By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
Jim and Kaye Biby didn’t know about the Realtor-Builder Trade Show the first year they were in business. For the next seven, they made sure they had a booth there.
“All of our business comes from Realtors,” said Kaye Biby, who runs Show Homes, a home-staging franchise. “We go to make that connection and to say ‘thank you for using us.’”
The Realtor-Builder Trade Show returns Oct. 17 to the University of North Florida. Sponsored by the Northeast Florida Builders Association and the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, about 500 attend the one-day event that brings companies from the region’s two largest trade groups together.
“It’s a way to find out about new products and services, but it’s also for networking,” said NEFAR president Linda McMorrow. “It’s striking the way people will stay for hours talking to each other.”
When the Bibys first attended, their company drew much of its business from Ponte Vedra, a territory the previous owner had developed. Today, Show Homes has customers from across the Jacksonville area. The company has earned $300 million in eight years, which Biby partly attributes to the trade show.
Troy White of Blue Reed Management LLC, a boutique builder from South Florida, is attending the trade show for the first time this year. He’s doing so to introduce La Fontana at World Golf Village, the company’s first Northeast Florida project.
“We’re going to be successful in this if the Realtor community knows about us and buys into our product,” White said.
La Fontana is a 52-condo development that will complete an existing complex, The Residences at World Golf Village.
Several types of outreach are planned, but the trade show will be the company’s premier marketing event, White said.
“I’m all about target marketing. I don’t want to go and cast a really wide net,” he said. “The trade show puts the market I want in front of me for a concentrated period of time.”
The trade show runs 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 17 at UNF’s Adam W. Herbert University Center.