Steve Ploussard can be excused his nerves as Saturday’s opening of his Home &
Garden Center Direct location draws near.
If the location draws the sort of consumer traffic that Ploussard expects — and
as many as 100 people a day already have been rattling the door, wondering when
the center will be open — he’s ready to quickly roll the concept into at least
10 more markets in the next 18 months.
And if everything goes well, as many as 30 Home & Garden Center Direct locations
in cities throughout the West are a strong possibility.
Working with commercial real estate broker John Mulder of Reno’s Premier Realty
Inc., Ploussard is scouting out second-generation big-box retail space that’s
available for redevelopment.
Once leases are signed, Ploussard is ready to replicate the work he’s undertaken
in Reno.
The 38,000-square-foot Reno store, previously the home of a PetSmart location,
will open this week with 75 unmanned booths rented by home improvement
companies, landscape contractors and the like.
Consumers will swipe a card with a magnetic strip through a reader at booths
where they want more information, and companies will follow up from the
consumer-contact information store on the card’s strip.
Nearly all the booths in the first phase of the Reno location will be leased by
the time the center opens on Saturday. Booths range from 20 to 200 square feet,
and exhibitors pay $350 to $2,000 a month for the space.
Some also have invested heavily into improvements at their booths — installing
stone walls, water features and the like.
Ploussard says home improvement companies have signed on in bunches — as one
countertop company agrees to rent some space, for instance, others have been
quick to follow. “If their competitors are in here, they want to be here,” he
says.
Sales efforts have been boosted, he says, by the slowdown in home construction
and the hunger of contractors and home improvement companies to find new
opportunities to market themselves to the remodeling market.
Ploussard himself is president of Stone Center of Nevada, which fabricates and
installs architectural surfaces.
Once the 75 booths in the first phase re fully rented, Ploussard expects to add
more. The building along Plumb Lane at Highway 395 ultimately will house about
250 booths.
In the meantime, Ploussard says he’ll be spending heavily on marketing in coming
months to keep consumer traffic strong at the Reno location — a key step in
proving the viability of the concept in other markets.
In the meantime, Ploussard says he’ll be spending heavily on marketing in coming
months to keep consumer traffic strong at the Reno location — a key step in
proving the viability of the concept in other markets.
