How Does Your Compensation Measure Up?

Be sure to participate in the next KitchenBathDesign.com Online Poll, which asks how kitchen and bath designers and salespeople are paid, online now.

How Does Your Compensation Measure Up?

While salary packages vary widely in the kitchen and bath industry, dealers and designers/salespeople are working long hours and many say they're not reaping the financial rewards for their labor. Still, most are optimistic about improvements in 2003.

A tighter economy has forced many kitchen and bath dealers not only to work longer hours, but to take on additional responsibilities and frequently cut back on benefits or become more creative in terms of packaging them in order to stay competitive.

For designers/salespeople, low salaries, long hours and a dearth of benefits are among the biggest concerns of the new millennium, particularly at low-volume dealerships.

However, despite this, more than half remain optimistic about seeing an improved financial picture in 2003, according to a recent compensation survey by Kitchen & Bath Design News.

Designers/salespeople, in particular, seem to be struggling financially (see graph 2), with nearly a third of those surveyed (30.3%) reporting an income of $35,000 a year or less in 2001. Another third (33.3%) earned between $35,000 and $49,999, while 21.9% earned between $50,000 and $74,999. On the higher end, some 8% reported making between $75,000 to $99,999, 4.5% earned between $100,000 to $149,999 and 2% made over $150,000.
Men generally earned more than women, with 44.3% of male designers/salespeople earning over $50,000, compared to 31.1% of female designers/salespeople.

Dealer income, of course, was considerably higher (see graph 1), with more than half (60%) of all dealers reporting a total income of over $75,000 for 2001, 35% earning over $100,000, and 20% earning more than $150,000 in 2001. At the higher end of the pay scale, male dealer incomes were more than double that of female dealer incomes, with 22.9% of male dealers surveyed reporting earnings of more than $150,000 for 2001, compared to only 11.2% of female dealers.

Additionally, 45.2% all designers/salespeople reported receiving a bonus in 2001, and more than half expected to see a bonus in 2002, with expected bonus amounts varying widely, running the gamut from a few hundred dollars to nearly $30,000.

Overworked?
Long hours were a common complaint among both dealers and designers/salespeople, with 86.3% of dealer/owners (see graph 3) and 67.8% of designers/salespeople (see graph 4) reporting working more than 40 hours per week on a regular basis.

Among both dealers and designers/salespeople, men were more likely to work 40+ hour work weeks than women, with 88.2% of male dealers and 78.5% of male designers/salespeople working more than 40 hours weekly, compared to 76.5% of female dealers and 59% of female designers/salespeople.

However, the survey did not show a correlation between increased number of hours worked and increased income; rather, many of those with the highest number of hours worked were in the lowest salary cate-gory. And, in fact, designers/ salespeople on the West Coast who worked the fewest number of hours, compared to other geographic regions drew the largest salaries.

Kitchen and bath dealers also rated factors impacting how they compensate employees, with customer service skills topping the list of qualities they would pay top dollar for. Design skills were the second biggest factor impacting pay, followed by experience in the industry, sales skills/ability to bring in jobs, attitude/personality and longevity with the firm.

The CKD Debate
Surprisingly, one of the factors that did not seem to have a major impact on kitchen and bath designers' pay scale was the Certified Kitchen Designer or Certified Bath Designer certifications. In fact, a whopping 85.7% of kitchen and bath dealers said they would not pay extra for a designer with a CKD or CBD designation (see graph 5).