Melissa Mouradian has made the showroom mobile.

In a year in which “pivot and adapt” have the been operative words for surviving the COVID-ravaged economy, Mouradian has put them into practice with a one-woman traveling promotional products roadshow that aims to be a boon for her distributor customers and the supplier brands she represents.

Melissa Mouradian, West Coast Branded Solutions

The multi-line rep with West Coast Branded Solutions has done this by outfitting a Little Guy Silver Shadow Teardrop Trailer (4 feet by 8 feet in total dimension) with hot products from key supplier lines.

Mouradian bought the trailer in June. She recently took it to the road, conducting personalized trade shows for prospects and clients in outdoor spaces in her vast western sales territory that includes Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and elsewhere. “The reaction has been incredible,” Mouradian says. “I’m getting noticed and getting conversations going that I was having a hard time generating before.”

Supplier brands she represents, including Maple Ridge Farms (asi/68680), have praised Mouradian’s enterprising initiative.

Counselor recently caught up with Mouradian to learn more about how she’s adapted to selling during a pandemic.

Q: What’s the background on the mobile showroom – the genesis of how this came about?
Melissa Mouradian: It was a product of my life experiences and the love of my career. I really enjoyed the pace of my life prior to March and the pandemic shutdowns. As an empty-nester, most weeks I took an airplane to work a different patch of our territory on Mondays and then flew back home on Thursday nights. I stayed at hotel rooms three to four nights a week. I spent my days dragging 100 pounds of samples onto planes, into rental cars, and into three different distributor offices a day to do presentations. With COVID, though, it became clear that even if the distributors I work with opened up their doors for meetings and let me lug my sample cases in and do my song and dance for them, I personally was not going to be comfortable working that way again any time soon. So, I needed to make some kind of drastic, ground-up change to my lifestyle in order to continue my career as a multi-line rep.   

Mouradian’s traveling setup

Q: How did a mobile showroom in particular come to be the solution?
MM: When I was on the supplier side, as the national sales manager for California Tattoos (asi/43530), my job was to hire and train the multi-line rep force. I had the opportunity to work with Tony Tuso and Bob Black, who had been working out of an RV showroom for years in Texas. It was a blast to work with them. It brought me back to RV and camping trips my parents would take my brother and I on when we were growing up.

Anyway, those Texas reps would pull into distributor parking lots and the sales team would come out and meet with us. It always looked so much easier to drive up and entertain rather than dragging samples into offices and doing sweaty, out-of-breath presentations, but it never seemed realistic for me to drive such a large vehicle around Los Angeles (my primary territory up until the beginning of this year). As such, it didn’t even occur to me that I could work that way too. But then the pandemic happened, and I realized I could give it a try.

Q: Can you provide a little more insight on how COVID-19 and its related economic fallout really compelled you to give this a go?
MM: Before I bought my teardrop in June, I had never pulled a trailer in my life, so COVID-19 has basically turned me into a badass out of necessity. I’ve been learning a lot. It has been a big gamble for me to go in this direction and sink money into my career instead of squirreling it away. When I received my Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in May (essentially receiving a guaranteed paycheck for the next few months, all in advance), I made this move knowing that future income after this one big check was something I was going to have to figure out how to generate on my own. I couldn’t wait until things were “normal” again to make it happen. As salespeople, we all know that we work today so we have an income three to six months from now. Multi-line reps are typically a 100% commission-based sales force. I can’t afford to just “wait out” the rough times; I need to keep sales coming in. I do that best face to face and not behind a computer; I knew I could figure out a way to get back to face to face safely. 

Q: What did it take to get the operation up and running? And how’s it been going?
MM: I’m just getting started. When I bought my little teardrop trailer in June, I honestly thought I would be setting up quick little parking lot displays by mid-July. I was wrong. Remodeling both the Jeep and the teardrop into both a mobile showroom and a mobile tiny home has been a huge undertaking. The key has been slide-out drawers and pegboard displays so that a parking lot show doesn’t look like a yard sale. At first, I was using a lot of PVC pipe displays and tables that I would set alongside of my vehicle and place my samples on, but merchandising and marketing attractive displays is a time killer. The entire setup was taking me about an hour, so that all had to change. Now, my goal is a 10- to 15-minute setup with all samples on display boards that easily prop up so it’s less setup on location.  

I’ve done about six shows so far, and I’m down to about a 20- to 25-minute setup. By the time I head to the Seattle area after Labor Day, I should be able to set up in any parking lot that will give me four parking spaces in just 10 minutes. Also, I’m meeting with distributors literally anywhere that has enough space. I’m contacting the Chamber of Commerce for each major area I approach beforehand to get a feel for what city parks or other public spaces may be options. I am also looking into parking garages and hotel parking lots as open house locations.

Q: How has the showroom benefitted you and West Coast Branded Solutions?
MM: My business partners, Daniel Sachs and Steve DeMars, are super adept at covering our needs as far as engaging with distributors virtually goes, so this really gave me the time and flexibility to figure out how to add that in-person/full-territory coverage that we are known for back into our mix. It’s also a great opportunity for me to learn how to utilize social media platforms and video marketing better, which is another area we are targeting for improvement and development during this time. We see our social media sites offering more lifestyle photos and videos of promotional products in use as I drive throughout the territory, essentially becoming a hub for fresh content that clients and potential customers can caption and edit for their own social media channels.

Q: What’s the key to success with the showroom?
MM: Flexibility. Driving into a distributor’s downtown office may not be an option on any given day. Also, who knows how many distributors will actually be at the office if I do set up there, so I am taking a different approach during September and targeting more residential pockets of the towns I am going to. I am doing three- to four-day open houses at different “nicer” RV parks in metro areas. I’m inviting distributors to basically come hang out with me, outdoors.  I’ve got sanitizers and I religiously scrub my samples. We can keep it distant and wear masks. And, we can enjoy a little conversation, a little brainstorming, maybe even a beer – I’ll even Uber you home if you want to stay for a few more! 

My ultimate idea is to find the distributor salespeople who are comfortable with this type of environment and then use all my powers to make both of us money. Do you want me to drive my setup to your end-users’ parking lots? Give me the address! Let’s go get those holiday sales!