This thread has posts that bother me because they come from people whose other posts I respect, but are totally misguided. I sure hope all you cabinet makers that say you throw people out of your shop, laugh at them, tell them to go to Ikea or Home Depot, or similar are engaging in idle rhetoric. You may build a kitchen a week, but how often does the average Joe buy a kitchen?
Putting aside what the average Joe knows about cabinets generally, you expect him or her to show up knowing why *your* cabinets are better than the custom cabinetmaker down the street? I've seen some custom cabinets where I'd rather have had Kraftmaid, and Kraftmaid actually represents pretty good value for certain types of work.
If I walk into your shop and say "why are your cabinet twice what I could get at Home Depot," I'm asking a serious question. What value are you going to deliver? Have I seen your cabinets before? How am I supposed to know that you dovetail your drawers from solid maple stock, as opposed to the guy down the street who butt joints 'em with thermal resin glue like the borg? How do I know you book match your panels and use 18mm baltic birch sides and backs if you don't tell me or show me? How do I know I'm not getting melamine covered particle board interiors if you don't take the time to tell me? How do I know that you are qualified to--and going to--take care to design a functional kitchen, and are fundamentally better at it than the guy at the borg with the computer? How do I know how much design flexibility I have if you don't tell me, or whether you have a small shop that has very specific sizing to fit your jigs? How do I know you hand pick your stock, as opposed to using every last inch of stuff that gets delivered by some truck from somewhere? How do I know you are going to sweat all the finish details and make the wood proud, as opposed to shooting a couple coats of poly and calling it a day?
When someone asks why you deserve more than the borg, its an invitation to show them your value proposition, not an insult. You know cabinets, and you know how you construct them. They don't. If you are gonna tell them to walk, that is potential business out the door. If you have so much business you don't give a damn, that's fine--perhaps your corpus of prior work has earned you the right to be a cantakerous bugger.
So, tell them WHY its value. If you started whinging about your costs being higher than the borg and how you need to save for retirement and get your kids new shoes, that doesn't speak to value to all. If I told my clients my rates are high because my costs are higher than my competitors and I need to make a profit, they would tell me to get more efficient.
In a society where people trade houses like underwear and 5-year ARMs are the norm, you aren't going to make a sale by telling someone you are installing an heirloom that can be passed down to future generations in their house. Chances are they aren't going to be in that house for that long. Tell them about the aesthetics of custom cabinets that create a "wow" factor that can't be duplicated by big box store cabinets, and how that differentiates their house from their neighbors (and other sellers in the neighborhood). Tell them about how you have created functional kitchens that have custom details that people remember and want to have--how you create kitchens that people want to live in and live with. Tell them how you will give them a beautiful space to use and a space that will increase the value of their home when it comes time to sell. Tell them the details you incorporate that they can be proud of and advertise to buyers when it comes time to sell. Show them your cabinets, point to the details that make it better, and send them to the borg to compare. If the value proposition is right, they will come back. Even if they don't come back this time--I say you may have a niche, but so does the borg--maybe they will come back the next time.
Face it. Not everyone will recognize your genius just by meeting you. You might have to lead them a bit.
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Originally Posted by Mike Robbins
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