Transcript

William Hanke (00:02 )
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. Today’s guest is David Soria. David has been in the window treatment industry since the mid 90s before joining America’s Window Covering Buying Network in 2021.

His previous experiences include in-home sales for a local retailer and sales management, as well as field sales for national brand suppliers to the industry. David, thank you so much for being on today.

David Soria (00:43 )
welcome.

William Hanke (00:45 )
Excited to have you here and kind of talk through a little bit about what’s known as the network, I guess, right? Yeah, awesome. So why don’t you start out by sharing a little bit of background about your journey, obviously, in the window treatment industry and some key roles that have helped you kind of shape your expertise.

David Soria (00:51 )
Yep, that’s right.

Sure, sure. You I got started in the industry when I answered a newspaper one ad, if you remember those, looking for a salesperson, somebody who might have an interest in design and who would be doing shop at home sales for that company. at the time I’d done some in-home sales, had a background in theater design and also in teaching.

William Hanke (01:15 )
You

David Soria (01:33 )
And the job sounded interesting. And this was for a fairly large window coverings retailer in the Chicago area. And when I started with them, they had over a dozen shop at home decorators working for them, big company. They had their own workroom, made their own drapery, vertical, shears, top treatments. And, you know, talk about a nice problem. They were drowning in leads. I got a two week

crash course in their showroom on blind shades and drapery and then I started taking sales calls. I mentioned that they were busy. I still remember I took 20 in-home calls my first full week with them. Mostly for hard treatments but still 20. A of customers to see. The owner had really great plans to expand.

William Hanke (02:21 )
Wow.

David Soria (02:28 )
eventually moved me into a supervisory role doing ride-alongs with the team, training, setting up promotions, working with the general manager and our marketing manager to develop programs and incentives. At the time, I didn’t know that the owner was building up some debt behind the scenes and that eventually caught up with him and forced him to close. I was fortunate enough to leave before that happened.

I then went to work as a territory rep for a hard treatment fabricator that had recently expanded into the Midwest. I was with them for some really tremendous growth and change at that company and the industry. We saw our product mix shift dramatically from more commodity products like verticals and cellular into the explosion of interest in horizontal woods then.

natural shade category and really the first big wave of screen shades and motorization. That company was eventually purchased by a larger national company right around the time of the 07-08 financial crisis and a number of years later they got absorbed into another company. I continued with them for a number of years before I moved on.

wanted to make a change, do less travel and have more time with my family. But it was a great way to learn about the industry. I couldn’t have asked for a better training ground. Having a chance to do the shop at home taught me a ton about product sales and the challenges that designers and retailers face every day. That in turn made me a better territory rep for the two companies I worked with.

you know, walked in the dealer’s shoes before. So I knew how important training, follow-up and the dealer support really could be. Now, as you said, I’ve been with America’s Window Covering Buying Network almost four years now as national sales manager. And that gives me an opportunity to really synthesize a lot of those previous experiences as I work with our account team, our members and our vendors.

William Hanke (04:52 )
Yeah, I love the fact that you’re kind of homegrown, right? You’ve already walked the walk and you understand what they’re going through now, right? And the kind of struggles that they have, even down to the point of understanding the in-home sales process. I love that.

David Soria (05:07 )
Yeah, yeah, and it is a process.

William Hanke (05:10 )
Very good. Yeah. Yeah. So all that brings you to what we call the network. And tell me a little bit about AWS CBN as an overview.

David Soria (05:18 )
Yeah.

Yeah, sure. America’s Window Covering Buying Network. And we shorten that to the network a lot of times. We’ve been servicing the company’s been servicing the industry for over 20 years now. And in fact, one of the vendors that I used to work with had been a supplier. So I remember meeting with the owner here at the network, Alan Meyer, to discuss our company’s programs. They had to be, you know, over 10, 15 years ago now.

William Hanke (05:48 )
Okay.

David Soria (05:53 )
The company is a nationwide membership group serving window covering professionals, designers, workrooms, independent retailers. Now here I work with our account team as well as our members and vendors. I’m involved in several areas contributing to our printed newsletter, organizing monthly webinars for members, along with other functions here. It’s pretty amazing though to see the growth we’ve had just

In the few years I’ve been here, we have members in all 50 states. We’re going to hit 1,500 members total before the end of the year, 2024. And right before the pandemic, we were happy to hit 1,000. So that’s some pretty significant growth.

William Hanke (06:33 )
Nice.

That’s fantastic. I love the list of things that you’re involved in. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got a dull moment. That’s awesome. That’s great. So Tell me a little bit more about a buying network. What is that and how does it benefit somebody who may be listening to the podcast today?

David Soria (06:50 )
No, never a dumb moment. I love it.

Sure. Well, to start off with buying groups have been around a long time and in a lot of different industries. The idea is pretty straightforward, pretty simple. Members of a buying group receive better discounts on their purchases because the group leverages the total buying power of the membership for the benefit of the members. Now in the window treatment industry, this means the vendors will offer network members discounts that members

would not ordinarily be able to receive on their own. For some vendors, you know, I think you can think of it as a franchise level buying power. Various vendors offer sample discounts as much as 50%, a dealer spiff, aggressive promotions, some exclusive to the members. One vendor has even created a natural shade book that only members have access to to sell a private label option.

And that’s obviously a real game changer for those members who were in competitive markets.

William Hanke (08:10 )
There’s a lot of window treatment dealers out there now that are probably selling the products that you guys have partners with, and they don’t realize they could be getting some sort of a discount just by being in the buying network.

David Soria (08:22 )
Right? Right?

William Hanke (08:24 )
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So and you said it’s around close to 1500 now. So you guys got some decent leverage on the on that side as well.

David Soria (08:34 )
Yes.

William Hanke (08:36 )
That’s great. I love to hear that. That’s really cool. Kind of a different approach to it. What is when we look at a WCBN or the network, what is kind of your core value proposition that you promote?

David Soria (08:52 )
Sure. You know, our bottom line goal