Canadian women will make $30 billion in home-improvement decisions this year.
And that represents about 80 per cent of the purchasing decisions, says Joanne Thomas Yaccato, a leading researcher and advocate of gender intelligence in the workplace.
The home-renovation market is expected to grow by six per cent in 2005 to $38.5 billion - double the level of seven years ago, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. The growth has prompted builders and home-improvement retailers to start paying attention to feminine ideals.
"Our market research shows that women, for the most part, are pretty unimpressed customers," Thomas Yaccato said in a recent interview.
"What businesses fail to see is that women have the veto power. If a guy wants to buy a boat, a car or tool, he will come home, talk to his wife and if she says no, it's no," said Thomas Yaccato, who is president and founder of the Toronto-based Thomas Yaccato Group consulting firm.
Rona Inc., the largest Canadian home-improvement and garden-centre distributor with a network of 530 franchised, affiliated and corporate stores and $4 billion in annual sales, has built a solid business foundation by paying attention to women's needs. As early as 1983 the home-improvement retailer introduced interior-decorating boutiques to its do-it-yourself flagship stores.
"We developed our business plan based on the do-it-yourself model, but we realized that in 75 per cent of couples the woman decides what kind of renovation is to be done," said Stephane Prud'homme, media relations co-ordinator for Rona. "We understood that and adapted our business plan accordingly."
The adaptation included a stronger emphasis on decor departments known as boutiques. "We understood the feminine mind and we changed our strategy. Now our stores are organized around our boutiques and customers are able to clearly see what the interior decoration would look like in their own homes," added Prud'homme.
"These specialized boutiques and our seasonal departments help women make those decisions in the store. And this strategy helps our clients to get things done."
Prud'homme admitted that the emphasis on home decor provides healthy margins of profit for the home outfitter.
Most big-box home-improvement retailers have added high-end renovation supplies and home-decoration departments, which appeal to women customers, said Thomas Yaccato.
"Rona aggressively targets women," noted Thomas Yaccato, who has written three books about women entrepreneurship and gendered business. She has also profiled Rona.
"This company is right on the money," she said. "They trained their staff, talked to their manufacturers, they even developed lighter-weight tools.
"Now a lot of companies are recognizing the influential power that women have," added Thomas Yaccato.
Home Depot, Canada's largest home-improvement retailer, also made changes in order to attract women consumers, including hiring Thomas Yaccato's company to help make the brand's image more friendly to women.
"We brought executives from every department of the company - all the people responsible for store operations, sales, marketing, all aspects of the business - and locked them in a room for a day," Thomas Yaccato said. "Considering 99 per cent of these decision-makers are MAWGs - middle-aged white guys - we offer them a perspective they've missed, a perspective from a women's point of view."
Nick Cowling, public relations manager for the Canadian division of Home Depot, said, however, that the company's recent growth would not have been possible if it had not already been paying attention to women customers.
Home Depot plans to open 25 new stores in 2005, a 23-per-cent increase in the size of its national network.
"We realized that half our customers were women and based on research we realized that women were making over half the purchasing decisions," said Cowling.
Cowling noted that 20 years ago all home-improvement stores had a well-worn concrete look - a set-up that wasn't appealing to women customers.
"We made our stores more shoppable for women by shortening the height of the aisles, putting more products at eye level, installing better, brighter lights, and by redoing or repolishing the floors," he said. "Much of the research that prepared us for all these changes came from our American stores, although our work with Joanne Thomas Yaccato provided invaluable insight."
Along with changes to the physical layout of the store, Home Depot also introduced Do-It-Herself workshops.
"Like the research, the idea came from our U.S. counterparts and it was originally started to help the Monday night football widows," said Cowling. "Yet we found that the workshops attracted a lot of women with a lot of questions."
While Cowling admitted that no formal research was done on the impact of the Do-It-Herself workshops, he speculated that the reason why the seminars were so successful is that women felt comfortable with other women and were able to ask more questions and learn more skills.
"Our breadth in home decor categories has also expanded so that today we have entire departments dedicated to this soft home-improvement category."
Home-improvement stores are not the only ones to recognize what Thomas Yaccato called the 80-per-cent minority.
Jim Ritchie, senior vice-president at Tridel Corp., a company with 70 years of building experience, also appreciated the importance of accommodating women in the home-building market. He said approximately one-third of Tridel's customers are single women.
"That's a significant chunk, so we pay attention to that," said Ritchie. "In fact, the very nature of the condominium lends itself to that demographic."
In order to provide better accommodations, Tridel has a policy of surveying its homeowners to establish areas of improvement. "Our buildings have well-lit garages, security and concierges, all of which are desirable features for a single woman," he added.
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(Romana King can be reached at king@businessedge.ca)
