Above, Melissa Francis photographed in New York City, April 5th, 2011.
LAS VEAGAS, NV — On the second day of Design and Construction Week, Bill Darcy, CEO of the NKBA gave his "State of the Association Address" to a packed room at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The past year had seen the National Kitchen and Bath Association grow by 20 percent, with a 120 percent growth in the KBIS Show.
2019 also saw the launch of NKBA's Global Connect initiative, and he welcomed all present from Germany, the UK, Australia and other places overseas who had traveled to make the show. "A spirited exchange of ideas," Darcy said, "will help us all prosper."
Darcy also made note of the industry's ongoing labor problems, and outlined the NKBA's new NextUp Workforce Initiative.
He also outlined the association's efforts at market research, including the 2019 Design Trends report (including the new Outdoor Kitchen report), as well as the Quarterly Kitchen & Bath Market Index.
Finally, he outlined the organizations continued outreach via social media. Social media interactions are up 360 percent Y-o-Y.
"The past ten years have seen unprecedented growth in the association," Darcy concluded, and he mentioned the co-location of KBIS and IBS as an important factor in that growth. "This is our moment," he said, "welcome to the '20s—let's get ready to roar," to enthusiastic approval from the crowd.
Then Darcy introduced Fox Business' Melissa Francis, to conduct the State of the Industry panel.
State of the Industry
Francis is currently a commentator working for the Fox Business Network. She is co-host of After The Bell weekday afternoons with Connell MacShane, an anchor on FNC's Happening Now newscast, and a regular panelist on FNC's afternoon talk show Outnumbered.
Her panelists for the discussion included Michael Akerberg of Nobila North America, who manufacture cabinetry; Katty Pien of LIXIL North America, a global leader in housing and building materials (and parent company of American Standard); Randy Warner of Dacor, an appliances manufacturer; and Adam Sandow of Sandow Media, a media and design company that publishes such magazines as New Beauty and Luxe.
The first topic was on the spread of digital technology, including automation, A.I. and machine learning, which had been slow coming to the industry but seems to have finally arrived.
Sandow opined that robots don't have to be scary. He talked about developing a logistics facility in Memphis, TN that became the highest wage payer in the warehouse business—that was structured to deliver $17.50/hr to its employees—and robots made it possible. The provided great gains in both efficiency and productivity, and those gains were passed along to the 65 people working in the facility. "A whole team of rock stars," Sandow said. "We've absolutely seen it pay off."
Young people, he added, love working with robots.
Francis segued to the ongoing labor shortage, and efforts to get more young people in the trades. Pien noted that according to survey results from her company, young people think of work associated with the bath and kitchen industry (plumbing in particular) as hard, dirty work. Paradoxically, 90 percent of plumbers report a high degree of job satisfaction. Clearly there's a disconnect.
The key, she said, is education. One of the programs LIXIL is investing in is "Tools and Tiaras," designed to introduce more young girls to the trades.
Warner was of the opnion that vocational schools have changed, and are no longer able to deliver the skilled workforce the country needs.
Akerberg felt that government had to take on more responsibility for the development of a trained workforce, or at least spearhead the investment needed for such training.
Francis jumped in to develop that idea, saying the country needed an ongoing system not just of training but of re-training as technologies and industries grow and develop.
"I think the hands-on approach is critical," Sandow said. Getting young people actually familiar with the tools, out on the job site, is the only way they will get a real sense of what trade work entails.
Another key consideration is the longevity of a career; a lot of people, Sandow said, are right now studying for careers that will not exist in ten years time. However, "no robot is going to go in and install a bathroom in our lifetimes," he said.
Pien noted that now, people need to prepare for several different careers over the course of their lifetimes.
Akerberg said that A.I., far from competing for the jobs of tomorrow, can make them more accessible to the upcoming generations. Imagine, he said, a kitchen installer with Augmented Reality goggles, able to access all the information they need. But then, of course, his hand still need to be able to do the work.
Sandow agreed that AR can make the work faster, more efficient and more fun for young people doing the work.
Francis took a step back to wonder if we weren't becoming too dependent on technology. What do we do when something breaks and it's totally beyond our ability to fix it? We are starting to live in a world, the workings of which are nearly incomprehensible, and feelings of fear and helplessness are only to be expected.
Warner answered that, at his company, the emphasis was always more on style and design, with technology more in the background. On a similar note, Pein said that her company's focus was to deliver the products their customers wanted, never simply technology just for the sake of technology. She continued that the technology of greatest use to the modern consumer is online reviews, online comparisons and online research.
Sandow talked about the example of Apple; it has to be simple, and it needs to remove "friction" for the consumer. It needs to get rid of some obstacle or frustration to have real value for the end-user.
As happens in almost any discussion of technology and its applications, thought soon turned to issues of privacy and security. According to Sandow, "There is not a lot of privacy—whatever you put out there stays out there forever. And that's the world we live in today, a world where even Jeff Bezo's phone can get hacked!" But, he thinks that today's young people understand that and take it as a given.
Francis asked, What have people gotten wrong?
Sandow felt that a lot of businesses are asleep at the wheel, unaware or unwilling to address the rapid pace of technological change that surrounds us—and that's when you have disruptors step in and completely upend the business model. People have fear and ego and it prevents them from adapting.
Pein feels that the industry is currently so complex, it is ripe for disruption. E-commerce sites like Amazon are going to step in at some point and the changes will be huge. New customers are going to buy everything online. So how then, she asked, are we adapting to how consumers want to shop?
If we don't have the help of professionals, said Warner, we would be getting so many returns, would be having so many dissatisfied customers. For now, he feels his end of the business is protected from e-commerce, but he doesn't see that lasting forever.
Francis then asked, How do you deliver service as a manufacturer?
How to make it a package is a tricky part, Akerberg said, and I think technology will play a part in how we solve it.
At the high end, it becomes a more "fun" process, Sandow said, more of an event, an experience. And going to a showroom, meeting with an design professional will be a part of that fun experience. At the low-end, he said, it will probably, inevitably, become an e-commerce, plug-and-play solution.
Francis wrapped up the panel by comparing the difficulties manufacturers have in serving their customer to the difficulties TV shows have in finding an audience. "Broad isn't working anymore," she said. "It's like the evening news—very bland. It tries to be something for everyone and ends up being nothing to no one."
And with that, and thanks to the NKBA, Darcy and the collected audience, the panel concluded.