2025 Sales And Marketing Outlook

04:58 - Market cooling, sales declining, foot traffic down
 

10:21 - Tools providing service boost traffic and conversions
 

13:08 - Labor shortage stabilizes industry amidst economic uncertainty
 

14:24 - Pros shift to new suppliers due to constraints
 

17:38 - Fight for contractor loyalty; quality over price
 

22:49 - Discussing DIY market insights and storytelling strategies
 

26:24 - DIY projects rise due to financial constraints
 

30:14 - Risk and opportunity found in creative DIY projects
 

33:02 - Hyper-specificity in consumer building product preferences
 

36:09 - Flexibility in design is becoming important again
 

38:03 - Strong housing demand and low supply expected
 

41:17 - 2025: Better foresight enhances competitive market strategies

Zach Williams and Beth PopNikolov are the founder and CEO respectively, of Venveo, a digital marketing firm for building and manufacturing products. 

Grant Farnsworth is the President of The Farnsworth Group which provides custom research expertise for the building, home, lawn & garden industry.

Dave King is the Executive Director of The Home Improvement Research Institute, a resource for home improvement insights. 

Sophia Wedeen is a Senior Research Analyst from the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (JCHS). 

After giving a little information about the Building Products Customer Workshop in December, Grant and Beth dig into some of the numbers. Grant says that the market is cooling down from the peaks of the 20-30% increases that have been seen over the past few years. He notes that foot traffic is down as well as project size. 

So, don’t want to say that we are falling off the cliff or the sky is falling, no need to panic. But I think, again, it’s just a little bit of a reset from where we were the past couple of years.”-Grant Farnsworth

The two discuss the topic of competition being something on everybody’s mind that hasn’t been a big topic for at least the last four years. Beth says that markets can thrive during competition and that it weeds out the weaker players. She also notes that it may take some concentration to get back into that mindset. 

The number one word I would use to describe 2025 is competition. Increased competition is going to be really high on everybody’s mind in the coming year.”-Beth PopNikolov

Beth gives an example of the idea of reducing friction before the purchase point. She talks about Russin Lumber, a high end dealer who wants to work specifically with architects doing custom projects. Russin is using a process to walk the homeowner or building owner through a set of questions to help everyone understand if they are in the right place and build some confidence. 

Zach agrees that this is a really effective way to not only capture more demand, but to also to get customers to convert more easily. He says that companies they’ve worked who have created similar types of tools see a huge spike in traffic. He maintains it's because they are helping the users do what they are trying to do, and that’s why they are winning. 

So it’s kind of a double benefit in that you’re helping your audience and you’re getting more traffic in the process.”-Zach Williams

Dave King joins the webinar to talk about contractor loyalty and contractor challenges. Grant starts by noting that the biggest concern that contractors are facing is budget. He says that challenge keeps hanging around and remains as a constant thread. Dave brings up the historic shortage of labor. He also says that we’ve had high uncertainty for the last 18 months causing everyone to freeze up. The two combined have actually provided some stability. He notes that if there had been a surplus of labor, he thinks that the industry would have seen a lot bigger declines. 

Dave and Grant talk about statistics showing that 3 out of 4 pros have gone to a new supplier, manufacturer, or product in the past few months, indicating a comfort with trying something new. Grant asks if the fact that there is a feeling of pressure about budgetary constraints from the homeowners is a trend that will last. Dave says that as financial uncertainty resolves this could be less of an issue into 2025. He feels that even though contractors have historically been a loyal group, the pandemic opened things up.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for you, contractors had a great experience with trying new brands. I think you’ve got to really fight for your business, fight for that loyalty. We’re seeing that a real hot topic right now is how do we gain the loyalty of the pro.”-Dave King

Zach and Beth talk about the fact that the opportunity to compete in the way the company wants to compete is going to lead to the people with the highest quality and intentionality and thoughtfulness coming out ahead.  Zach describes a trend he’s seen of events where a manufacturer has brought their customer base together to host an event to help train the employees differently. 

Beth says that promoting products that have a decreased labor requirement is a necessity, but also is an easy miss. There are now products that install faster, don’t require skilled labor, don’t require as many people to install it, etc. She says that the question builders and architects are going to ask is the level of gain really worth the pain. She says all change will require some form of loss, friction, conversation and maybe even reduced efficiencies in the very beginning. 

And so what we often say when we’re talking about something like this is that better is not enough. What we really need to do is be different. Markedly, obviously, clearly, different.” - Beth PopNikolov

Sophia Wedeen joins to talk about the demographic and drivers for DIY activity. She spoke about the huge growth in DIY during the pandemic due to the fact that everyone was home with nothing to do and nowhere to spend their money. 

I think DIY grew 44% in just two years, which is unthinkable, right? I think $66 billion in total.”-Sophia Wedeen

They talk about the fact that about 20% of younger homeowners, folks under the age of 35, were doing a DIY project in 2021. That was more than twice what homeowners over 65 were doing. The barriers to homeownership will make that number go down. The data shows that the biggest challenge to homeowners doing a project in the last 90 days has been budget. However, more people are doing DIY projects to save money versus hiring out. Sophia says that a way that they have seen that DIY activity is reflective of financial considerations is that it comes from replacement projects. Grant asks the big question. “Is DIY dead or is it alive and well.” Sopia gives lots of data to show that it appears to be alive and well. 

Zach talks about the fact that people are looking for ways to get creative with their DIY projects. He says to look at TikTok and you will find proof of that. He calls out a company called Wilsonart that got a contractor to make a video of an install in a day. He compares the methods of showing the features of a project, to showing how to use the product actually doing a project. He quotes some statistics about the numbers of likes, comments, and shares the video got on social media and says ultimately that increases conversions. 

Grant says their firm has been hearing the word curation more and more over the past year. Beth says they refer to it as the hyper specific project content. They both talk about the need to tailor the project to the very specific need of the consumer that will need to be addressed by the building materials industry. This is a topic that will be discussed in more detail at the workshop in December. 

Grant shows some information about increased competition in the multifamily space. He says the opportunities may be more in the repair and remodel area. 

You’ve got a new building across the street from a 15 year old building. Well, that 15 year old building might need to update its interior, new faucets, new counters, new cabinets, new flooring, to be able to compete with that new building that just finished up across the street.” -Grant Farnsworth

He says there will certainly be some new starts in multifamily, but manufacturers may benefit most from the fact that they will be the last step in those projects that have already started and are finishing up. Beth agrees that having the flexibility to show where your product works is a necessity. 

Being able to highlight how your product can be retrofitted, or work in multiple spaces, is going to start to be a very important topic.” -Beth PopNikolov

Beth and Grant talk about supply and demand. He says that his firm believes that as we get to the end of 2025 demand could come back strongly. How does that affect availability and logistics challenges? What does that do to the constraints on labor? He says that they see an upside of consumer confidence growth and a sign of contractor optimism. He says that the industry needs to look at their planning data from pre-pandemic because you will see very similar growth rates, very similar project levels, etc. Grant says that an economist will be at the workshop to really look at the macro level and forecasting for 2025 and 2026.

If we think about competition also in 2025, it feels like we have a better grasp on what is going to happen, what are going to be our challenges and our opportunities in a way that we haven’t had that foresight in the last several years. We know what we’re up against. We’re not waiting for the other shoe to drop. It dropped. We’re here.” -Beth PopNikolov

Want the slides talked about in this podcast? Email podcast@venveo.com.

Have more questions about the Building Products Customer Workshop? Go to www.venveo.com/2025

SBMM is co-hosted by Venveo’s Founder, Zach Williams and Venveo’s CEO, Beth PopNikolov.