Guest Profile: David SoriaDavid has been in the industry since the mid 90s before joining America's Window Covering Buying Network in 2021. His previous experiences include in-home sales for a local retailer and sales management as well as field sales for national brand suppliers to the industry.Other Notes/Links:To learn more about David Soria visit:America's Window Covering Buying Networkpssst.... want to be a guest on the show?Listen to other episodes
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TranscriptWilliam Hanke (00:02)All right, hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning service providers or business owners about their successes and struggles related to marketing their business. Today’s guest is David Soria. David has been in the window treatment industry since the mid 90s before joining America’s Window Covering Buying Network in 2021.His previous experiences include in-home sales for a local retailer and sales management, as well as field sales for national brand suppliers to the industry. David, thank you so much for being on today.David Soria (00:43)welcome.William Hanke (00:45)Excited to have you here and kind of talk through a little bit about what’s known as the network, I guess, right? Yeah, awesome. So why don’t you start out by sharing a little bit of background about your journey, obviously, in the window treatment industry and some key roles that have helped you kind of shape your expertise.David Soria (00:51)Yep, that’s right.Sure, sure. You I got started in the industry when I answered a newspaper one ad, if you remember those, looking for a salesperson, somebody who might have an interest in design and who would be doing shop at home sales for that company. at the time I’d done some in-home sales, had a background in theater design and also in teaching.William Hanke (01:15)YouDavid Soria (01:33)And the job sounded interesting. And this was for a fairly large window coverings retailer in the Chicago area. And when I started with them, they had over a dozen shop at home decorators working for them, big company. They had their own workroom, made their own drapery, vertical, shears, top treatments. And, you know, talk about a nice problem. They were drowning in leads. I got a two weekcrash course in their showroom on blind shades and drapery and then I started taking sales calls. I mentioned that they were busy. I still remember I took 20 in-home calls my first full week with them. Mostly for hard treatments but still 20. A of customers to see. The owner had really great plans to expand.William Hanke (02:21)Wow.David Soria (02:28)eventually moved me into a supervisory role doing ride-alongs with the team, training, setting up promotions, working with the general manager and our marketing manager to develop programs and incentives. At the time, I didn’t know that the owner was building up some debt behind the scenes and that eventually caught up with him and forced him to close. I was fortunate enough to leave before that happened.I then went to work as a territory rep for a hard treatment fabricator that had recently expanded into the Midwest. I was with them for some really tremendous growth and change at that company and the industry. We saw our product mix shift dramatically from more commodity products like verticals and cellular into the explosion of interest in horizontal woods then.natural shade category and really the first big wave of screen shades and motorization. That company was eventually purchased by a larger national company right around the time of the 07-08 financial crisis and a number of years later they got absorbed into another company. I continued with them for a number of years before I moved on.wanted to make a change,