IT’S SHOWTIME!

WASILLA — Heidi Daley and Bill Hubbard found the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center a great place to unwind Saturday.

The Wasilla couple spent part of their time at the annual Mat-Su Fall Home Show enjoying personal demonstrations of deep muscle massage. For Janet Henson of Wasilla-based Medi Massagers, working out those everyday tensions is good for business.

Shows like this weekend’s Valley event are crucial to her operation.

“Really the only way that I sell my product is through shows like this,” Henson said. “I don’t have a store and I don’t do door-to-door type of stuff. So, for me, shows are very important.”

Although most of her business is conducted outside the Valley, Henson takes every opportunity to keep her products visible locally.

“I do most of my shows in Fairbanks and some in Anchorage,” she said. “I wish there were more shows here so I wouldn’t have to travel so far.”

What the convention-type atmosphere does for Henson is establish contacts and a word-of-mouth buzz that relates to sales up to several months after a show.

She has a fan in Daley.

“I can’t feel anything from my knees down it’s vibrating so hard,” Daley said. “It feels great.”

Hubbard finally was persuaded to join in, but said he attends shows like Saturday’s event to glean home improvement ideas.

“We’ve got an older house, so we’re just looking for ideas on upgrading,” he said.

Of the booths that have packed the sports center, many are local, and most say they depend on the exposure and contacts they make at convention-style shows.

Bob Lackey owns Northern Flooring Design Center in Palmer. Since opening his operation last December, this weekend is his first Valley home show.

“We moved here from Michigan, so this is our first one in Alaska,” he said. “But when we did them in Michigan, we got a lot of business over the next six to eight months from the people we talked to. Over the course of a year, it brings in a lot of business.”

And for those who may lament how the economy has affected Alaska, the Last Frontier has been pretty well insulated, Lakey said.

“Compared to where we came from, Alaska is booming,” he said. “We’ve been staying three to four weeks ahead on installations. It’s been great. In Michigan, the economy there is just terrible. People (who complain) about it here don’t know how bad it can get.”

Another Valley business bolstered by working the show is George Shell of Big Lake, who owns Custom Concrete Countertops. On Saturday, Shell spent part of the afternoon talking with Mike Dillingham.

“I’m just getting a lot of ideas,” Dillingham said. “There are a couple of things we want to do at our house. One’s the kitchen and we also have a bathroom we’re looking at doing.”

Shell can help, quipping that contrary to what many may think of the look of the poured concrete countertops, “it’s granite that’s made to look like concrete.”

Home shows are vital to his business, Shell said.

“It’s the exposure, huge exposure,” he said. “The biggest thing I hear is, ‘I didn’t know anybody did this around here’ or ‘I see this on TV all the time.’”

Interaction like that with Dillingham “is what we’re looking for,” Shell said. “That’s because he tells his neighbor about us and the word spreads. These shows are very important. It’s the exposure, and another thing is the critique we get from others and contractors who actually do this kind of work. When they say, ‘This is beautiful,’ that really means a lot to me as a craftsman.”

Someone used to hearing about the beauty of her work is Loi Ricker, owner of Avant Gardens. Ricker not only set up display gardens in her space, she also parked her new mobile greenhouse on the floor at the sports center. It’s a converted 2001 school bus she bought from the Mat-Su Borough and converted to a greenhouse on wheels.

Although most gardeners are putting their beds to bed about this time, Ricker hopes the home show will help line up potential customers for next year.

“This is a perfect way for people to preview our work live rather than looking at a black-and-white advertisement,” she said. “They can see the quality of our work. They definitely want to make their plans for the spring for landscape design and installation. We usually do very well at the shows. It’s the best marketing tool around.”

The show provides a venue to display the versatility of the work done by Pia’s Custom Picture Framing of Wasilla, said co-owner Danny Williams. In addition to traditional flat artwork, his booth also features a framed violin.

“People seem surprised with that,” he said. “We’ve framed up a Civil War pistol, we’ve framed up an 1819 shotgun, a rattlesnake hide.”

The violin belongs to Williams. He used to play until his thumb was amputated in an accident. It was reattached, but ligament damage prevents him from properly playing the instrument anymore.

Mat-Su Fall Home Show continues today at noon at the sports complex in Wasilla.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.