This week, I attended the Home Hardware Spring Market in St. Jacobs Ontario and I visited Home Hardware stores in Ontario & Quebec on my way back to Nova Scotia. I’m ending the week giving In-store product demonstrations & answering customer questions at Kent Building Supplies in Halifax, Nova Scotia
We are offering In-store demonstrations for our local dealers in the Maritimes, just like the demonstrations you see performed at large retail locations, such as supermarkets, discount stores, or in shopping malls. The products that are promoted at in-store demonstrations may be food and beverages, food preparation equipment, housekeeping products, personal care items, or occasionally other types of goods … In our case, Trail Blazer’s top selling products available at the maritime location we’re demostrating in. Our in-store demonstrations are being done by employees from our manufacturing facility in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Most of them are not trained to seek out customers likely to buy the products or sales of any kind … but they know details about how the product is built & operates.
Betty Millard manages our shipping department and is demonstrating at Kent’s in Moncton Saturday & Dartmouth on May 12. I’m demonstrating at Kent’s in Halifax Saturday, Fredericton on May 12. I’m joining Mark Cullen at Home Hardware in Barrington Passage on June 22 and Home Hardware in Weymouth on June 23.
We introduced our Reverse-D Handle Snow Shovels at the Home Hardware Spring Market, which features a handle turned 90-degrees so that it’s perpendicular to the shovel face. The sideway configuration provides a better grip, leverage & the wrist doesn’t bend!! This takes the strain off your wrist to allow your forearm to do most of the lifting. We 1st received rave reviews about the Reverse-D Handle from farmers and decided to create a snow shovel with the same feature.
We are known mainly as a manufacturer of yard and garden equipment and saws, knives & hatchets for the outdoors. I noticed most of our products were removed from retail shelves in the winter to make way for the new season. Now with our Reverse-D Handle Snow Shovels, Trail Blazer is able to offer you products all year-round.
During the Home Hardware Spring Market I had opportunities to discuss future product ideas with different dealers from across Canada, other vendors & the fine folks with Mark’s Choice Ltd including Brenda Hensley. I will start working on her ideas right away … Thank you Brenda, your always great to work with. This year I received feed back for an idea to complement our yard & garden equipment that I am very excited to start working on right away. I also received suggestions on three completely new products including one that would complement our Reverse-D Handle Snow Shovels.
I’m now scheduling time for new product development and look forward to putting some time towards new saws, knives & hatchets for the outdoors industry where Curtis Levangie (My Dad) began with Trail Blazer’s first product, the Take-Down Buck Saw. A product that is popular today in over 40 countries.
Looking back, April 30th, 2011
One Year Ago, spring definitely arrived because our stores were ordering more products because their initial supply was sold out.
Today, spring products have been delivered to the stores but where is spring … we’re still receiving snow in places
All the Best, Shawn Levangie