I’ve got to commend Holly Blalock the Creative Director at C.R. Laine again. She has done an awesome job of leveraging her company’s exposure with marketing partners. This something every small business owner and retailer must do to beat the competition by maintaining and growing your exposure while minimizing marketing cost. Holly follows me and I was really tickled to meet her at High Point in person. What she has done, is something I’ve been advocating for the last couple of years to businesses large and small. It just makes sense to leverage your brand.
Whatever your business, in C.R. Laine’s case it is custom upholstery, you can make this work. Holly identified quality manufacturers of goods compatible with upholstery. These include European aged case goods (www.porteliot.com), hand-knotted rugs (www.kalaty.com), mirrors, wall décor and accessories (www.uttermost.com), fine home décor and lamps (www.orientaldanny.com), blue and white porcelain (www.tozaihome.com), twig chandeliers and lamps ( www.wishdesignsusa.com), fine custom art (www.artscapeusa.com) and hand-crafted rugs (www.companyc.com ).
Holly designed a simple but informative flyer with a complete listing of each vendor, their specialty, their full location and contact including an email contact in addition to the website of each. These were handed out upon entering the C.R. Laine showroom at High Point and buyers are encouraged to source these resources in addition to C.R. Laine. Each vendor chosen has provided selected inventory appropriate to C. R. Laine’s vignettes and is well showcased.
Now the true key in this is for C.R. Laine to, in turn, have a piece or two or three of upholstery in each partners showroom with a similar flyer directing buyers back to their opportunity. In addition, by implementing a password for each order, buyers could be offered even a 5% discount, making leads easy to track from this marketing coop program. C. R. Laine and Holly 
get it. They understand that this isn’t about competition but about collaboration. She knows that while there are a few buyers that will only want upholstery, most also are going to be sourcing for lamps, mirrors, rugs, artwork, and accents.
C.R. Laine becomes the “go-to” resource for their buyers and they increase their exposure, their credibility and subsequently their profitability with a minimal amount of investment. To appear in five or more additional showrooms would typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. Instead to collaborate and share exposure for mutual benefit with a select group of vendors at the same product quality, service level, and price point is what leveraging your brand is all about.
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This is something that could easily be translated into online businesses. It used to be that people traded links. This was called “reciprocal linking”. In SEO campaigns, this type of linking is discouraged as it dilutes the page’s ability to focus on the website.
If a company went out of the way to build a section promoting companies in the same markets selling complimentary items and got a reciprocal from the other group, this could be phenomenal for both companies. It would produce SEO links geared towards the other company and produce additional traffic. Affiliate programs could easily track how effective it was for each company.
Great Post!
This awesome idea is a great example of collaborative cross promotion. Not only are they lifting each other up, they are also providing value to their customers and prospects. It’s a win-win for everyone.