Display Fixture DMer Sees Online Path
For Display Supply and Lighting, the brightest possible future seems to be online.
In the past two years, the firm has experienced growth of more than 10%, thanks largely to its online marketing efforts, says Rob Cohen, vice president of sales and product development.
The business-to-business direct marketing company was started 29 years ago by Walt and Jo Filipowicz, a husband and wife who taught school for a living.
Their first lines were multi-outlet electrical strips and Velcro products for the trade show industry, marketed via catalogs, says Cohen. Gradually, the company expanded into the business of selling lighting fixtures as well.
Over the first 20 years, the couple built the business into a $3 million a year enterprise, says Cohen.
Then, about nine years ago, Cohen and his partner Dennis Wojcicki bought into the company and began moving the firm more into online selling. The Filipowicz’s remain minority shareholders.
DS&L, which now pulls in about $15 million annually, uses its catalog, direct mail pieces, a Web site (www.dslgroup.com), trade shows and industry associations to sell to more than 2,500 companies nationwide that are engaged in building exhibits or retail displays, Cohen says.
The Itasca, IL company’s database numbers more than 4,000, since many of its customers have more than one product specifier, he notes.
“We sell to the builders or distributors of exhibit systems and then they sell to the ultimate exhibitor,” he says. The average sale is less than $600.
“The catalog is approximately 48 pages and it’s mailed throughout the year. Then we do updates a couple of times a year,” says Cohen. He stresses that the catalog is not used for mailing so much as it is a reference book for customers, even though the catalog contains less information than the Web site.
“We try to do general mailings highlighting products six or eight times a year,” says Cohen, noting search engine optimization is also part of the marketing strategy.
One thing that helped the company over the past two years was a three-dimensional product catalog on its site, developed by Kaon Interactive. The 3-D pages display DS&L products in an animated form and enable users to rotate the images, says Cohen.
On top of that, the system allows users to download computer aided design files, so they can make their own renderings of what DS&L products would look like in actual use.
For the moment, although DS&L doesn’t plan to stray too far from its core customer base, it is considering strategic alliances with firms in other markets that want to sell into trade show and display marketplace. But don’t expect anything drastic.
“We don’t want get too greedy,” Cohen says.
