Page 22 - HME Business, August 2017

The Bath Safety Rethink
To compete, HME retailers need to offer knowledgeable, convenient, personalized service and quality products that shed the decrepit image of aging. It’s a generational shift from utility to luxury, or at least relative style and comfort.
“The consumer today is not my father. We think, ‘We are hip, we’re into it, we don’t want an old-looking product, an industrial-looking product in my nice new bathroom,’“ says Rich Lowenstein, vice president of sales at MHI Safe-Er-Grip.
As Baby Boomers enter the bath aid generation, however reluctantly, manufacturers are starting to cater to them with products that either disap- pear into their surroundings or match the décor.
“Does it look institutional, or does it look like it belongs in a home? It’s going to be there for a long time. A person who starts using a bath seat at age 70, that product might be in their home for 10 or 20 years,” says Brendan McEvoy, director of product management at Compass Health.
Responding to a Multi-Faceted Market
Most of the major plumbing manufacturers — Allied Brass, Moen, Delta, Grohe, Kohler — now make grab bars that match their most popular bathroom fixture lines. Instead of a chunky bar that screams “hospital,”
consumers can install a bar that is at home with the faucets, handles and showerheads (many lines have long offered matching fixed-mount and handheld showerheads). Many are offered in different finishes that go beyond stainless steel to brass, chrome, oil-rubbed bronze and other fashion looks, so remodels and even aftermarket installations can match, or at least approximate, their most popular styles to fit in.
Then there are relative newcomers like GrabAccessories (grabcessories. com) and Invisia (invisiacollection.com), that seek to hide the support features in plain sight. A basic towel rod or bath shelf becomes a stunning stealth grab bar. Stylish wall-mounted accent bars and rings are rated to 500-pound load capacity. Even toilet paper holders can be stealth stability aids.
These items appeal not only to the growing generation of active seniors, but to the sandwich generation — midlife adults taking care of their children and their parents.
“The average age of a caregiver is 52. The average age of a patient is 74, based on research,” McEvoy says. “It’s remarkable how that is moving the market.”
Adult caregivers may want bath features that keep their visiting elders safe without making youngsters and guests feel like they walked into the latest episode of “Bates Motel.”
Making a Splash with Bath Aids
The marketing and merchandising of bath safety is critical to success.
As customer demographics change, your approach to selling has to keep up if you want to keep your business strong and growing. That doesn’t mean following fads, but it does mean sizing up your customers, your store and how you stock and staff it, especially for stores that have been operating in more of a warehouse, brown-box model.
Despite competition from general and online retailers the customers are out there, if you know how to reach them. The keys to growing your bath aid business are smart promotion and merchandising, selection and a more concierge-like approach.
“Be cognizant what the image is of your showroom. Do you want to be current, or be the traditional scary medical equipment provider?” says
Jim Greatorex, vice president of VGM’s Accessible Home Improvement of America division. “If you’ve got a showroom, you need to build it into a real showroom that has a retail concept to it, and you need somebody who knows how to do that.”
Take a look around your store. If the floor is crowded with bulky items, rethink their quantity and placement. “If you walk into a home medical supply store and the first thing you see is an electric bed, you feel like you have to be really old to need that,” he says. “In many cases you can use a picture for some of those items.”
Balance a good selection with getting the biggest bang from every inch of floor space. Limit the number of large items on the floor, keep them to the back of the store, and use them to market smaller accessories, which often are suitable for wall displays.
“Make sure to have a display open and set up of the bath seats and transfer benches for customers to sit in or touch and feel,” says Rob Baumhover, of VGM. “I would then merchandise the wall section with the boxed items on shelves towards the floor or just above the displays, then the hanging products above that. Lastly, make sure everything is priced for your customers’ ease.”
Brendan McEvoy, director of product management at Compass Health, recommends the “good, better, best” approach. Have a range of the same product with different features and price points on hand so customers can make the best choices for their budgets and needs.
“Retail accessibility to the products is the number one way to get things to move,” he says. “And the breadth of items available. You can’t just have one bath chair, you have to have the entire [feature] range of chairs.”
Many suppliers of smaller items offer display setups to maximize space while showing off their products.
Safe-Er-Grip’s Changing Lifestyles suction line is easy and space- economical to display, with a 14-item wall-mount setup available. Most of the Changing Lifestyles products are in the $7.99 to $29.99 range, with grab bars selling for $12.99 to $14.99.
Compass Health offers product sets designed to fit into 4-, 8, and 12-foot spaces. “Your four-foot set will get you the basics; 8-foot is a full mobility set and a full bath set; the 12-foot set is for a high-traffic store,” McEvoy explained. That also allows flexibility for stores growing the bath business. “We make sure that we position everything correctly so they know what goes with what. If they’re buying a bath seat, the box says you might need a showerhead, as well.”
Spiffing up the showroom is an important step, but staffing it is at least as important and may even come first.
“If you don’t have someone who has been in retail and knows merchan- dising, get somebody that has that experience,” Greatorex says. “Watch your showroom transform into a real retail experience.”
All the merchandising in the world won’t help if nobody knows you’re in business. For bath aids,
“Letting your referral sources know the type of products you carry is always a plus when getting the word out or driving sales,” Baumhover says. “Many of our customers don’t even know we carry these type of products — this is a big reason many big box stores now do. So market to the masses. Our vendor part- ners have all sorts of helpful marketing pieces and we’re happy to make these connections to help drive sales and enhance the shopping experience.”
Who are the best referral partners? With bath aids, “doctors are too high on the food chain,” Greatorex says. He and other experts recommend putting the word out with home health agencies, therapy divisions of hospitals, senior services organizations such as the local Area Agency on Aging and other agencies that serve seniors.
“The best way to serve yourself is to campaign around your area and let everyone know you are in the business. Try to make sure those referrals will come to your door,” McEvoy says. “Start by saying you are in the busi- ness. Most people are not doing the legwork, so to do that outreach so it is a real advantage.”
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