them.
Rory McNeil (26:05)
Yeah.
Will Hanke (26:05)
Yeah, there’s something to be said for just the fact that they showed up in your inbox and you saw them again. If you’re just deleting them, they’re still staying top of mind to you, right? Yeah. So we recommend our clients once a month, even if they’re getting a slow open rate, that kind of thing. When that time comes and they’re thinking about it and that email pops up, yeah, I need to call these guys. So anyway, that’s good.
Russ Elinson (26:14)
Mmm. Fair point.
Will Hanke (26:31)
Postcards, the postcard thing, we’ve got a couple clients doing that now. And we’ve got a system where we can actually reverse engineer the visitors to their website and send postcards to just those people. And that works really well because they’ve already kind of raised their hand to engage with your business or maybe they didn’t engage, but they came to your website or clicked on an ad or something for some reason. So hitting them from a different angle.
is a nice little approach a couple days later. Yeah. Yeah. So that works really well. I wanted to, before we finish up, I wanted to talk about industry gatherings. Is there any industry gatherings that are on your radar next quarter or later this year?
Russ Elinson (26:58)
That’s a idea.
Rory McNeil (27:13)
This is a great question because there was a show in Anaheim last year, I think you were a speaker there Will, called the Sunshading Expo, and I begged Russ to attend the show for the first time in a while because it was in his home state and because he would go to all the… You did come, yes. Was it useful?
Russ Elinson (27:27)
I like it!
I thought so, yes.
Rory McNeil (27:33)
Yeah,
yeah. So industry gatherings are always going to be critical. so they just wish people to just go there, support them, look for the new, you can see what the trends are. You know, the the Anaheim show was probably 40 % exterior shading guys. mean, that says something.
Will Hanke (27:49)
Yeah, it was a good show. I’m speaking at the one this year again. That’s in November. ⁓ Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well. I’m speaking there. I’m going to be doing some live podcasting from there too as well. So that should be fun with all the the ambient noise in the background.
Rory McNeil (27:53)
Yeah, Indianapolis.
Yeah, because they’ve set up your area right in the middle of the show, right? So looks like it’ll be more busy rather than off to the side.
Will Hanke (28:12)
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’ll be a lot of fun. Any other events?
Rory McNeil (28:16)
Are there any other, there’s no other trade shows you go to, Rasa. I kind of like the building product shows because you learn more about how windows are changing. Like in Europe, we see a lot of tilt and turn windows. And in this country, you don’t see them so much in it, except in very specific markets. And in Europe, the manufacturers over there have developed special, usually cellular or pleated or roller shade systems that snap into the inside of the sill.
So as the window tilts forward, the shade is under tension, it stays with the window. Or if it tilts into the room, been the shade is under tension, bracketed around a frame. And that’s kind of a cool feature that I think will grow as windows are used better for ventilation and buildings, for smart buildings certainly, lead buildings.
Will Hanke (29:02)
Interesting. Do you think the Sun Shading Expo is good for exterior as well? I know it’s tied to the ATA show as well. So I know they have a lot of exterior vendors there.
Rory McNeil (29:09)
Yeah.
They have exterior vendors and so does the Sun Shading Expo side. So between the two, there’s quite a bit. I I think that’s one of the reasons why Sun Shading partnered with the Advanced Textiles Expo. So those were all exterior fabric companies and been it was logical that they became exterior shading companies. so when Russ was there in Anaheim, he probably saw on that side, a lot of guys who made stainless steel hardware that could be good for some solutions on exterior wire guide systems.
Will Hanke (29:17)
Right.
Rory McNeil (29:41)
Where are you gonna see that, you know?
Will Hanke (29:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that too, Rory. We’ll put a link down below. think I’m going to end up having some free tickets to give away to that as well. And it’s close to me. Indianapolis isn’t that far of a drive from St. Louis. So I get off cheap this time. No flights or anything. So that’s always nice, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Russ Elinson (29:43)
Yeah, it was a great experience going there.
Rory McNeil (30:00)
Yeah, okay. Always good.
Will Hanke (30:05)
For dealers that are listening, Russ, I’m really interested in how you guys approached things like networking for some of your designers, some of the local lead generation. How are they doing it now and how has that changed over the years?
Russ Elinson (30:20)
interesting. I mean, I think we’ve tried different things over the years. Fortunately, our business has been around for several decades. a lot of people find us just organically. We’ve done networking events in our showrooms to host architects before and had different vendors come in and present one after the other to get AIA credit for those architects. That’s been helpful. Let’s see.
Calling actually general contractors, just picking up the telephone the old fashioned way and asking if we could get onto their bidders lists for commercial projects and have a blueprint sent to us that we read and do commercial bidding off of. That’s been very helpful as well. We have a designer that’s joined AIA and participates in those type of networking functions and generated some leads from there.
And been also in our Phoenix based market, we actually do a TV show that’s tied to home improvement in Phoenix called Sonoran Living. And that’s been very effective too.
Will Hanke (31:17)
wow.
Wow, are you the star on that show?
Russ Elinson (31:24)
I am not, because I’m based out of our California location, but we have a few different design consultants that rotate some of their more interesting projects that get filmed for that show.
Rory McNeil (31:34)
Have you ever seen those, Will? Because I normally put them on Window Shading Pro Newsletter because they’re great and I’m just trying to encourage other retailers around the country to copy that style because it’s so useful, I think. It’s very smart.
Will Hanke (31:34)
brilliant.
Yeah, those are great.
Yeah.
Video.
Russ Elinson (31:48)
But I am headed to Phoenix
tomorrow and we’ll be on camera Tuesday. We’re doing a shoot in our showroom.
Will Hanke (31:52)
There you go. Nice,
nice. Video is huge for this industry. I think it’s a missed opportunity for a lot of dealers.
Rory McNeil (32:01)
I did
have a question for you, Russ, about construction companies talking about networking with construction companies to be able to get in on bids or projects that might be, you know, a couple of hundred cut down shades or stock horizontal. I find that when I’m looking at quotes around the country for those kinds of projects, that there’s about a point of maybe about twenty thousand dollars in value to the construction company that most other national
companies who are going after contracts find it too small to waste their time on getting installers into that marketplace. Do you find that there is kind of a sweet spot in terms of the size, the quantity of windows that you don’t get competition from national companies?
Russ Elinson (32:43)
Sure, I think that our strong, our area of success in commercial bidding as a window covering dealer is going after small to medium sized commercial projects. I would say generally we don’t bid projects that are above 300 windows. Sometimes the commercial projects are 25, sometimes they’re 75. Large apartment complexes and also it depends.
upon the geography, right, where you’re at. If you’re in a major metropolitan city, there might be several commercial window covering companies that that’s all they do. And perhaps that’s not the right customer for a residential window covering dealer. If you’re in a little bit more rural area or outside of a big city, those big commercial window covering dealers may not find it worth their time to travel up for a three or four or five hundred blind project. So I think it depends on your market.
We found our sweet spot in a part of our area and it’s that small to medium sized job that’s generally not exceeding 300 windows, but we have certainly tackled projects that are larger than that. It depends on the relationship you’ve built with that specific general contractor. From my perspective, I think it’s better for individual window covering dealers to build relationships with small regional, excuse me, small regional,
general contractors as opposed to large national general contractors, which there’s not much margin in it at that point for any of us.
Rory McNeil (34:09)
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a cool sweet spot,
Will Hanke (34:11)
Yeah,
really nice. So before we finish up, I just wanted to ask you guys one last thing. There might be a lot of business owners or people that are new to the industry listening to the podcast today. If you could give them advice, what would that be? Let’s start with Rory.
Rory McNeil (34:28)
Well, we used to be a preferred vendor to a budget blind group. And all the time we would see new franchisees who came from middle management, upper management in corporate jobs. And the most inspiring thing about these new people coming into the window covering business after just having spent $80,000 to buy a franchise is that they were sales machines. It was all about sales and tracking leads and tracking quotes and
Many of us who sort of grown up in the industry just, you know, do the work and expect all that comes behind, you know, everything just flows. That’s all changed in the last 10, 15 years where you can’t afford to not mine your own customer database and you can’t afford to stop doing marketing. I meet so many people who’ve been in the industry a lifetime that they just assume they’re getting word of mouth. Well, you know, your customers are dying, you know, there’s more people you’ve got to find.
Will Hanke (35:21)
Thank you, Russ. What about you?
Russ Elinson (35:21)
I’m
Rory McNeil (35:22)
That’s
Russ Elinson (35:22)
sure I think.
Rory McNeil (35:23)
an optimistic note, isn’t it?
Russ Elinson (35:26)
The advice that I would give takes us right back to a conversation we had a few minutes ago, which is investing in technology, investing in a laser measure that Rory mentioned, and investing in quoting software so you can quote those projects in the home. Don’t try to do it by hand. You’ll drive yourself crazy. You’ll fall asleep on your price books at night. And you’re going to serve your customers and yourself better by investing in quoting software.
Will Hanke (35:50)
Awesome,
Rory McNeil (35:50)
On that note,
there’s something like four or five software companies exhibiting in the sun shading experts. So they’re from all over the world.
Will Hanke (35:57)
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your insight today. Incredible conversation. Before we wrap up, Rory, I just wanted you to give us the one minute elevator pitch about the Windows Shading Pro newsletter.
Rory McNeil (36:09)
Oh,
I can maybe do 30 seconds. So I created Windows Shading Pro as a newsletter, a free newsletter for the industry in maybe 94, 95, long time ago. And there’s about a little over 3000 window covering professionals subscribed to it. And I just write articles that I think are or I find articles from all over the world and been editorialize them as to how I think they relate to the window covering business.
Will Hanke (36:12)
Okay.
Awesome. We will put a link in the show notes for your to sign up for your newsletter as well. Appreciate you doing that, by the way. That’s great. So thank you guys for being on today. I definitely appreciate your time. I know that you’re both very busy. Thank you also for listening to the podcast today. If you got one idea or a useful strategy out of this conversation, please do us a favor and send it to a friend in the trade. And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, all the different socials.
And thank you so much for listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Rory and Russ, thank you guys. I really appreciate it.
Russ Elinson (37:12)
Thank
Rory McNeil (37:12)
Thanks for your
Russ Elinson (37:12)
you.
Rory McNeil (37:12)
time. Nice chatting.
TRANSCRIPT
Will Hanke (00:00)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. My name is Will Hanke. Today is a special episode. We’ve got not one, but two industry leaders joining us and we want to talk about Q3, which is just around the corner.
And maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Q2 as well and see how well it went. But we’ve got some great guests today. So Russ Elinson serves as the principal of Arjays’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Incorporated. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry. And Rory McNeil, who’s been with us before, he’s a seasoned leader in the window coverings industry.
And founder of Windows Shading Pro. With decades of experience from launching Eclipse blinds in the US to co-founding TechStyles, he now heads Shading and Automation Solutions, or SAS, continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation. Gentlemen, it’s fantastic to have you here.
Rory McNeil (01:13)
Thanks for having me.
Russ Elinson (01:13)
Thanks for having us.
Will Hanke (01:15)
Appreciate it. So let’s jump in. want to I don’t want to spend too much time bantering back and forth, but let’s talk about what pulled you into the industry. Maybe we’ll start with Russ. What kind of pulled you in? Was it love at first sight or was it more of a slow burn?
Russ Elinson (01:30)
Well, my situation is perhaps a little different. I was born into the industry, so that could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I grew up in a window covering manufacturing business. So from five years old, running around a warehouse and assembling brackets and sweeping floors and counting rolls of fabric. I never thought I would wind up in the industry. Coming out of school, wound up in the family business.
I was there for 10 years and been moved on into my own business venture on the retail side of the business that was 14 years ago.
Will Hanke (02:03)
Okay. long time ago. Rory, what about yourself?
Rory McNeil (02:03)
Long time ago.
Russ Elinson (02:06)
To be 45 and have 25 years plus experience in the industry full time is a lot.
Will Hanke (02:13)
You
Rory McNeil (02:14)
The wild thing is Russ that back when Russ was running around the floors in that fabricator, I was visiting them from the UK. That goes back a long way. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (02:23)
well
Will Hanke (02:25)
You’re dating.
Russ Elinson (02:26)
So needless to say, Rory and I have known each other a long time.
Will Hanke (02:29)
Yeah, yeah. Rory, what kind of pulled you into the industry first?
Rory McNeil (02:33)
Nepotism just like Russ. Yeah, my father and uncle had started a window covering business in the UK. That was called Apollo Blinds was first this retail franchise operation and been Eclipse Blinds applied the franchisees with Apollo branded product. And they also supplied every other independent fabricator of blinds in the UK. And been I got involved in the company in the mid 80s to start the export department because we we’d grown so much in the UK.
Will Hanke (02:35)
Okay.
Rory McNeil (03:02)
Only 65 million people to work with, you it’s not a big market. And so within about five years, we were selling to 36 countries around the world. A lot of fun.
Will Hanke (03:11)
Yeah, wow, what a journey that’s been. Thanks for sharing that. Russ, I know you guys, Arjays’s is doing quite well in the Southwest, I guess is where you guys are at. What was the point when you thought, know, okay, we’re not just surviving, we’re leading?
Russ Elinson (03:28)
I think the big change happened once we started hiring full-time installation technicians. Stop relying for the most part on subcontractors and just building a full team that would be with the company for a long time. That allows us to pivot our installation team almost daily if we need to when schedules are behind or ahead of schedule, just to control our own destiny in that regard.
Will Hanke (03:50)
Love that there is definitely something to be said about an entrepreneur that has to, you when you get to that point where you start hiring and you’re like, wow, this is incredible. It’s scary at first, but been it’s also quite freeing, you know.
Russ Elinson (04:01)
Yes, for sure.
Rory McNeil (04:04)
Will, do you notice that with some of the more successful retailers that they do employ their own installers? Because it’s quite important.
Will Hanke (04:13)
Yeah, think for most clients, think early on, they’re the ones running sales and installs. And finding installers a little bit tougher than it has been in the past. But yeah, absolutely. If they can start to find their own installers or somebody that’s moonlighting maybe two or three different window treatment companies in the same city, that seems to work out well.
Rory McNeil (04:33)
Russ, how have you been able to find new installers? Do you train them from within?
Russ Elinson (04:39)
It’s a kind of a mixed bag. Some of them we found with just construction experience and brought them on and been they’ve trained from a more master seasoned installer. Others we’ve been fortunate that as our businesses have grown in each of the markets, it’s been a good source for recruiting where people just wanted to come work for our company because they’ve heard our reputation of building a team and the cool projects that we were going after and the continual flow of work that’s been happening with our company.
So it’s definitely a mixture.
Will Hanke (05:08)
That’s nice. Always nice when you have people coming to you and raising their hand versus you having to go find them, right? Yeah, that’s fantastic. So I want to talk about 2025, been obviously another strange year in the window treatment world. What do you guys think is driving growth right now? Let’s start with Rory.
Russ Elinson (05:13)
It does happen.
Rory McNeil (05:27)
Well, I would say that most retailers in the marketplace and most fabricators are just hanging on for dear life while they’re watching people pause their decision making and hold on to their earnings and the importance of pause of non-essential purchases. People can put off window covering purchases if they think that there’s trouble ahead. And we’ve been looking at six months worth of trouble.
Will Hanke (05:52)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (05:53)
I have to say I agree. That’s what we found. I don’t know that this has been a year of growth. It’s more a year of being stable, hopefully, or minimizing your decline. ⁓ Certainly, the fear of tariffs had a little bit of a spike towards the end of the first quarter, where everyone rushed to buy beforehand. But once the tariffs hit and it impacted so many businesses in our industry, whether or not price increases moved down the
Will Hanke (06:03)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (06:19)
The supply chain homeowner’s mentality is like, hey, I’m going to be paying too much. I better pause for a second as Roy was saying and wait. I think it’s flat is a win for any dealer.
Will Hanke (06:34)
Definitely same thing we’re seeing from the marketing side. A lot of our clients had a pretty good Q1, but it’s been, I don’t know about downhill, but it’s definitely been trending not as uphill, I guess would be a good way to say it.
Rory McNeil (06:49)
Yeah, there was definitely
Russ Elinson (06:49)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (06:50)
A lot of business optimism in Q1, but that’s been tempered a little bit by just not knowing what’s going to happen next. mean, I know fabricators who have a container on the ocean with, you know, $100,000 worth of aluminum in it. And at one point they knew that there was 10 % duty and now there’s 50 % duty. So that’s the difference between paying $10,000 and $50,000. It’s a cashflow nightmare.
Will Hanke (07:17)
Yeah, that’s interesting to hear about it like that, but definitely makes sense. So do you think it’s also affecting manufacturers like Made in the USA, where they kind of say, don’t have to pay tariffs, but I guess they have to pay on the actual hard products?
Rory McNeil (07:33)
Russ?
Russ Elinson (07:34)
Well, I I think they’re paying the tariff to some degree on components, right? Very limited amount of actual window covering components that go into the finished product actually come from the U.S., right? So there’s some level of tariff. think some of the smaller fabricators that build in the U.S. have held off perhaps too long, raising pricing from their perspective, thinking that that would generate more market share growth for them. I don’t know whether that’s happened or not. We’ve seen some modest price increases with domestic fabricators. It’s been more extreme with those that are manufacturing in overseas or across the border in Mexico, for sure.
Rory McNeil (08:11)
Yeah. And Will, what’s interesting is that if you’re a manufacturer like Springs or Hunter in Mexico, been you’re able to bring in goods to Mexico with very minimal duties and been sell into the U.S. without the same duties that U.S. manufacturers have to pay on fabrics and aluminum coming from other countries. So it gives Mexican manufacturing an advantage over U.S. manufacturing, which is kind of, unfortunately, the opposite of what was was hoped to have been created.
Will Hanke (08:40)
Yeah, we’ve also seen an increase in phone calls from manufacturers in the marketing world because suddenly they’re thinking they have an advantage that they need to get out in front of dealers. know, hey, by the way, we make this right down the road from you. You should buy it from us.
Rory McNeil (08:58)
Yeah. Well, Russ knows as well as anybody else that there’s certain extruders of profiles for shutters that manufacture in Taiwan and not in China. And that gives them a big advantage in the market until there’s a Chinese tariff deal reached, which apparently is imminent for the last six months.
Will Hanke (09:15)
Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (09:17)
And been it’ll get moved to another country, which will be hit with that same thing and another and another. So the cycle continues, unfortunately.
Will Hanke (09:25)
Yes, it does. Let’s talk about emerging trends. What are you guys seeing in the window treatment industry in the last couple of months? And how can the listeners kind of start to align their businesses to stay competitive?
Russ Elinson (09:39)
From our perspective, I think there’s a growth of people interested in both exterior product and also a continued growth in automation, motorized projects. But something that simple app control from their phone, it doesn’t have to be tied into a third party automation system. It doesn’t have to be in a huge mansion. Just regular homeowners are looking for convenience and timer scheduling. Certainly outdoor living spaces is a big area of growth in our part of the country in Southern California and the Phoenix market where we service. retractable awnings, retractable exterior screens, that’s an area of growth for us, certainly.
Rory McNeil (10:18)
Will, you deal with lot of retailers who are dabbling with exterior shading and awnings. It’s not always that easy to see a retailer who’s typically in the interior window covering business make the transition into exterior. But the best retailers understand that that’s the business they’re in. They’re in the business of shading all of the areas of the home inside and out. It’s just that they have to go to seminars, they have to train their installers, they have to do the work that’s required to train staff.
And Russ has been doing that at least for 10 years. When’s the first time you sold a exterior shading job, Russ? Yeah.
Russ Elinson (10:49)
Years. that’s probably 10 years ago.
Will Hanke (10:54)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I’d say two or three years ago, we probably had less than 10 % of our clients that did exterior stuff. And now that number is probably creeping up towards 30%, 35%. Yeah, they’re all looking at the exterior stuff. What I hear is it’s a different breed of installer that they have to find. So that starts almost all the way over, finding those kinds of installers as well.
It’s definitely an uphill battle for some of these clients, but a decent amount of them have started to transition.
Russ Elinson (11:25)
The nice thing with exterior sales is the average invoice is going to be higher typically than the average interior window covering invoice.
Will Hanke (11:32)
Right, for sure. Yeah. On the marketing side, getting those leads is not as difficult or not more difficult than getting a window treatment lead. But like you said, the average ticket value is a lot higher.
That’s really nice. Yeah. Is there is there any since we’re talking a little bit about marketing, is there any marketing thing that you’ve done, Russ, maybe that has completely flopped?
Russ Elinson (11:56)
Yelp from many years ago, that was a terrible flop. ⁓ I think that company is extortionist. So, I mean, that’s pretty well known, but that was definitely a failure years back.
Will Hanke (12:01)
Okay.
It’s interesting you say that because you’re in California. The one thing that I’ve learned is Californians love Yelp for some reason. Most of the rest of the US doesn’t, but it seems like our California clients seem to want to advertise on there and they use that. Like we, we don’t even think I have Yelp on my phone. But interesting that you say that. I have heard people call it mafia style tactics on Yelp.
Russ Elinson (12:38)
for sure.
Will Hanke (12:38)
And they’ve also been kicked out of Google a couple times because of those unscrupulous tactics.
Rory McNeil (12:43)
Yeah,
daughter went to UC Davis and went to school with a guy who became a sales rep in Yelp. the stories were pretty horrific. How they incentivize the sales guys, know, basically extortionist Russ is talking about, you know, we have Arjay’s on our system and they’re getting all the leads should be you should be paying into our system. You know, that’s just fear and fear and
What was the word? Fear? forget what the acronym is, just FEE? Yeah, something like that. FOMO? Yeah. Pretend FOMO. Yeah.
Will Hanke (13:08)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (13:12)
We are missing out.
Will Hanke (13:15)
Yeah.
I also spoke to a guy the other day who was using or was spending money on Yelp. I think the minimum seven fifty a month. In the meantime, he got a one star review on Yelp and now he’s afraid to stop spending the money because that one star review is being suppressed because he’s an advertiser there. And so he was he was spending the seven fifty for the one star not to show up.
Rory McNeil (13:37)
Okay.
Russ Elinson (13:42)
What’s so scary about all of that is that people do look at Yelp and our ratings on Yelp are lower because they hide any five-star review if you’re not advertising with them. So our design consultants, when they’re in the home, will try to get ahead of that and direct the homeowners to look at our Google reviews, which your company, has been so instrumental over the last year in helping us grow that review base ⁓ and seeing all the five-star reviews that come out of Google hopefully wash out.
Will Hanke (14:05)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (14:11)
Yelp and can be explained away. That’s a business that only generates money when you’re paying for advertising.
Rory McNeil (14:17)
Yeah, I think it’s clear that Google’s gonna eat their lunch on restaurants and businesses reviews for a long time to come.
Will Hanke (14:26)
Yeah, yeah. So as we look at Q3 and maybe even into Q4, are there any tech related shift things that business owners should be prepared for? Whether that’s product availability, pricing, customer demand, what do you guys see in there?
Rory McNeil (14:42)
Russ, do you see that more of your customers want their window coverings wired into the home through a central control system or are they still kind of looking at them as different motorized solutions, smart home solutions?
Russ Elinson (14:56)
I think it’s different motorized solutions. The challenge becomes most people that have existing homes aren’t going to be willing to have an electrician rip open their walls to pull wiring. Does it happen? Sure. Did I do it at my house? Yes, because I didn’t want to deal with charging batteries. But for the most part, I think that’s not the case. So an existing home is getting a retrofit rechargeable battery solution and new construction. That’s when you have the opportunity to get in and recommend wiring.
Rory McNeil (15:25)
Do you ever have any homeowners who say to you, I’m trying to standardize around matter? Are you guys offering matter compatible motors?
Russ Elinson (15:32)
Matter actually has not come up at all with any homeowners. Zigbee barely has come up with any homeowners. I think the homeowners mentality generally is, can I have a remote? Can I have a switch on the wall? Can I operate it from my phone? And beyond that, they haven’t thought much further. Occasionally you’ll have an engineer that’s done some research and requests a Z-Wave system or a Zigbee system. But in general, it’s
I just want to operate it from my phone and a remote.
Will Hanke (16:01)
I’ll say that would be me. I wouldn’t want to be able to have Alexa do it all for me just by me raising my right hand or something, right?
Russ Elinson (16:08)
Yeah,
Rory McNeil (16:09)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (16:09)
I mean, it’s definitely a mixture for sure. We’ll see.
Rory McNeil (16:12)
And how many go ahead, we’ll try.
Will Hanke (16:12)
Russ,
you see a difference in the type of customer that’s asking for those things, maybe like an age difference?
Russ Elinson (16:20)
I think people that like automated, I should say motorized shades may tend to be those with more discretionary income, perhaps more on the retirement end or later in their career path, where they just don’t want to walk over and pull chains. They’ve lived in homes where manual shades just stay down most of the time. There is a trend though in I would say millennial and end of generation X where they’re more comfortable with automation.
and having an app control. And so to them, it becomes less about having a remote and more about being able to control it from their phone and being able to set scenes or timer scheduled events. I think that’s important to the couples that are getting closer towards retirement or are there. Maybe the app control is not so important, but just having the ability to operate the shade with a button as opposed to pulling the chain.
Rory McNeil (17:09)
What about periodic or scheduled opening and closings? Do most of your installers set up those schedules for consumers, Russ, when you do installation?
Russ Elinson (17:19)
We don’t generally set them up because we found that they will keep our installers there for hours after the installation has happened. So they’ll pair the motors to the app system. Generally, we’re using Bond for most of our RTS controls. We’ll show them how to operate the shades, how to set up a scene, how to set up a schedule, perhaps one, and been that’s it. And there’s plenty of YouTube videos that walk them through that process if they struggle.
Will Hanke (17:46)
yet.
Russ Elinson (17:46)
We’ve also had to recommend to our design consultants to perhaps not offer app control to those homeowners they can see up front or perhaps not technologically savvy.
Rory McNeil (17:57)
Yeah, makes sense.
Will Hanke (17:59)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. Are there any tech tools on the sales side that you guys think dealers should be using right now?
Russ Elinson (18:08)
I mean, I think there’s a movement of dealers towards automated quoting systems. There’s several obviously out there, Solitech being one and a few others using those type of automated systems in the home to quote while you’re there, minimizes mistakes. I think anyone who’s not using it or something like that is missing out for sure. The days of pricing jobs by hand out of a giant product reference guide should have long been terminated. So for anyone getting into the industry or someone who’s been in the industry a long time but isn’t using one of those software packages, I would highly recommend researching which one would be right for their business.
Rory McNeil (18:49)
Russ, do you see anybody using like disto measuring tools with Bluetooth capability? Do any of your design consultants do that?
Will Hanke (18:49)
Agreed.
Russ Elinson (18:57)
I think there are some, I mean, we have laser measures for all of our design consultants. We choose not to integrate it directly into the quoting software. Things change while you’re in discussion with the homeowner. So I’d much rather walk in with a yellow legal pad, take my notes, I shoot my measurements with a laser, those that are inside mount at least, and been record everything. So that way I have a firm idea if something changes from inside mount to outside mount, or it goes from a cellular shade to,
maybe a natural shade or something where the height measurement matters more, just so you have a clear written idea of what you measured. It’s my preference.
Rory McNeil (19:33)
Do think it makes
a difference if you’re the only retailer calling on this customer who’s using laser measures and everybody else is in there with the foldable bendable tape measures?
Russ Elinson (19:45)
I’m sure there’s some positive response that you get out of it. Wow, what’s that? I’ve never seen one before. And been we just explain how precision measuring is something that’s a part of our business model.
Will Hanke (19:56)
So we had, we actually wanted to get some windows done. have some faux wood blinds that we’ve had since we moved in 15, 16 years ago. So we actually had a window treatment dealer out to our home this week. And Russ, you’re spot on because my wife got involved and we went from roller shades to just regular pull down shades to shutters all in the matter of 20 minutes. And the guy visiting, that’s basically, he just wrote everything down because she was
Russ Elinson (20:21)
Yep.
Will Hanke (20:26)
going through all these different decisions, obviously guided her in a direction. And once we decided, been he popped open his, I guess he maybe had an iPad with a keyboard on it or something, plugged everything in and I mean, took our credit card and we were done. It was fantastic.
Russ Elinson (20:42)
Yeah, and measuring for a faux wood blind is very different than measuring for a shutter. There’s more critical measurements at many different points, so that’s why I like writing things down.
Will Hanke (20:52)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (20:52)
From a sales standpoint, the quoting software you’re talking about Russ, if you’re in the home and you’re not able to close the sale while you’re in the home, been you’ve increased your chances of losing the sale.
Russ Elinson (21:05)
Absolutely.
Will Hanke (21:07)
Yeah. On the other side of this, is there any tech trend or product that you guys think that has been overhyped and not really delivering the ROI?
Rory McNeil (21:15)
Russ, do you want to handle that?
Russ Elinson (21:17)
I don’t know of one specifically that I’m thinking of. there something that comes to mind for you, Rory?
Rory McNeil (21:23)
There was something earlier, but now I can’t remember. I’ll come back to that. That’s what happens when you get too old, I guess.
Will Hanke (21:26)
no.
Russ Elinson (21:30)
I mean, just on perhaps one end, I think there’s a large marketing effort towards Zigbee automation motors and it’s a very good system. I agree. I don’t think it’s applicable at this time for the typical homeowner. I think what’s tried and true with RTS that’s been out for 20 plus years still works really well. Certainly we’re going to all be pivoting towards a Zigbee or matter or some solution as it’s related to that.
But from my perspective, I’m gonna wait a little bit, continue with what works for us and see how the market hashes itself out technologically wise and what communication protocol wins over the next few years.
Rory McNeil (22:09)
Russ, do you have any design consultants who use any kind of azimuth solar range or solar movement apps to show how the light changes in the house?
Russ Elinson (22:19)
I mean, I do for sure and a couple of hours do there’s a wonderful app called Sunseeker. I don’t remember what yeah, I don’t remember what that one costs at the time. Maybe it’s $15 or something. But it’s always interesting when you get a husband and wife that are arguing over whether or not they should put shades in a certain room and you look down at their beautiful flooring and realize that you’re south facing or west facing and the amount of sun that’s going to come through and they say
Rory McNeil (22:26)
Yeah, I have it.
Russ Elinson (22:47)
No, no, no, there’s no sun that comes through here. And been you pull out an app and you show them in 3D the path of the sun during the summer and winter, winter when it’s lowest and can penetrate in the deepest or summer when it’s higher and they don’t notice it as much. And been quickly the attitude changes of, they start thinking about how much it’s gonna cost to refinish that wood floor and the shades quickly become back on the table.
Rory McNeil (23:11)
Yeah, curiously, well, Lutron basically created an app around that kind of technology and guys like Russ’s business partner, John Edwards, who you’ve communicated with. John is kind of an expert in that area. So he’s an expert in, I guess you’d call it a fenestration, right?
Will Hanke (23:30)
right. Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know about that app, but we’ll look that up and make sure to link that in the show.
Russ Elinson (23:30)
Yes, and he could explain it incredibly well.
Rory McNeil (23:34)
He
Russ Elinson (23:38)
Yeah, it’s a great tool. John actually found that app many, years ago, introduced it to me, and it’s been so useful in many regular design appointments with homeowners and also in commercial projects where perhaps the architect doesn’t think they’re going to have a sun problem, but they certainly do.
Will Hanke (23:54)
Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. So we talked a little bit about the maybe the economy slowing down. People are not making as many spending choices or not in our favor, at least right now. What would you advise as we’re going into Q3 for window treatment business owners really to put their focus on as we move through the rest of the year?
Rory McNeil (23:55)
Cool.
Russ Elinson (24:16)
I think continuing to diversify customer base, if they can at all. For us, what’s helped us, whether the ups and downs of the economy is just targeting different groups. So we work with regular homeowners. We’re heavily involved in the Costco window fashions program. We go after small commercial projects where we do work on schools, multifamily housing, like apartment buildings, small commercial tenant improvements.
So we’ve built a relationship with a number of general contractors, both on the commercial side and the custom home residential side. So just trying to build your business and diversify your customer base so it’s not all reliant on the phone ringing from Jane Doe that found you on Google or Facebook. Trade partnerships with interior designers or real estate agents, those are all good sources of leads that
continue to pay dividends for years to come.
Will Hanke (25:08)
Good points. Rory, anything on your radar that you see?
Rory McNeil (25:11)
Yeah, I I was going to ask Russ if he’s doing more email marketing to his existing customer base to try and mine the customers who are already familiar with you.
Russ Elinson (25:21)
The reality is we haven’t yet. That’s an area we’ve not done a very good job at. We are going to be moving more towards that. It’s part of our plan for third and fourth quarter of this year. We’ve done the old style of postcard marketing to our past customer base, and that’s always generated a good return, or at least a decent return. It’s not very expensive, obviously, to market to past customers. But certainly going after a more digital approach is better for a long-term perspective.
Rory McNeil (25:49)
The biggest mistake there is I see retailers just deluging their customers with weekly emails and it’s just too much. Once a month, once a quarter.
Russ Elinson (25:59)
Yeah, I think once a quarter is probably appropriate because those that email me regularly, I just delete them.
Rory McNeil (26:05)
Yeah.
Will Hanke (26:05)
Yeah, there’s something to be said for just the fact that they showed up in your inbox and you saw them again. If you’re just deleting them, they’re still staying top of mind to you, right? Yeah. So we recommend our clients once a month, even if they’re getting a slow open rate, that kind of thing. When that time comes and they’re thinking about it and that email pops up, yeah, I need to call these guys. So anyway, that’s good.
Russ Elinson (26:14)
Mmm. Fair point.
Will Hanke (26:31)
Postcards, the postcard thing, we’ve got a couple clients doing that now. And we’ve got a system where we can actually reverse engineer the visitors to their website and send postcards to just those people. And that works really well because they’ve already kind of raised their hand to engage with your business or maybe they didn’t engage, but they came to your website or clicked on an ad or something for some reason. So hitting them from a different angle.
is a nice little approach a couple days later. Yeah. Yeah. So that works really well. I wanted to, before we finish up, I wanted to talk about industry gatherings. Is there any industry gatherings that are on your radar next quarter or later this year?
Russ Elinson (26:58)
That’s a idea.
Rory McNeil (27:13)
This is a great question because there was a show in Anaheim last year, I think you were a speaker there Will, called the Sunshading Expo, and I begged Russ to attend the show for the first time in a while because it was in his home state and because he would go to all the… You did come, yes. Was it useful?
Russ Elinson (27:27)
I like it!
I thought so, yes.
Rory McNeil (27:33)
Yeah,
yeah. So industry gatherings are always going to be critical. so they just wish people to just go there, support them, look for the new, you can see what the trends are. You know, the the Anaheim show was probably 40 % exterior shading guys. mean, that says something.
Will Hanke (27:49)
Yeah, it was a good show. I’m speaking at the one this year again. That’s in November. ⁓ Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well. I’m speaking there. I’m going to be doing some live podcasting from there too as well. So that should be fun with all the the ambient noise in the background.
Rory McNeil (27:53)
Yeah, Indianapolis.
Yeah, because they’ve set up your area right in the middle of the show, right? So looks like it’ll be more busy rather than off to the side.
Will Hanke (28:12)
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’ll be a lot of fun. Any other events?
Rory McNeil (28:16)
Are there any other, there’s no other trade shows you go to, Rasa. I kind of like the building product shows because you learn more about how windows are changing. Like in Europe, we see a lot of tilt and turn windows. And in this country, you don’t see them so much in it, except in very specific markets. And in Europe, the manufacturers over there have developed special, usually cellular or pleated or roller shade systems that snap into the inside of the sill.
So as the window tilts forward, the shade is under tension, it stays with the window. Or if it tilts into the room, been the shade is under tension, bracketed around a frame. And that’s kind of a cool feature that I think will grow as windows are used better for ventilation and buildings, for smart buildings certainly, lead buildings.
Will Hanke (29:02)
Interesting. Do you think the Sun Shading Expo is good for exterior as well? I know it’s tied to the ATA show as well. So I know they have a lot of exterior vendors there.
Rory McNeil (29:09)
Yeah.
They have exterior vendors and so does the Sun Shading Expo side. So between the two, there’s quite a bit. I I think that’s one of the reasons why Sun Shading partnered with the Advanced Textiles Expo. So those were all exterior fabric companies and been it was logical that they became exterior shading companies. so when Russ was there in Anaheim, he probably saw on that side, a lot of guys who made stainless steel hardware that could be good for some solutions on exterior wire guide systems.
Will Hanke (29:17)
Right.
Rory McNeil (29:41)
Where are you gonna see that, you know?
Will Hanke (29:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that too, Rory. We’ll put a link down below. think I’m going to end up having some free tickets to give away to that as well. And it’s close to me. Indianapolis isn’t that far of a drive from St. Louis. So I get off cheap this time. No flights or anything. So that’s always nice, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Russ Elinson (29:43)
Yeah, it was a great experience going there.
Rory McNeil (30:00)
Yeah, okay. Always good.
Will Hanke (30:05)
For dealers that are listening, Russ, I’m really interested in how you guys approached things like networking for some of your designers, some of the local lead generation. How are they doing it now and how has that changed over the years?
Russ Elinson (30:20)
interesting. I mean, I think we’ve tried different things over the years. Fortunately, our business has been around for several decades. a lot of people find us just organically. We’ve done networking events in our showrooms to host architects before and had different vendors come in and present one after the other to get AIA credit for those architects. That’s been helpful. Let’s see.
Calling actually general contractors, just picking up the telephone the old fashioned way and asking if we could get onto their bidders lists for commercial projects and have a blueprint sent to us that we read and do commercial bidding off of. That’s been very helpful as well. We have a designer that’s joined AIA and participates in those type of networking functions and generated some leads from there.
And been also in our Phoenix based market, we actually do a TV show that’s tied to home improvement in Phoenix called Sonoran Living. And that’s been very effective too.
Will Hanke (31:17)
wow.
Wow, are you the star on that show?
Russ Elinson (31:24)
I am not, because I’m based out of our California location, but we have a few different design consultants that rotate some of their more interesting projects that get filmed for that show.
Rory McNeil (31:34)
Have you ever seen those, Will? Because I normally put them on Window Shading Pro Newsletter because they’re great and I’m just trying to encourage other retailers around the country to copy that style because it’s so useful, I think. It’s very smart.
Will Hanke (31:34)
brilliant.
Yeah, those are great.
Yeah.
Video.
Russ Elinson (31:48)
But I am headed to Phoenix
tomorrow and we’ll be on camera Tuesday. We’re doing a shoot in our showroom.
Will Hanke (31:52)
There you go. Nice,
nice. Video is huge for this industry. I think it’s a missed opportunity for a lot of dealers.
Rory McNeil (32:01)
I did
have a question for you, Russ, about construction companies talking about networking with construction companies to be able to get in on bids or projects that might be, you know, a couple of hundred cut down shades or stock horizontal. I find that when I’m looking at quotes around the country for those kinds of projects, that there’s about a point of maybe about twenty thousand dollars in value to the construction company that most other national
companies who are going after contracts find it too small to waste their time on getting installers into that marketplace. Do you find that there is kind of a sweet spot in terms of the size, the quantity of windows that you don’t get competition from national companies?
Russ Elinson (32:43)
Sure, I think that our strong, our area of success in commercial bidding as a window covering dealer is going after small to medium sized commercial projects. I would say generally we don’t bid projects that are above 300 windows. Sometimes the commercial projects are 25, sometimes they’re 75. Large apartment complexes and also it depends.
upon the geography, right, where you’re at. If you’re in a major metropolitan city, there might be several commercial window covering companies that that’s all they do. And perhaps that’s not the right customer for a residential window covering dealer. If you’re in a little bit more rural area or outside of a big city, those big commercial window covering dealers may not find it worth their time to travel up for a three or four or five hundred blind project. So I think it depends on your market.
We found our sweet spot in a part of our area and it’s that small to medium sized job that’s generally not exceeding 300 windows, but we have certainly tackled projects that are larger than that. It depends on the relationship you’ve built with that specific general contractor. From my perspective, I think it’s better for individual window covering dealers to build relationships with small regional, excuse me, small regional,
general contractors as opposed to large national general contractors, which there’s not much margin in it at that point for any of us.
Rory McNeil (34:09)
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a cool sweet spot,
Will Hanke (34:11)
Yeah,
really nice. So before we finish up, I just wanted to ask you guys one last thing. There might be a lot of business owners or people that are new to the industry listening to the podcast today. If you could give them advice, what would that be? Let’s start with Rory.
Rory McNeil (34:28)
Well, we used to be a preferred vendor to a budget blind group. And all the time we would see new franchisees who came from middle management, upper management in corporate jobs. And the most inspiring thing about these new people coming into the window covering business after just having spent $80,000 to buy a franchise is that they were sales machines. It was all about sales and tracking leads and tracking quotes and
Many of us who sort of grown up in the industry just, you know, do the work and expect all that comes behind, you know, everything just flows. That’s all changed in the last 10, 15 years where you can’t afford to not mine your own customer database and you can’t afford to stop doing marketing. I meet so many people who’ve been in the industry a lifetime that they just assume they’re getting word of mouth. Well, you know, your customers are dying, you know, there’s more people you’ve got to find.
Will Hanke (35:21)
Thank you, Russ. What about you?
Russ Elinson (35:21)
I’m
Rory McNeil (35:22)
That’s
Russ Elinson (35:22)
sure I think.
Rory McNeil (35:23)
an optimistic note, isn’t it?
Russ Elinson (35:26)
The advice that I would give takes us right back to a conversation we had a few minutes ago, which is investing in technology, investing in a laser measure that Rory mentioned, and investing in quoting software so you can quote those projects in the home. Don’t try to do it by hand. You’ll drive yourself crazy. You’ll fall asleep on your price books at night. And you’re going to serve your customers and yourself better by investing in quoting software.
Will Hanke (35:50)
Awesome,
Rory McNeil (35:50)
On that note,
there’s something like four or five software companies exhibiting in the sun shading experts. So they’re from all over the world.
Will Hanke (35:57)
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your insight today. Incredible conversation. Before we wrap up, Rory, I just wanted you to give us the one minute elevator pitch about the Windows Shading Pro newsletter.
Rory McNeil (36:09)
Oh,
I can maybe do 30 seconds. So I created Windows Shading Pro as a newsletter, a free newsletter for the industry in maybe 94, 95, long time ago. And there’s about a little over 3000 window covering professionals subscribed to it. And I just write articles that I think are or I find articles from all over the world and been editorialize them as to how I think they relate to the window covering business.
Will Hanke (36:12)
Okay.
Awesome. We will put a link in the show notes for your to sign up for your newsletter as well. Appreciate you doing that, by the way. That’s great. So thank you guys for being on today. I definitely appreciate your time. I know that you’re both very busy. Thank you also for listening to the podcast today. If you got one idea or a useful strategy out of this conversation, please do us a favor and send it to a friend in the trade. And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, all the different socials.
And thank you so much for listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Rory and Russ, thank you guys. I really appreciate it.
Russ Elinson (37:12)
Thank
Rory McNeil (37:12)
Thanks for your
Russ Elinson (37:12)
you.
Rory McNeil (37:12)
time. Nice chatting.
View all episodes
By Window Treatment Marketing Pros
5
11 ratings
In this episode of Marketing Panes, host Will Hanke sits down with Russ Elinson of Arjay’s Window Fashions and Rory McNeil of Shading and Automation Solutions to unpack what’s really happening in the window treatment world as we head into Q3 2025. It’s not all bad news despite economic headwinds, dealers are finding smart, strategic ways to stay profitable. From industry trends to overlooked tools and lead sources, this episode offers real-world insights for professionals navigating a shifting landscape.
Guest Profile: Russ Elinson
Arjay’s Window Fashions
Serves as Principal of Arjay’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Inc. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry.
Rory McNeil
WindowShading.Pro
Seasoned leader in the window coverings industry and founder of WindowShading.Pro. With decades of experience, from launching Eclipse Blinds in the U.S. to co-founding TechStyles, He now heads Shading & Automation Solutions (SAS), continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation.
The Reality of “Survival Mode” in 2025
Many window treatment dealers are adjusting expectations this year, shifting from aggressive growth to business stability. As consumer spending softens and buyers delay home upgrades, staying flat is considered a success. Russ describes it as “flat is a win,” and this mindset is helping dealers focus on internal efficiencies, consistent lead flow, and retaining talent.
Why This Isn’t a Bad Thing
Survival mode pushes dealers to double down on what works. From hiring in-house installers to improving scheduling control, it’s about building a resilient, self-reliant business that can weather slow quarters and bounce back stronger.
Import Duties and Industry Shake-Ups
One major challenge in Q1 and Q2 of 2025 was the rapid increase in import tariffs—jumping from 10% to 50% without warning. This has created a cashflow crisis for many fabricators, especially those with goods already in transit.
Who’s Gaining an Edge?
Surprisingly, manufacturers based in Mexico or sourcing outside China are gaining traction. They can avoid steep U.S. duties while still offering competitive pricing, giving them an advantage in a tight market. Domestic fabricators are also seeing opportunities, especially if they can offer shorter lead times and stable pricing.
The Tech Tools Closing More Sales
Technology is playing a big role in helping dealers stand out and close faster. One standout mentioned in the episode is Sunseeker, a sun-tracking app used to visualize how sunlight moves through a room. It’s a powerful tool for convincing skeptical homeowners that window treatments aren’t just a luxury—they’re protection for their floors and furniture.
Automating Quotes and Simplifying Installs
Top dealers are using laser measuring tools and quoting software like Solatech to speed up the sales process, reduce errors, and close deals on the spot. Even simple app control for motorized shades is becoming the norm, with clients expecting remote or phone-based operation.
More Than Just Homeowners: Diversifying Your Lead Sources
With residential leads slowing down, forward-thinking dealers are expanding into commercial work, partnerships, and media opportunities.
Russ’s Lead Generation Advice
Show Notes
A solar tracking app used during consultations to show sun path and help clients understand the value of solar protection and proper shading.
Curated by Rory McNeil, this free newsletter has been around since the 1990s and provides industry updates, product highlights, and business insights.
Sign up here: Windows Shading Pro Newsletter
Other Notes/Links:
pssst…. want to be a guest on the show?
Listen to other episodes
Arjay’s Window Fashions: Visit Website
WindowShading.Pro: Visit Website
Video
https://youtu.be/nW9WEe0xOaA?feature=shared
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TRANSCRIPT
Will Hanke (00:00)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. My name is Will Hanke. Today is a special episode. We’ve got not one, but two industry leaders joining us and we want to talk about Q3, which is just around the corner.
And maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Q2 as well and see how well it went. But we’ve got some great guests today. So Russ Elinson serves as the principal of Arjays’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Incorporated. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry. And Rory McNeil, who’s been with us before, he’s a seasoned leader in the window coverings industry.
And founder of Windows Shading Pro. With decades of experience from launching Eclipse blinds in the US to co-founding TechStyles, he now heads Shading and Automation Solutions, or SAS, continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation. Gentlemen, it’s fantastic to have you here.
Rory McNeil (01:13)
Thanks for having me.
Russ Elinson (01:13)
Thanks for having us.
Will Hanke (01:15)
Appreciate it. So let’s jump in. want to I don’t want to spend too much time bantering back and forth, but let’s talk about what pulled you into the industry. Maybe we’ll start with Russ. What kind of pulled you in? Was it love at first sight or was it more of a slow burn?
Russ Elinson (01:30)
Well, my situation is perhaps a little different. I was born into the industry, so that could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I grew up in a window covering manufacturing business. So from five years old, running around a warehouse and assembling brackets and sweeping floors and counting rolls of fabric. I never thought I would wind up in the industry. Coming out of school, wound up in the family business.
I was there for 10 years and been moved on into my own business venture on the retail side of the business that was 14 years ago.
Will Hanke (02:03)
Okay. long time ago. Rory, what about yourself?
Rory McNeil (02:03)
Long time ago.
Russ Elinson (02:06)
To be 45 and have 25 years plus experience in the industry full time is a lot.
Will Hanke (02:13)
You
Rory McNeil (02:14)
The wild thing is Russ that back when Russ was running around the floors in that fabricator, I was visiting them from the UK. That goes back a long way. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (02:23)
well
Will Hanke (02:25)
You’re dating.
Russ Elinson (02:26)
So needless to say, Rory and I have known each other a long time.
Will Hanke (02:29)
Yeah, yeah. Rory, what kind of pulled you into the industry first?
Rory McNeil (02:33)
Nepotism just like Russ. Yeah, my father and uncle had started a window covering business in the UK. That was called Apollo Blinds was first this retail franchise operation and been Eclipse Blinds applied the franchisees with Apollo branded product. And they also supplied every other independent fabricator of blinds in the UK. And been I got involved in the company in the mid 80s to start the export department because we we’d grown so much in the UK.
Will Hanke (02:35)
Okay.
Rory McNeil (03:02)
Only 65 million people to work with, you it’s not a big market. And so within about five years, we were selling to 36 countries around the world. A lot of fun.
Will Hanke (03:11)
Yeah, wow, what a journey that’s been. Thanks for sharing that. Russ, I know you guys, Arjays’s is doing quite well in the Southwest, I guess is where you guys are at. What was the point when you thought, know, okay, we’re not just surviving, we’re leading?
Russ Elinson (03:28)
I think the big change happened once we started hiring full-time installation technicians. Stop relying for the most part on subcontractors and just building a full team that would be with the company for a long time. That allows us to pivot our installation team almost daily if we need to when schedules are behind or ahead of schedule, just to control our own destiny in that regard.
Will Hanke (03:50)
Love that there is definitely something to be said about an entrepreneur that has to, you when you get to that point where you start hiring and you’re like, wow, this is incredible. It’s scary at first, but been it’s also quite freeing, you know.
Russ Elinson (04:01)
Yes, for sure.
Rory McNeil (04:04)
Will, do you notice that with some of the more successful retailers that they do employ their own installers? Because it’s quite important.
Will Hanke (04:13)
Yeah, think for most clients, think early on, they’re the ones running sales and installs. And finding installers a little bit tougher than it has been in the past. But yeah, absolutely. If they can start to find their own installers or somebody that’s moonlighting maybe two or three different window treatment companies in the same city, that seems to work out well.
Rory McNeil (04:33)
Russ, how have you been able to find new installers? Do you train them from within?
Russ Elinson (04:39)
It’s a kind of a mixed bag. Some of them we found with just construction experience and brought them on and been they’ve trained from a more master seasoned installer. Others we’ve been fortunate that as our businesses have grown in each of the markets, it’s been a good source for recruiting where people just wanted to come work for our company because they’ve heard our reputation of building a team and the cool projects that we were going after and the continual flow of work that’s been happening with our company.
So it’s definitely a mixture.
Will Hanke (05:08)
That’s nice. Always nice when you have people coming to you and raising their hand versus you having to go find them, right? Yeah, that’s fantastic. So I want to talk about 2025, been obviously another strange year in the window treatment world. What do you guys think is driving growth right now? Let’s start with Rory.
Russ Elinson (05:13)
It does happen.
Rory McNeil (05:27)
Well, I would say that most retailers in the marketplace and most fabricators are just hanging on for dear life while they’re watching people pause their decision making and hold on to their earnings and the importance of pause of non-essential purchases. People can put off window covering purchases if they think that there’s trouble ahead. And we’ve been looking at six months worth of trouble.
Will Hanke (05:52)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (05:53)
I have to say I agree. That’s what we found. I don’t know that this has been a year of growth. It’s more a year of being stable, hopefully, or minimizing your decline. ⁓ Certainly, the fear of tariffs had a little bit of a spike towards the end of the first quarter, where everyone rushed to buy beforehand. But once the tariffs hit and it impacted so many businesses in our industry, whether or not price increases moved down the
Will Hanke (06:03)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (06:19)
The supply chain homeowner’s mentality is like, hey, I’m going to be paying too much. I better pause for a second as Roy was saying and wait. I think it’s flat is a win for any dealer.
Will Hanke (06:34)
Definitely same thing we’re seeing from the marketing side. A lot of our clients had a pretty good Q1, but it’s been, I don’t know about downhill, but it’s definitely been trending not as uphill, I guess would be a good way to say it.
Rory McNeil (06:49)
Yeah, there was definitely
Russ Elinson (06:49)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (06:50)
A lot of business optimism in Q1, but that’s been tempered a little bit by just not knowing what’s going to happen next. mean, I know fabricators who have a container on the ocean with, you know, $100,000 worth of aluminum in it. And at one point they knew that there was 10 % duty and now there’s 50 % duty. So that’s the difference between paying $10,000 and $50,000. It’s a cashflow nightmare.
Will Hanke (07:17)
Yeah, that’s interesting to hear about it like that, but definitely makes sense. So do you think it’s also affecting manufacturers like Made in the USA, where they kind of say, don’t have to pay tariffs, but I guess they have to pay on the actual hard products?
Rory McNeil (07:33)
Russ?
Russ Elinson (07:34)
Well, I I think they’re paying the tariff to some degree on components, right? Very limited amount of actual window covering components that go into the finished product actually come from the U.S., right? So there’s some level of tariff. think some of the smaller fabricators that build in the U.S. have held off perhaps too long, raising pricing from their perspective, thinking that that would generate more market share growth for them. I don’t know whether that’s happened or not. We’ve seen some modest price increases with domestic fabricators. It’s been more extreme with those that are manufacturing in overseas or across the border in Mexico, for sure.
Rory McNeil (08:11)
Yeah. And Will, what’s interesting is that if you’re a manufacturer like Springs or Hunter in Mexico, been you’re able to bring in goods to Mexico with very minimal duties and been sell into the U.S. without the same duties that U.S. manufacturers have to pay on fabrics and aluminum coming from other countries. So it gives Mexican manufacturing an advantage over U.S. manufacturing, which is kind of, unfortunately, the opposite of what was was hoped to have been created.
Will Hanke (08:40)
Yeah, we’ve also seen an increase in phone calls from manufacturers in the marketing world because suddenly they’re thinking they have an advantage that they need to get out in front of dealers. know, hey, by the way, we make this right down the road from you. You should buy it from us.
Rory McNeil (08:58)
Yeah. Well, Russ knows as well as anybody else that there’s certain extruders of profiles for shutters that manufacture in Taiwan and not in China. And that gives them a big advantage in the market until there’s a Chinese tariff deal reached, which apparently is imminent for the last six months.
Will Hanke (09:15)
Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (09:17)
And been it’ll get moved to another country, which will be hit with that same thing and another and another. So the cycle continues, unfortunately.
Will Hanke (09:25)
Yes, it does. Let’s talk about emerging trends. What are you guys seeing in the window treatment industry in the last couple of months? And how can the listeners kind of start to align their businesses to stay competitive?
Russ Elinson (09:39)
From our perspective, I think there’s a growth of people interested in both exterior product and also a continued growth in automation, motorized projects. But something that simple app control from their phone, it doesn’t have to be tied into a third party automation system. It doesn’t have to be in a huge mansion. Just regular homeowners are looking for convenience and timer scheduling. Certainly outdoor living spaces is a big area of growth in our part of the country in Southern California and the Phoenix market where we service. retractable awnings, retractable exterior screens, that’s an area of growth for us, certainly.
Rory McNeil (10:18)
Will, you deal with lot of retailers who are dabbling with exterior shading and awnings. It’s not always that easy to see a retailer who’s typically in the interior window covering business make the transition into exterior. But the best retailers understand that that’s the business they’re in. They’re in the business of shading all of the areas of the home inside and out. It’s just that they have to go to seminars, they have to train their installers, they have to do the work that’s required to train staff.
And Russ has been doing that at least for 10 years. When’s the first time you sold a exterior shading job, Russ? Yeah.
Russ Elinson (10:49)
Years. that’s probably 10 years ago.
Will Hanke (10:54)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I’d say two or three years ago, we probably had less than 10 % of our clients that did exterior stuff. And now that number is probably creeping up towards 30%, 35%. Yeah, they’re all looking at the exterior stuff. What I hear is it’s a different breed of installer that they have to find. So that starts almost all the way over, finding those kinds of installers as well.
It’s definitely an uphill battle for some of these clients, but a decent amount of them have started to transition.
Russ Elinson (11:25)
The nice thing with exterior sales is the average invoice is going to be higher typically than the average interior window covering invoice.
Will Hanke (11:32)
Right, for sure. Yeah. On the marketing side, getting those leads is not as difficult or not more difficult than getting a window treatment lead. But like you said, the average ticket value is a lot higher.
That’s really nice. Yeah. Is there is there any since we’re talking a little bit about marketing, is there any marketing thing that you’ve done, Russ, maybe that has completely flopped?
Russ Elinson (11:56)
Yelp from many years ago, that was a terrible flop. ⁓ I think that company is extortionist. So, I mean, that’s pretty well known, but that was definitely a failure years back.
Will Hanke (12:01)
Okay.
It’s interesting you say that because you’re in California. The one thing that I’ve learned is Californians love Yelp for some reason. Most of the rest of the US doesn’t, but it seems like our California clients seem to want to advertise on there and they use that. Like we, we don’t even think I have Yelp on my phone. But interesting that you say that. I have heard people call it mafia style tactics on Yelp.
Russ Elinson (12:38)
for sure.
Will Hanke (12:38)
And they’ve also been kicked out of Google a couple times because of those unscrupulous tactics.
Rory McNeil (12:43)
Yeah,
daughter went to UC Davis and went to school with a guy who became a sales rep in Yelp. the stories were pretty horrific. How they incentivize the sales guys, know, basically extortionist Russ is talking about, you know, we have Arjay’s on our system and they’re getting all the leads should be you should be paying into our system. You know, that’s just fear and fear and
What was the word? Fear? forget what the acronym is, just FEE? Yeah, something like that. FOMO? Yeah. Pretend FOMO. Yeah.
Will Hanke (13:08)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (13:12)
We are missing out.
Will Hanke (13:15)
Yeah.
I also spoke to a guy the other day who was using or was spending money on Yelp. I think the minimum seven fifty a month. In the meantime, he got a one star review on Yelp and now he’s afraid to stop spending the money because that one star review is being suppressed because he’s an advertiser there. And so he was he was spending the seven fifty for the one star not to show up.
Rory McNeil (13:37)
Okay.
Russ Elinson (13:42)
What’s so scary about all of that is that people do look at Yelp and our ratings on Yelp are lower because they hide any five-star review if you’re not advertising with them. So our design consultants, when they’re in the home, will try to get ahead of that and direct the homeowners to look at our Google reviews, which your company, has been so instrumental over the last year in helping us grow that review base ⁓ and seeing all the five-star reviews that come out of Google hopefully wash out.
Will Hanke (14:05)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (14:11)
Yelp and can be explained away. That’s a business that only generates money when you’re paying for advertising.
Rory McNeil (14:17)
Yeah, I think it’s clear that Google’s gonna eat their lunch on restaurants and businesses reviews for a long time to come.
Will Hanke (14:26)
Yeah, yeah. So as we look at Q3 and maybe even into Q4, are there any tech related shift things that business owners should be prepared for? Whether that’s product availability, pricing, customer demand, what do you guys see in there?
Rory McNeil (14:42)
Russ, do you see that more of your customers want their window coverings wired into the home through a central control system or are they still kind of looking at them as different motorized solutions, smart home solutions?
Russ Elinson (14:56)
I think it’s different motorized solutions. The challenge becomes most people that have existing homes aren’t going to be willing to have an electrician rip open their walls to pull wiring. Does it happen? Sure. Did I do it at my house? Yes, because I didn’t want to deal with charging batteries. But for the most part, I think that’s not the case. So an existing home is getting a retrofit rechargeable battery solution and new construction. That’s when you have the opportunity to get in and recommend wiring.
Rory McNeil (15:25)
Do you ever have any homeowners who say to you, I’m trying to standardize around matter? Are you guys offering matter compatible motors?
Russ Elinson (15:32)
Matter actually has not come up at all with any homeowners. Zigbee barely has come up with any homeowners. I think the homeowners mentality generally is, can I have a remote? Can I have a switch on the wall? Can I operate it from my phone? And beyond that, they haven’t thought much further. Occasionally you’ll have an engineer that’s done some research and requests a Z-Wave system or a Zigbee system. But in general, it’s
I just want to operate it from my phone and a remote.
Will Hanke (16:01)
I’ll say that would be me. I wouldn’t want to be able to have Alexa do it all for me just by me raising my right hand or something, right?
Russ Elinson (16:08)
Yeah,
Rory McNeil (16:09)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (16:09)
I mean, it’s definitely a mixture for sure. We’ll see.
Rory McNeil (16:12)
And how many go ahead, we’ll try.
Will Hanke (16:12)
Russ,
you see a difference in the type of customer that’s asking for those things, maybe like an age difference?
Russ Elinson (16:20)
I think people that like automated, I should say motorized shades may tend to be those with more discretionary income, perhaps more on the retirement end or later in their career path, where they just don’t want to walk over and pull chains. They’ve lived in homes where manual shades just stay down most of the time. There is a trend though in I would say millennial and end of generation X where they’re more comfortable with automation.
and having an app control. And so to them, it becomes less about having a remote and more about being able to control it from their phone and being able to set scenes or timer scheduled events. I think that’s important to the couples that are getting closer towards retirement or are there. Maybe the app control is not so important, but just having the ability to operate the shade with a button as opposed to pulling the chain.
Rory McNeil (17:09)
What about periodic or scheduled opening and closings? Do most of your installers set up those schedules for consumers, Russ, when you do installation?
Russ Elinson (17:19)
We don’t generally set them up because we found that they will keep our installers there for hours after the installation has happened. So they’ll pair the motors to the app system. Generally, we’re using Bond for most of our RTS controls. We’ll show them how to operate the shades, how to set up a scene, how to set up a schedule, perhaps one, and been that’s it. And there’s plenty of YouTube videos that walk them through that process if they struggle.
Will Hanke (17:46)
yet.
Russ Elinson (17:46)
We’ve also had to recommend to our design consultants to perhaps not offer app control to those homeowners they can see up front or perhaps not technologically savvy.
Rory McNeil (17:57)
Yeah, makes sense.
Will Hanke (17:59)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. Are there any tech tools on the sales side that you guys think dealers should be using right now?
Russ Elinson (18:08)
I mean, I think there’s a movement of dealers towards automated quoting systems. There’s several obviously out there, Solitech being one and a few others using those type of automated systems in the home to quote while you’re there, minimizes mistakes. I think anyone who’s not using it or something like that is missing out for sure. The days of pricing jobs by hand out of a giant product reference guide should have long been terminated. So for anyone getting into the industry or someone who’s been in the industry a long time but isn’t using one of those software packages, I would highly recommend researching which one would be right for their business.
Rory McNeil (18:49)
Russ, do you see anybody using like disto measuring tools with Bluetooth capability? Do any of your design consultants do that?
Will Hanke (18:49)
Agreed.
Russ Elinson (18:57)
I think there are some, I mean, we have laser measures for all of our design consultants. We choose not to integrate it directly into the quoting software. Things change while you’re in discussion with the homeowner. So I’d much rather walk in with a yellow legal pad, take my notes, I shoot my measurements with a laser, those that are inside mount at least, and been record everything. So that way I have a firm idea if something changes from inside mount to outside mount, or it goes from a cellular shade to,
maybe a natural shade or something where the height measurement matters more, just so you have a clear written idea of what you measured. It’s my preference.
Rory McNeil (19:33)
Do think it makes
a difference if you’re the only retailer calling on this customer who’s using laser measures and everybody else is in there with the foldable bendable tape measures?
Russ Elinson (19:45)
I’m sure there’s some positive response that you get out of it. Wow, what’s that? I’ve never seen one before. And been we just explain how precision measuring is something that’s a part of our business model.
Will Hanke (19:56)
So we had, we actually wanted to get some windows done. have some faux wood blinds that we’ve had since we moved in 15, 16 years ago. So we actually had a window treatment dealer out to our home this week. And Russ, you’re spot on because my wife got involved and we went from roller shades to just regular pull down shades to shutters all in the matter of 20 minutes. And the guy visiting, that’s basically, he just wrote everything down because she was
Russ Elinson (20:21)
Yep.
Will Hanke (20:26)
going through all these different decisions, obviously guided her in a direction. And once we decided, been he popped open his, I guess he maybe had an iPad with a keyboard on it or something, plugged everything in and I mean, took our credit card and we were done. It was fantastic.
Russ Elinson (20:42)
Yeah, and measuring for a faux wood blind is very different than measuring for a shutter. There’s more critical measurements at many different points, so that’s why I like writing things down.
Will Hanke (20:52)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (20:52)
From a sales standpoint, the quoting software you’re talking about Russ, if you’re in the home and you’re not able to close the sale while you’re in the home, been you’ve increased your chances of losing the sale.
Russ Elinson (21:05)
Absolutely.
Will Hanke (21:07)
Yeah. On the other side of this, is there any tech trend or product that you guys think that has been overhyped and not really delivering the ROI?
Rory McNeil (21:15)
Russ, do you want to handle that?
Russ Elinson (21:17)
I don’t know of one specifically that I’m thinking of. there something that comes to mind for you, Rory?
Rory McNeil (21:23)
There was something earlier, but now I can’t remember. I’ll come back to that. That’s what happens when you get too old, I guess.
Will Hanke (21:26)
no.
Russ Elinson (21:30)
I mean, just on perhaps one end, I think there’s a large marketing effort towards Zigbee automation motors and it’s a very good system. I agree. I don’t think it’s applicable at this time for the typical homeowner. I think what’s tried and true with RTS that’s been out for 20 plus years still works really well. Certainly we’re going to all be pivoting towards a Zigbee or matter or some solution as it’s related to that.
But from my perspective, I’m gonna wait a little bit, continue with what works for us and see how the market hashes itself out technologically wise and what communication protocol wins over the next few years.
Rory McNeil (22:09)
Russ, do you have any design consultants who use any kind of azimuth solar range or solar movement apps to show how the light changes in the house?
Russ Elinson (22:19)
I mean, I do for sure and a couple of hours do there’s a wonderful app called Sunseeker. I don’t remember what yeah, I don’t remember what that one costs at the time. Maybe it’s $15 or something. But it’s always interesting when you get a husband and wife that are arguing over whether or not they should put shades in a certain room and you look down at their beautiful flooring and realize that you’re south facing or west facing and the amount of sun that’s going to come through and they say
Rory McNeil (22:26)
Yeah, I have it.
Russ Elinson (22:47)
No, no, no, there’s no sun that comes through here. And been you pull out an app and you show them in 3D the path of the sun during the summer and winter, winter when it’s lowest and can penetrate in the deepest or summer when it’s higher and they don’t notice it as much. And been quickly the attitude changes of, they start thinking about how much it’s gonna cost to refinish that wood floor and the shades quickly become back on the table.
Rory McNeil (23:11)
Yeah, curiously, well, Lutron basically created an app around that kind of technology and guys like Russ’s business partner, John Edwards, who you’ve communicated with. John is kind of an expert in that area. So he’s an expert in, I guess you’d call it a fenestration, right?
Will Hanke (23:30)
right. Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know about that app, but we’ll look that up and make sure to link that in the show.
Russ Elinson (23:30)
Yes, and he could explain it incredibly well.
Rory McNeil (23:34)
He
Russ Elinson (23:38)
Yeah, it’s a great tool. John actually found that app many, years ago, introduced it to me, and it’s been so useful in many regular design appointments with homeowners and also in commercial projects where perhaps the architect doesn’t think they’re going to have a sun problem, but they certainly do.
Will Hanke (23:54)
Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. So we talked a little bit about the maybe the economy slowing down. People are not making as many spending choices or not in our favor, at least right now. What would you advise as we’re going into Q3 for window treatment business owners really to put their focus on as we move through the rest of the year?
Rory McNeil (23:55)
Cool.
Russ Elinson (24:16)
I think continuing to diversify customer base, if they can at all. For us, what’s helped us, whether the ups and downs of the economy is just targeting different groups. So we work with regular homeowners. We’re heavily involved in the Costco window fashions program. We go after small commercial projects where we do work on schools, multifamily housing, like apartment buildings, small commercial tenant improvements.
So we’ve built a relationship with a number of general contractors, both on the commercial side and the custom home residential side. So just trying to build your business and diversify your customer base so it’s not all reliant on the phone ringing from Jane Doe that found you on Google or Facebook. Trade partnerships with interior designers or real estate agents, those are all good sources of leads that
continue to pay dividends for years to come.
Will Hanke (25:08)
Good points. Rory, anything on your radar that you see?
Rory McNeil (25:11)
Yeah, I I was going to ask Russ if he’s doing more email marketing to his existing customer base to try and mine the customers who are already familiar with you.
Russ Elinson (25:21)
The reality is we haven’t yet. That’s an area we’ve not done a very good job at. We are going to be moving more towards that. It’s part of our plan for third and fourth quarter of this year. We’ve done the old style of postcard marketing to our past customer base, and that’s always generated a good return, or at least a decent return. It’s not very expensive, obviously, to market to past customers. But certainly going after a more digital approach is better for a long-term perspective.
Rory McNeil (25:49)
The biggest mistake there is I see retailers just deluging their customers with weekly emails and it’s just too much. Once a month, once a quarter.
Russ Elinson (25:59)
Yeah, I think once a quarter is probably appropriate because those that email me regularly, I just delete them.
Rory McNeil (26:05)
Yeah.
Will Hanke (26:05)
Yeah, there’s something to be said for just the fact that they showed up in your inbox and you saw them again. If you’re just deleting them, they’re still staying top of mind to you, right? Yeah. So we recommend our clients once a month, even if they’re getting a slow open rate, that kind of thing. When that time comes and they’re thinking about it and that email pops up, yeah, I need to call these guys. So anyway, that’s good.
Russ Elinson (26:14)
Mmm. Fair point.
Will Hanke (26:31)
Postcards, the postcard thing, we’ve got a couple clients doing that now. And we’ve got a system where we can actually reverse engineer the visitors to their website and send postcards to just those people. And that works really well because they’ve already kind of raised their hand to engage with your business or maybe they didn’t engage, but they came to your website or clicked on an ad or something for some reason. So hitting them from a different angle.
is a nice little approach a couple days later. Yeah. Yeah. So that works really well. I wanted to, before we finish up, I wanted to talk about industry gatherings. Is there any industry gatherings that are on your radar next quarter or later this year?
Russ Elinson (26:58)
That’s a idea.
Rory McNeil (27:13)
This is a great question because there was a show in Anaheim last year, I think you were a speaker there Will, called the Sunshading Expo, and I begged Russ to attend the show for the first time in a while because it was in his home state and because he would go to all the… You did come, yes. Was it useful?
Russ Elinson (27:27)
I like it!
I thought so, yes.
Rory McNeil (27:33)
Yeah,
yeah. So industry gatherings are always going to be critical. so they just wish people to just go there, support them, look for the new, you can see what the trends are. You know, the the Anaheim show was probably 40 % exterior shading guys. mean, that says something.
Will Hanke (27:49)
Yeah, it was a good show. I’m speaking at the one this year again. That’s in November. ⁓ Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well. I’m speaking there. I’m going to be doing some live podcasting from there too as well. So that should be fun with all the the ambient noise in the background.
Rory McNeil (27:53)
Yeah, Indianapolis.
Yeah, because they’ve set up your area right in the middle of the show, right? So looks like it’ll be more busy rather than off to the side.
Will Hanke (28:12)
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’ll be a lot of fun. Any other events?
Rory McNeil (28:16)
Are there any other, there’s no other trade shows you go to, Rasa. I kind of like the building product shows because you learn more about how windows are changing. Like in Europe, we see a lot of tilt and turn windows. And in this country, you don’t see them so much in it, except in very specific markets. And in Europe, the manufacturers over there have developed special, usually cellular or pleated or roller shade systems that snap into the inside of the sill.
So as the window tilts forward, the shade is under tension, it stays with the window. Or if it tilts into the room, been the shade is under tension, bracketed around a frame. And that’s kind of a cool feature that I think will grow as windows are used better for ventilation and buildings, for smart buildings certainly, lead buildings.
Will Hanke (29:02)
Interesting. Do you think the Sun Shading Expo is good for exterior as well? I know it’s tied to the ATA show as well. So I know they have a lot of exterior vendors there.
Rory McNeil (29:09)
Yeah.
They have exterior vendors and so does the Sun Shading Expo side. So between the two, there’s quite a bit. I I think that’s one of the reasons why Sun Shading partnered with the Advanced Textiles Expo. So those were all exterior fabric companies and been it was logical that they became exterior shading companies. so when Russ was there in Anaheim, he probably saw on that side, a lot of guys who made stainless steel hardware that could be good for some solutions on exterior wire guide systems.
Will Hanke (29:17)
Right.
Rory McNeil (29:41)
Where are you gonna see that, you know?
Will Hanke (29:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that too, Rory. We’ll put a link down below. think I’m going to end up having some free tickets to give away to that as well. And it’s close to me. Indianapolis isn’t that far of a drive from St. Louis. So I get off cheap this time. No flights or anything. So that’s always nice, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Russ Elinson (29:43)
Yeah, it was a great experience going there.
Rory McNeil (30:00)
Yeah, okay. Always good.
Will Hanke (30:05)
For dealers that are listening, Russ, I’m really interested in how you guys approached things like networking for some of your designers, some of the local lead generation. How are they doing it now and how has that changed over the years?
Russ Elinson (30:20)
interesting. I mean, I think we’ve tried different things over the years. Fortunately, our business has been around for several decades. a lot of people find us just organically. We’ve done networking events in our showrooms to host architects before and had different vendors come in and present one after the other to get AIA credit for those architects. That’s been helpful. Let’s see.
Calling actually general contractors, just picking up the telephone the old fashioned way and asking if we could get onto their bidders lists for commercial projects and have a blueprint sent to us that we read and do commercial bidding off of. That’s been very helpful as well. We have a designer that’s joined AIA and participates in those type of networking functions and generated some leads from there.
And been also in our Phoenix based market, we actually do a TV show that’s tied to home improvement in Phoenix called Sonoran Living. And that’s been very effective too.
Will Hanke (31:17)
wow.
Wow, are you the star on that show?
Russ Elinson (31:24)
I am not, because I’m based out of our California location, but we have a few different design consultants that rotate some of their more interesting projects that get filmed for that show.
Rory McNeil (31:34)
Have you ever seen those, Will? Because I normally put them on Window Shading Pro Newsletter because they’re great and I’m just trying to encourage other retailers around the country to copy that style because it’s so useful, I think. It’s very smart.
Will Hanke (31:34)
brilliant.
Yeah, those are great.
Yeah.
Video.
Russ Elinson (31:48)
But I am headed to Phoenix
tomorrow and we’ll be on camera Tuesday. We’re doing a shoot in our showroom.
Will Hanke (31:52)
There you go. Nice,
nice. Video is huge for this industry. I think it’s a missed opportunity for a lot of dealers.
Rory McNeil (32:01)
I did
have a question for you, Russ, about construction companies talking about networking with construction companies to be able to get in on bids or projects that might be, you know, a couple of hundred cut down shades or stock horizontal. I find that when I’m looking at quotes around the country for those kinds of projects, that there’s about a point of maybe about twenty thousand dollars in value to the construction company that most other national
companies who are going after contracts find it too small to waste their time on getting installers into that marketplace. Do you find that there is kind of a sweet spot in terms of the size, the quantity of windows that you don’t get competition from national companies?
Russ Elinson (32:43)
Sure, I think that our strong, our area of success in commercial bidding as a window covering dealer is going after small to medium sized commercial projects. I would say generally we don’t bid projects that are above 300 windows. Sometimes the commercial projects are 25, sometimes they’re 75. Large apartment complexes and also it depends.
upon the geography, right, where you’re at. If you’re in a major metropolitan city, there might be several commercial window covering companies that that’s all they do. And perhaps that’s not the right customer for a residential window covering dealer. If you’re in a little bit more rural area or outside of a big city, those big commercial window covering dealers may not find it worth their time to travel up for a three or four or five hundred blind project. So I think it depends on your market.
We found our sweet spot in a part of our area and it’s that small to medium sized job that’s generally not exceeding 300 windows, but we have certainly tackled projects that are larger than that. It depends on the relationship you’ve built with that specific general contractor. From my perspective, I think it’s better for individual window covering dealers to build relationships with small regional, excuse me, small regional,
general contractors as opposed to large national general contractors, which there’s not much margin in it at that point for any of us.
Rory McNeil (34:09)
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a cool sweet spot,
Will Hanke (34:11)
Yeah,
really nice. So before we finish up, I just wanted to ask you guys one last thing. There might be a lot of business owners or people that are new to the industry listening to the podcast today. If you could give them advice, what would that be? Let’s start with Rory.
Rory McNeil (34:28)
Well, we used to be a preferred vendor to a budget blind group. And all the time we would see new franchisees who came from middle management, upper management in corporate jobs. And the most inspiring thing about these new people coming into the window covering business after just having spent $80,000 to buy a franchise is that they were sales machines. It was all about sales and tracking leads and tracking quotes and
Many of us who sort of grown up in the industry just, you know, do the work and expect all that comes behind, you know, everything just flows. That’s all changed in the last 10, 15 years where you can’t afford to not mine your own customer database and you can’t afford to stop doing marketing. I meet so many people who’ve been in the industry a lifetime that they just assume they’re getting word of mouth. Well, you know, your customers are dying, you know, there’s more people you’ve got to find.
Will Hanke (35:21)
Thank you, Russ. What about you?
Russ Elinson (35:21)
I’m
Rory McNeil (35:22)
That’s
Russ Elinson (35:22)
sure I think.
Rory McNeil (35:23)
an optimistic note, isn’t it?
Russ Elinson (35:26)
The advice that I would give takes us right back to a conversation we had a few minutes ago, which is investing in technology, investing in a laser measure that Rory mentioned, and investing in quoting software so you can quote those projects in the home. Don’t try to do it by hand. You’ll drive yourself crazy. You’ll fall asleep on your price books at night. And you’re going to serve your customers and yourself better by investing in quoting software.
Will Hanke (35:50)
Awesome,
Rory McNeil (35:50)
On that note,
there’s something like four or five software companies exhibiting in the sun shading experts. So they’re from all over the world.
Will Hanke (35:57)
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your insight today. Incredible conversation. Before we wrap up, Rory, I just wanted you to give us the one minute elevator pitch about the Windows Shading Pro newsletter.
Rory McNeil (36:09)
Oh,
I can maybe do 30 seconds. So I created Windows Shading Pro as a newsletter, a free newsletter for the industry in maybe 94, 95, long time ago. And there’s about a little over 3000 window covering professionals subscribed to it. And I just write articles that I think are or I find articles from all over the world and been editorialize them as to how I think they relate to the window covering business.
Will Hanke (36:12)
Okay.
Awesome. We will put a link in the show notes for your to sign up for your newsletter as well. Appreciate you doing that, by the way. That’s great. So thank you guys for being on today. I definitely appreciate your time. I know that you’re both very busy. Thank you also for listening to the podcast today. If you got one idea or a useful strategy out of this conversation, please do us a favor and send it to a friend in the trade. And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, all the different socials.
And thank you so much for listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Rory and Russ, thank you guys. I really appreciate it.
Russ Elinson (37:12)
Thank
Rory McNeil (37:12)
Thanks for your
Russ Elinson (37:12)
you.
Rory McNeil (37:12)
time. Nice chatting.
TRANSCRIPT
Will Hanke (00:00)
All right, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. My name is Will Hanke. Today is a special episode. We’ve got not one, but two industry leaders joining us and we want to talk about Q3, which is just around the corner.
And maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Q2 as well and see how well it went. But we’ve got some great guests today. So Russ Elinson serves as the principal of Arjays’s Window Fashions, spearheading strategic growth at Window Products Management, Incorporated. A USC graduate, Russ brings proven leadership in the window coverings industry. And Rory McNeil, who’s been with us before, he’s a seasoned leader in the window coverings industry.
And founder of Windows Shading Pro. With decades of experience from launching Eclipse blinds in the US to co-founding TechStyles, he now heads Shading and Automation Solutions, or SAS, continuing to drive innovation in shading and automation. Gentlemen, it’s fantastic to have you here.
Rory McNeil (01:13)
Thanks for having me.
Russ Elinson (01:13)
Thanks for having us.
Will Hanke (01:15)
Appreciate it. So let’s jump in. want to I don’t want to spend too much time bantering back and forth, but let’s talk about what pulled you into the industry. Maybe we’ll start with Russ. What kind of pulled you in? Was it love at first sight or was it more of a slow burn?
Russ Elinson (01:30)
Well, my situation is perhaps a little different. I was born into the industry, so that could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I grew up in a window covering manufacturing business. So from five years old, running around a warehouse and assembling brackets and sweeping floors and counting rolls of fabric. I never thought I would wind up in the industry. Coming out of school, wound up in the family business.
I was there for 10 years and been moved on into my own business venture on the retail side of the business that was 14 years ago.
Will Hanke (02:03)
Okay. long time ago. Rory, what about yourself?
Rory McNeil (02:03)
Long time ago.
Russ Elinson (02:06)
To be 45 and have 25 years plus experience in the industry full time is a lot.
Will Hanke (02:13)
You
Rory McNeil (02:14)
The wild thing is Russ that back when Russ was running around the floors in that fabricator, I was visiting them from the UK. That goes back a long way. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (02:23)
well
Will Hanke (02:25)
You’re dating.
Russ Elinson (02:26)
So needless to say, Rory and I have known each other a long time.
Will Hanke (02:29)
Yeah, yeah. Rory, what kind of pulled you into the industry first?
Rory McNeil (02:33)
Nepotism just like Russ. Yeah, my father and uncle had started a window covering business in the UK. That was called Apollo Blinds was first this retail franchise operation and been Eclipse Blinds applied the franchisees with Apollo branded product. And they also supplied every other independent fabricator of blinds in the UK. And been I got involved in the company in the mid 80s to start the export department because we we’d grown so much in the UK.
Will Hanke (02:35)
Okay.
Rory McNeil (03:02)
Only 65 million people to work with, you it’s not a big market. And so within about five years, we were selling to 36 countries around the world. A lot of fun.
Will Hanke (03:11)
Yeah, wow, what a journey that’s been. Thanks for sharing that. Russ, I know you guys, Arjays’s is doing quite well in the Southwest, I guess is where you guys are at. What was the point when you thought, know, okay, we’re not just surviving, we’re leading?
Russ Elinson (03:28)
I think the big change happened once we started hiring full-time installation technicians. Stop relying for the most part on subcontractors and just building a full team that would be with the company for a long time. That allows us to pivot our installation team almost daily if we need to when schedules are behind or ahead of schedule, just to control our own destiny in that regard.
Will Hanke (03:50)
Love that there is definitely something to be said about an entrepreneur that has to, you when you get to that point where you start hiring and you’re like, wow, this is incredible. It’s scary at first, but been it’s also quite freeing, you know.
Russ Elinson (04:01)
Yes, for sure.
Rory McNeil (04:04)
Will, do you notice that with some of the more successful retailers that they do employ their own installers? Because it’s quite important.
Will Hanke (04:13)
Yeah, think for most clients, think early on, they’re the ones running sales and installs. And finding installers a little bit tougher than it has been in the past. But yeah, absolutely. If they can start to find their own installers or somebody that’s moonlighting maybe two or three different window treatment companies in the same city, that seems to work out well.
Rory McNeil (04:33)
Russ, how have you been able to find new installers? Do you train them from within?
Russ Elinson (04:39)
It’s a kind of a mixed bag. Some of them we found with just construction experience and brought them on and been they’ve trained from a more master seasoned installer. Others we’ve been fortunate that as our businesses have grown in each of the markets, it’s been a good source for recruiting where people just wanted to come work for our company because they’ve heard our reputation of building a team and the cool projects that we were going after and the continual flow of work that’s been happening with our company.
So it’s definitely a mixture.
Will Hanke (05:08)
That’s nice. Always nice when you have people coming to you and raising their hand versus you having to go find them, right? Yeah, that’s fantastic. So I want to talk about 2025, been obviously another strange year in the window treatment world. What do you guys think is driving growth right now? Let’s start with Rory.
Russ Elinson (05:13)
It does happen.
Rory McNeil (05:27)
Well, I would say that most retailers in the marketplace and most fabricators are just hanging on for dear life while they’re watching people pause their decision making and hold on to their earnings and the importance of pause of non-essential purchases. People can put off window covering purchases if they think that there’s trouble ahead. And we’ve been looking at six months worth of trouble.
Will Hanke (05:52)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (05:53)
I have to say I agree. That’s what we found. I don’t know that this has been a year of growth. It’s more a year of being stable, hopefully, or minimizing your decline. ⁓ Certainly, the fear of tariffs had a little bit of a spike towards the end of the first quarter, where everyone rushed to buy beforehand. But once the tariffs hit and it impacted so many businesses in our industry, whether or not price increases moved down the
Will Hanke (06:03)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (06:19)
The supply chain homeowner’s mentality is like, hey, I’m going to be paying too much. I better pause for a second as Roy was saying and wait. I think it’s flat is a win for any dealer.
Will Hanke (06:34)
Definitely same thing we’re seeing from the marketing side. A lot of our clients had a pretty good Q1, but it’s been, I don’t know about downhill, but it’s definitely been trending not as uphill, I guess would be a good way to say it.
Rory McNeil (06:49)
Yeah, there was definitely
Russ Elinson (06:49)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (06:50)
A lot of business optimism in Q1, but that’s been tempered a little bit by just not knowing what’s going to happen next. mean, I know fabricators who have a container on the ocean with, you know, $100,000 worth of aluminum in it. And at one point they knew that there was 10 % duty and now there’s 50 % duty. So that’s the difference between paying $10,000 and $50,000. It’s a cashflow nightmare.
Will Hanke (07:17)
Yeah, that’s interesting to hear about it like that, but definitely makes sense. So do you think it’s also affecting manufacturers like Made in the USA, where they kind of say, don’t have to pay tariffs, but I guess they have to pay on the actual hard products?
Rory McNeil (07:33)
Russ?
Russ Elinson (07:34)
Well, I I think they’re paying the tariff to some degree on components, right? Very limited amount of actual window covering components that go into the finished product actually come from the U.S., right? So there’s some level of tariff. think some of the smaller fabricators that build in the U.S. have held off perhaps too long, raising pricing from their perspective, thinking that that would generate more market share growth for them. I don’t know whether that’s happened or not. We’ve seen some modest price increases with domestic fabricators. It’s been more extreme with those that are manufacturing in overseas or across the border in Mexico, for sure.
Rory McNeil (08:11)
Yeah. And Will, what’s interesting is that if you’re a manufacturer like Springs or Hunter in Mexico, been you’re able to bring in goods to Mexico with very minimal duties and been sell into the U.S. without the same duties that U.S. manufacturers have to pay on fabrics and aluminum coming from other countries. So it gives Mexican manufacturing an advantage over U.S. manufacturing, which is kind of, unfortunately, the opposite of what was was hoped to have been created.
Will Hanke (08:40)
Yeah, we’ve also seen an increase in phone calls from manufacturers in the marketing world because suddenly they’re thinking they have an advantage that they need to get out in front of dealers. know, hey, by the way, we make this right down the road from you. You should buy it from us.
Rory McNeil (08:58)
Yeah. Well, Russ knows as well as anybody else that there’s certain extruders of profiles for shutters that manufacture in Taiwan and not in China. And that gives them a big advantage in the market until there’s a Chinese tariff deal reached, which apparently is imminent for the last six months.
Will Hanke (09:15)
Sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Russ Elinson (09:17)
And been it’ll get moved to another country, which will be hit with that same thing and another and another. So the cycle continues, unfortunately.
Will Hanke (09:25)
Yes, it does. Let’s talk about emerging trends. What are you guys seeing in the window treatment industry in the last couple of months? And how can the listeners kind of start to align their businesses to stay competitive?
Russ Elinson (09:39)
From our perspective, I think there’s a growth of people interested in both exterior product and also a continued growth in automation, motorized projects. But something that simple app control from their phone, it doesn’t have to be tied into a third party automation system. It doesn’t have to be in a huge mansion. Just regular homeowners are looking for convenience and timer scheduling. Certainly outdoor living spaces is a big area of growth in our part of the country in Southern California and the Phoenix market where we service. retractable awnings, retractable exterior screens, that’s an area of growth for us, certainly.
Rory McNeil (10:18)
Will, you deal with lot of retailers who are dabbling with exterior shading and awnings. It’s not always that easy to see a retailer who’s typically in the interior window covering business make the transition into exterior. But the best retailers understand that that’s the business they’re in. They’re in the business of shading all of the areas of the home inside and out. It’s just that they have to go to seminars, they have to train their installers, they have to do the work that’s required to train staff.
And Russ has been doing that at least for 10 years. When’s the first time you sold a exterior shading job, Russ? Yeah.
Russ Elinson (10:49)
Years. that’s probably 10 years ago.
Will Hanke (10:54)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I’d say two or three years ago, we probably had less than 10 % of our clients that did exterior stuff. And now that number is probably creeping up towards 30%, 35%. Yeah, they’re all looking at the exterior stuff. What I hear is it’s a different breed of installer that they have to find. So that starts almost all the way over, finding those kinds of installers as well.
It’s definitely an uphill battle for some of these clients, but a decent amount of them have started to transition.
Russ Elinson (11:25)
The nice thing with exterior sales is the average invoice is going to be higher typically than the average interior window covering invoice.
Will Hanke (11:32)
Right, for sure. Yeah. On the marketing side, getting those leads is not as difficult or not more difficult than getting a window treatment lead. But like you said, the average ticket value is a lot higher.
That’s really nice. Yeah. Is there is there any since we’re talking a little bit about marketing, is there any marketing thing that you’ve done, Russ, maybe that has completely flopped?
Russ Elinson (11:56)
Yelp from many years ago, that was a terrible flop. ⁓ I think that company is extortionist. So, I mean, that’s pretty well known, but that was definitely a failure years back.
Will Hanke (12:01)
Okay.
It’s interesting you say that because you’re in California. The one thing that I’ve learned is Californians love Yelp for some reason. Most of the rest of the US doesn’t, but it seems like our California clients seem to want to advertise on there and they use that. Like we, we don’t even think I have Yelp on my phone. But interesting that you say that. I have heard people call it mafia style tactics on Yelp.
Russ Elinson (12:38)
for sure.
Will Hanke (12:38)
And they’ve also been kicked out of Google a couple times because of those unscrupulous tactics.
Rory McNeil (12:43)
Yeah,
daughter went to UC Davis and went to school with a guy who became a sales rep in Yelp. the stories were pretty horrific. How they incentivize the sales guys, know, basically extortionist Russ is talking about, you know, we have Arjay’s on our system and they’re getting all the leads should be you should be paying into our system. You know, that’s just fear and fear and
What was the word? Fear? forget what the acronym is, just FEE? Yeah, something like that. FOMO? Yeah. Pretend FOMO. Yeah.
Will Hanke (13:08)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (13:12)
We are missing out.
Will Hanke (13:15)
Yeah.
I also spoke to a guy the other day who was using or was spending money on Yelp. I think the minimum seven fifty a month. In the meantime, he got a one star review on Yelp and now he’s afraid to stop spending the money because that one star review is being suppressed because he’s an advertiser there. And so he was he was spending the seven fifty for the one star not to show up.
Rory McNeil (13:37)
Okay.
Russ Elinson (13:42)
What’s so scary about all of that is that people do look at Yelp and our ratings on Yelp are lower because they hide any five-star review if you’re not advertising with them. So our design consultants, when they’re in the home, will try to get ahead of that and direct the homeowners to look at our Google reviews, which your company, has been so instrumental over the last year in helping us grow that review base ⁓ and seeing all the five-star reviews that come out of Google hopefully wash out.
Will Hanke (14:05)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (14:11)
Yelp and can be explained away. That’s a business that only generates money when you’re paying for advertising.
Rory McNeil (14:17)
Yeah, I think it’s clear that Google’s gonna eat their lunch on restaurants and businesses reviews for a long time to come.
Will Hanke (14:26)
Yeah, yeah. So as we look at Q3 and maybe even into Q4, are there any tech related shift things that business owners should be prepared for? Whether that’s product availability, pricing, customer demand, what do you guys see in there?
Rory McNeil (14:42)
Russ, do you see that more of your customers want their window coverings wired into the home through a central control system or are they still kind of looking at them as different motorized solutions, smart home solutions?
Russ Elinson (14:56)
I think it’s different motorized solutions. The challenge becomes most people that have existing homes aren’t going to be willing to have an electrician rip open their walls to pull wiring. Does it happen? Sure. Did I do it at my house? Yes, because I didn’t want to deal with charging batteries. But for the most part, I think that’s not the case. So an existing home is getting a retrofit rechargeable battery solution and new construction. That’s when you have the opportunity to get in and recommend wiring.
Rory McNeil (15:25)
Do you ever have any homeowners who say to you, I’m trying to standardize around matter? Are you guys offering matter compatible motors?
Russ Elinson (15:32)
Matter actually has not come up at all with any homeowners. Zigbee barely has come up with any homeowners. I think the homeowners mentality generally is, can I have a remote? Can I have a switch on the wall? Can I operate it from my phone? And beyond that, they haven’t thought much further. Occasionally you’ll have an engineer that’s done some research and requests a Z-Wave system or a Zigbee system. But in general, it’s
I just want to operate it from my phone and a remote.
Will Hanke (16:01)
I’ll say that would be me. I wouldn’t want to be able to have Alexa do it all for me just by me raising my right hand or something, right?
Russ Elinson (16:08)
Yeah,
Rory McNeil (16:09)
Yeah.
Russ Elinson (16:09)
I mean, it’s definitely a mixture for sure. We’ll see.
Rory McNeil (16:12)
And how many go ahead, we’ll try.
Will Hanke (16:12)
Russ,
you see a difference in the type of customer that’s asking for those things, maybe like an age difference?
Russ Elinson (16:20)
I think people that like automated, I should say motorized shades may tend to be those with more discretionary income, perhaps more on the retirement end or later in their career path, where they just don’t want to walk over and pull chains. They’ve lived in homes where manual shades just stay down most of the time. There is a trend though in I would say millennial and end of generation X where they’re more comfortable with automation.
and having an app control. And so to them, it becomes less about having a remote and more about being able to control it from their phone and being able to set scenes or timer scheduled events. I think that’s important to the couples that are getting closer towards retirement or are there. Maybe the app control is not so important, but just having the ability to operate the shade with a button as opposed to pulling the chain.
Rory McNeil (17:09)
What about periodic or scheduled opening and closings? Do most of your installers set up those schedules for consumers, Russ, when you do installation?
Russ Elinson (17:19)
We don’t generally set them up because we found that they will keep our installers there for hours after the installation has happened. So they’ll pair the motors to the app system. Generally, we’re using Bond for most of our RTS controls. We’ll show them how to operate the shades, how to set up a scene, how to set up a schedule, perhaps one, and been that’s it. And there’s plenty of YouTube videos that walk them through that process if they struggle.
Will Hanke (17:46)
yet.
Russ Elinson (17:46)
We’ve also had to recommend to our design consultants to perhaps not offer app control to those homeowners they can see up front or perhaps not technologically savvy.
Rory McNeil (17:57)
Yeah, makes sense.
Will Hanke (17:59)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. Are there any tech tools on the sales side that you guys think dealers should be using right now?
Russ Elinson (18:08)
I mean, I think there’s a movement of dealers towards automated quoting systems. There’s several obviously out there, Solitech being one and a few others using those type of automated systems in the home to quote while you’re there, minimizes mistakes. I think anyone who’s not using it or something like that is missing out for sure. The days of pricing jobs by hand out of a giant product reference guide should have long been terminated. So for anyone getting into the industry or someone who’s been in the industry a long time but isn’t using one of those software packages, I would highly recommend researching which one would be right for their business.
Rory McNeil (18:49)
Russ, do you see anybody using like disto measuring tools with Bluetooth capability? Do any of your design consultants do that?
Will Hanke (18:49)
Agreed.
Russ Elinson (18:57)
I think there are some, I mean, we have laser measures for all of our design consultants. We choose not to integrate it directly into the quoting software. Things change while you’re in discussion with the homeowner. So I’d much rather walk in with a yellow legal pad, take my notes, I shoot my measurements with a laser, those that are inside mount at least, and been record everything. So that way I have a firm idea if something changes from inside mount to outside mount, or it goes from a cellular shade to,
maybe a natural shade or something where the height measurement matters more, just so you have a clear written idea of what you measured. It’s my preference.
Rory McNeil (19:33)
Do think it makes
a difference if you’re the only retailer calling on this customer who’s using laser measures and everybody else is in there with the foldable bendable tape measures?
Russ Elinson (19:45)
I’m sure there’s some positive response that you get out of it. Wow, what’s that? I’ve never seen one before. And been we just explain how precision measuring is something that’s a part of our business model.
Will Hanke (19:56)
So we had, we actually wanted to get some windows done. have some faux wood blinds that we’ve had since we moved in 15, 16 years ago. So we actually had a window treatment dealer out to our home this week. And Russ, you’re spot on because my wife got involved and we went from roller shades to just regular pull down shades to shutters all in the matter of 20 minutes. And the guy visiting, that’s basically, he just wrote everything down because she was
Russ Elinson (20:21)
Yep.
Will Hanke (20:26)
going through all these different decisions, obviously guided her in a direction. And once we decided, been he popped open his, I guess he maybe had an iPad with a keyboard on it or something, plugged everything in and I mean, took our credit card and we were done. It was fantastic.
Russ Elinson (20:42)
Yeah, and measuring for a faux wood blind is very different than measuring for a shutter. There’s more critical measurements at many different points, so that’s why I like writing things down.
Will Hanke (20:52)
Yeah.
Rory McNeil (20:52)
From a sales standpoint, the quoting software you’re talking about Russ, if you’re in the home and you’re not able to close the sale while you’re in the home, been you’ve increased your chances of losing the sale.
Russ Elinson (21:05)
Absolutely.
Will Hanke (21:07)
Yeah. On the other side of this, is there any tech trend or product that you guys think that has been overhyped and not really delivering the ROI?
Rory McNeil (21:15)
Russ, do you want to handle that?
Russ Elinson (21:17)
I don’t know of one specifically that I’m thinking of. there something that comes to mind for you, Rory?
Rory McNeil (21:23)
There was something earlier, but now I can’t remember. I’ll come back to that. That’s what happens when you get too old, I guess.
Will Hanke (21:26)
no.
Russ Elinson (21:30)
I mean, just on perhaps one end, I think there’s a large marketing effort towards Zigbee automation motors and it’s a very good system. I agree. I don’t think it’s applicable at this time for the typical homeowner. I think what’s tried and true with RTS that’s been out for 20 plus years still works really well. Certainly we’re going to all be pivoting towards a Zigbee or matter or some solution as it’s related to that.
But from my perspective, I’m gonna wait a little bit, continue with what works for us and see how the market hashes itself out technologically wise and what communication protocol wins over the next few years.
Rory McNeil (22:09)
Russ, do you have any design consultants who use any kind of azimuth solar range or solar movement apps to show how the light changes in the house?
Russ Elinson (22:19)
I mean, I do for sure and a couple of hours do there’s a wonderful app called Sunseeker. I don’t remember what yeah, I don’t remember what that one costs at the time. Maybe it’s $15 or something. But it’s always interesting when you get a husband and wife that are arguing over whether or not they should put shades in a certain room and you look down at their beautiful flooring and realize that you’re south facing or west facing and the amount of sun that’s going to come through and they say
Rory McNeil (22:26)
Yeah, I have it.
Russ Elinson (22:47)
No, no, no, there’s no sun that comes through here. And been you pull out an app and you show them in 3D the path of the sun during the summer and winter, winter when it’s lowest and can penetrate in the deepest or summer when it’s higher and they don’t notice it as much. And been quickly the attitude changes of, they start thinking about how much it’s gonna cost to refinish that wood floor and the shades quickly become back on the table.
Rory McNeil (23:11)
Yeah, curiously, well, Lutron basically created an app around that kind of technology and guys like Russ’s business partner, John Edwards, who you’ve communicated with. John is kind of an expert in that area. So he’s an expert in, I guess you’d call it a fenestration, right?
Will Hanke (23:30)
right. Well, that’s cool. I didn’t know about that app, but we’ll look that up and make sure to link that in the show.
Russ Elinson (23:30)
Yes, and he could explain it incredibly well.
Rory McNeil (23:34)
He
Russ Elinson (23:38)
Yeah, it’s a great tool. John actually found that app many, years ago, introduced it to me, and it’s been so useful in many regular design appointments with homeowners and also in commercial projects where perhaps the architect doesn’t think they’re going to have a sun problem, but they certainly do.
Will Hanke (23:54)
Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. So we talked a little bit about the maybe the economy slowing down. People are not making as many spending choices or not in our favor, at least right now. What would you advise as we’re going into Q3 for window treatment business owners really to put their focus on as we move through the rest of the year?
Rory McNeil (23:55)
Cool.
Russ Elinson (24:16)
I think continuing to diversify customer base, if they can at all. For us, what’s helped us, whether the ups and downs of the economy is just targeting different groups. So we work with regular homeowners. We’re heavily involved in the Costco window fashions program. We go after small commercial projects where we do work on schools, multifamily housing, like apartment buildings, small commercial tenant improvements.
So we’ve built a relationship with a number of general contractors, both on the commercial side and the custom home residential side. So just trying to build your business and diversify your customer base so it’s not all reliant on the phone ringing from Jane Doe that found you on Google or Facebook. Trade partnerships with interior designers or real estate agents, those are all good sources of leads that
continue to pay dividends for years to come.
Will Hanke (25:08)
Good points. Rory, anything on your radar that you see?
Rory McNeil (25:11)
Yeah, I I was going to ask Russ if he’s doing more email marketing to his existing customer base to try and mine the customers who are already familiar with you.
Russ Elinson (25:21)
The reality is we haven’t yet. That’s an area we’ve not done a very good job at. We are going to be moving more towards that. It’s part of our plan for third and fourth quarter of this year. We’ve done the old style of postcard marketing to our past customer base, and that’s always generated a good return, or at least a decent return. It’s not very expensive, obviously, to market to past customers. But certainly going after a more digital approach is better for a long-term perspective.
Rory McNeil (25:49)
The biggest mistake there is I see retailers just deluging their customers with weekly emails and it’s just too much. Once a month, once a quarter.
Russ Elinson (25:59)
Yeah, I think once a quarter is probably appropriate because those that email me regularly, I just delete them.
Rory McNeil (26:05)
Yeah.
Will Hanke (26:05)
Yeah, there’s something to be said for just the fact that they showed up in your inbox and you saw them again. If you’re just deleting them, they’re still staying top of mind to you, right? Yeah. So we recommend our clients once a month, even if they’re getting a slow open rate, that kind of thing. When that time comes and they’re thinking about it and that email pops up, yeah, I need to call these guys. So anyway, that’s good.
Russ Elinson (26:14)
Mmm. Fair point.
Will Hanke (26:31)
Postcards, the postcard thing, we’ve got a couple clients doing that now. And we’ve got a system where we can actually reverse engineer the visitors to their website and send postcards to just those people. And that works really well because they’ve already kind of raised their hand to engage with your business or maybe they didn’t engage, but they came to your website or clicked on an ad or something for some reason. So hitting them from a different angle.
is a nice little approach a couple days later. Yeah. Yeah. So that works really well. I wanted to, before we finish up, I wanted to talk about industry gatherings. Is there any industry gatherings that are on your radar next quarter or later this year?
Russ Elinson (26:58)
That’s a idea.
Rory McNeil (27:13)
This is a great question because there was a show in Anaheim last year, I think you were a speaker there Will, called the Sunshading Expo, and I begged Russ to attend the show for the first time in a while because it was in his home state and because he would go to all the… You did come, yes. Was it useful?
Russ Elinson (27:27)
I like it!
I thought so, yes.
Rory McNeil (27:33)
Yeah,
yeah. So industry gatherings are always going to be critical. so they just wish people to just go there, support them, look for the new, you can see what the trends are. You know, the the Anaheim show was probably 40 % exterior shading guys. mean, that says something.
Will Hanke (27:49)
Yeah, it was a good show. I’m speaking at the one this year again. That’s in November. ⁓ Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well. I’m speaking there. I’m going to be doing some live podcasting from there too as well. So that should be fun with all the the ambient noise in the background.
Rory McNeil (27:53)
Yeah, Indianapolis.
Yeah, because they’ve set up your area right in the middle of the show, right? So looks like it’ll be more busy rather than off to the side.
Will Hanke (28:12)
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’ll be a lot of fun. Any other events?
Rory McNeil (28:16)
Are there any other, there’s no other trade shows you go to, Rasa. I kind of like the building product shows because you learn more about how windows are changing. Like in Europe, we see a lot of tilt and turn windows. And in this country, you don’t see them so much in it, except in very specific markets. And in Europe, the manufacturers over there have developed special, usually cellular or pleated or roller shade systems that snap into the inside of the sill.
So as the window tilts forward, the shade is under tension, it stays with the window. Or if it tilts into the room, been the shade is under tension, bracketed around a frame. And that’s kind of a cool feature that I think will grow as windows are used better for ventilation and buildings, for smart buildings certainly, lead buildings.
Will Hanke (29:02)
Interesting. Do you think the Sun Shading Expo is good for exterior as well? I know it’s tied to the ATA show as well. So I know they have a lot of exterior vendors there.
Rory McNeil (29:09)
Yeah.
They have exterior vendors and so does the Sun Shading Expo side. So between the two, there’s quite a bit. I I think that’s one of the reasons why Sun Shading partnered with the Advanced Textiles Expo. So those were all exterior fabric companies and been it was logical that they became exterior shading companies. so when Russ was there in Anaheim, he probably saw on that side, a lot of guys who made stainless steel hardware that could be good for some solutions on exterior wire guide systems.
Will Hanke (29:17)
Right.
Rory McNeil (29:41)
Where are you gonna see that, you know?
Will Hanke (29:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that too, Rory. We’ll put a link down below. think I’m going to end up having some free tickets to give away to that as well. And it’s close to me. Indianapolis isn’t that far of a drive from St. Louis. So I get off cheap this time. No flights or anything. So that’s always nice, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Russ Elinson (29:43)
Yeah, it was a great experience going there.
Rory McNeil (30:00)
Yeah, okay. Always good.
Will Hanke (30:05)
For dealers that are listening, Russ, I’m really interested in how you guys approached things like networking for some of your designers, some of the local lead generation. How are they doing it now and how has that changed over the years?
Russ Elinson (30:20)
interesting. I mean, I think we’ve tried different things over the years. Fortunately, our business has been around for several decades. a lot of people find us just organically. We’ve done networking events in our showrooms to host architects before and had different vendors come in and present one after the other to get AIA credit for those architects. That’s been helpful. Let’s see.
Calling actually general contractors, just picking up the telephone the old fashioned way and asking if we could get onto their bidders lists for commercial projects and have a blueprint sent to us that we read and do commercial bidding off of. That’s been very helpful as well. We have a designer that’s joined AIA and participates in those type of networking functions and generated some leads from there.
And been also in our Phoenix based market, we actually do a TV show that’s tied to home improvement in Phoenix called Sonoran Living. And that’s been very effective too.
Will Hanke (31:17)
wow.
Wow, are you the star on that show?
Russ Elinson (31:24)
I am not, because I’m based out of our California location, but we have a few different design consultants that rotate some of their more interesting projects that get filmed for that show.
Rory McNeil (31:34)
Have you ever seen those, Will? Because I normally put them on Window Shading Pro Newsletter because they’re great and I’m just trying to encourage other retailers around the country to copy that style because it’s so useful, I think. It’s very smart.
Will Hanke (31:34)
brilliant.
Yeah, those are great.
Yeah.
Video.
Russ Elinson (31:48)
But I am headed to Phoenix
tomorrow and we’ll be on camera Tuesday. We’re doing a shoot in our showroom.
Will Hanke (31:52)
There you go. Nice,
nice. Video is huge for this industry. I think it’s a missed opportunity for a lot of dealers.
Rory McNeil (32:01)
I did
have a question for you, Russ, about construction companies talking about networking with construction companies to be able to get in on bids or projects that might be, you know, a couple of hundred cut down shades or stock horizontal. I find that when I’m looking at quotes around the country for those kinds of projects, that there’s about a point of maybe about twenty thousand dollars in value to the construction company that most other national
companies who are going after contracts find it too small to waste their time on getting installers into that marketplace. Do you find that there is kind of a sweet spot in terms of the size, the quantity of windows that you don’t get competition from national companies?
Russ Elinson (32:43)
Sure, I think that our strong, our area of success in commercial bidding as a window covering dealer is going after small to medium sized commercial projects. I would say generally we don’t bid projects that are above 300 windows. Sometimes the commercial projects are 25, sometimes they’re 75. Large apartment complexes and also it depends.
upon the geography, right, where you’re at. If you’re in a major metropolitan city, there might be several commercial window covering companies that that’s all they do. And perhaps that’s not the right customer for a residential window covering dealer. If you’re in a little bit more rural area or outside of a big city, those big commercial window covering dealers may not find it worth their time to travel up for a three or four or five hundred blind project. So I think it depends on your market.
We found our sweet spot in a part of our area and it’s that small to medium sized job that’s generally not exceeding 300 windows, but we have certainly tackled projects that are larger than that. It depends on the relationship you’ve built with that specific general contractor. From my perspective, I think it’s better for individual window covering dealers to build relationships with small regional, excuse me, small regional,
general contractors as opposed to large national general contractors, which there’s not much margin in it at that point for any of us.
Rory McNeil (34:09)
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a cool sweet spot,
Will Hanke (34:11)
Yeah,
really nice. So before we finish up, I just wanted to ask you guys one last thing. There might be a lot of business owners or people that are new to the industry listening to the podcast today. If you could give them advice, what would that be? Let’s start with Rory.
Rory McNeil (34:28)
Well, we used to be a preferred vendor to a budget blind group. And all the time we would see new franchisees who came from middle management, upper management in corporate jobs. And the most inspiring thing about these new people coming into the window covering business after just having spent $80,000 to buy a franchise is that they were sales machines. It was all about sales and tracking leads and tracking quotes and
Many of us who sort of grown up in the industry just, you know, do the work and expect all that comes behind, you know, everything just flows. That’s all changed in the last 10, 15 years where you can’t afford to not mine your own customer database and you can’t afford to stop doing marketing. I meet so many people who’ve been in the industry a lifetime that they just assume they’re getting word of mouth. Well, you know, your customers are dying, you know, there’s more people you’ve got to find.
Will Hanke (35:21)
Thank you, Russ. What about you?
Russ Elinson (35:21)
I’m
Rory McNeil (35:22)
That’s
Russ Elinson (35:22)
sure I think.
Rory McNeil (35:23)
an optimistic note, isn’t it?
Russ Elinson (35:26)
The advice that I would give takes us right back to a conversation we had a few minutes ago, which is investing in technology, investing in a laser measure that Rory mentioned, and investing in quoting software so you can quote those projects in the home. Don’t try to do it by hand. You’ll drive yourself crazy. You’ll fall asleep on your price books at night. And you’re going to serve your customers and yourself better by investing in quoting software.
Will Hanke (35:50)
Awesome,
Rory McNeil (35:50)
On that note,
there’s something like four or five software companies exhibiting in the sun shading experts. So they’re from all over the world.
Will Hanke (35:57)
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your insight today. Incredible conversation. Before we wrap up, Rory, I just wanted you to give us the one minute elevator pitch about the Windows Shading Pro newsletter.
Rory McNeil (36:09)
Oh,
I can maybe do 30 seconds. So I created Windows Shading Pro as a newsletter, a free newsletter for the industry in maybe 94, 95, long time ago. And there’s about a little over 3000 window covering professionals subscribed to it. And I just write articles that I think are or I find articles from all over the world and been editorialize them as to how I think they relate to the window covering business.
Will Hanke (36:12)
Okay.
Awesome. We will put a link in the show notes for your to sign up for your newsletter as well. Appreciate you doing that, by the way. That’s great. So thank you guys for being on today. I definitely appreciate your time. I know that you’re both very busy. Thank you also for listening to the podcast today. If you got one idea or a useful strategy out of this conversation, please do us a favor and send it to a friend in the trade. And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, all the different socials.
And thank you so much for listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Rory and Russ, thank you guys. I really appreciate it.
Russ Elinson (37:12)
Thank
Rory McNeil (37:12)
Thanks for your
Russ Elinson (37:12)
you.
Rory McNeil (37:12)
time. Nice chatting.
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