The Home Depot and Lowe's: Retailing Baseboard Heater Covers

Back in 2008 we launched the original one size fits most easy slip-on baseboard heater cover solution. There's been hundreds of 5 star reviews, numerous complimentary phone calls from customers and lots of interest from the trade press along the way. But to get the attention of the big box stores, it has taken some serious effort.

We've been fortunate to have formed a vendor relationship with The Home Depot. Based in Atlanta, this retail behemoth has confirmed Baseboarders are not only a worthy addition to their heating and hydronics product range, but are also offering their customers a far better solution that simply wasn't available before. Retailers like The Home Depot and Lowe's are all about DIY projects; empowering consumers to do renovation projects without the need for specialized skills and tools . Baseboarders are an obvious perfect fit.

Some people might expect to find the easy slip-on baseboard heater cover at their local Home Depot store. Unfortunately you won't, and there's a good reason for this. Unlike most durable goods, Baseboarders have the characteristics of a Lego set; numerous related components that snap together. The Home Depot currently sells Baseboarders Premium and Basic which combine to a whopping 24 SKU product assortment. Multiply this number of components by several hundred store locations and it's not hard to see why a huge amount of shelf space in addition to constant inventory monitoring would be a never-ending challenge. And then there is the physical size issue. How many products will you find in a retail store that are seven foot in length? Outside of the lumber aisle, not many. Most retailers utilize pallet racking that is eight foot in width by three feet deep. This precious real estate has to turn over product quickly at a certain $ per square foot just to stay on the shelf. The graphic above is nothing more than a Photoshop job to show how Baseboarders might appear when merchandized. Clearly the volume of space required to keep all items on display is unlikely to go over well with a store merchandiser. The amount of product that would be displaced to allow Baseboarders to fit into the store's plan-o-gram would be enormous. Products of this size are simply not retail store friendly.

Thank goodness for the internet. The advantages of using a virtual store are not just about avoiding shelf space limitations, but the opportunity to present sales materials that would never be let into a retail store. Videos that show how Baseboarders are installed and how they look in various styles of residential decor, photos that give insight into the manufacturing process and technical data that can be studied at your leisure all comprise the advantages of the online shopping experience. Since the purchase of baseboard radiator covers require the consumer to take some measurements on their existing old heaters, this selling format has more benefits than drawbacks.

So for the best baseboard heater cover shopping experience, you don't need to run out to your local hardware store, just click here.