What does a curtain, blind or wallpaper shop lose by not selling online?
What does a curtain, blind or wallpaper shop lose by not selling online?
A shop without an online store loses three things that never show up on any report - the evening buyer who wanted a price at 10pm, the made-to-measure sale that died waiting for a quote email, and a place in the answers AI assistants now give when someone asks where to buy blinds or wallpaper. Mordor Intelligence puts offline retail at 72.86% of the window coverings market in 2025 - still the majority - but online is the side that is growing, at 5.75% a year through 2031. Lost sales you can see hurt. Lost sales you never see are the ones that close shops.
I have been in this trade since 2011, when my wife Evelina opened Admaja, her curtains salon in Klaipėda. I have watched the customer change from someone who plans a Saturday trip to the showroom into someone who measures the window after dinner and expects a price before going to bed. The shops did not change at the same speed. That gap is where the money quietly leaks out.
When do people actually buy blinds and wallpaper?
Not at 11 on a Tuesday morning, which is when your showroom is quietest and your staff most available. They measure after work, sit on the sofa at 9 or 10 in the evening, and start looking for a price. Grand View Research values the blinds and shades market at 14.8 billion dollars in 2024, growing to 24.6 billion by 2030 - and the part of that growth happening after your closing time goes to whoever has a store open at that hour. A closed showroom at 10pm is normal. A closed website at 10pm is a choice.
Don't people want to touch the fabric first?
Many do. NAHB research says over 60% of consumers still prefer buying window coverings in a physical store, and I believe it - @evelina-baltune salon lives on exactly those customers. But read the number the other way - nearly 4 in 10 don't need the showroom, and that is the share that is growing. Even the showroom customers behave differently now. They visit you, go home, and check your prices online before coming back. If there is nothing to check, some of them quietly check a competitor instead. The online store does not replace the showroom. It stops the showroom from leaking.
Why does "email us for a quote" kill made-to-measure sales?
Because the customer has the tape measure in their hand right now. Made-to-measure has a built-in excuse - every window and every wall is different, so shops hide the price behind a quote form. The answer arrives in two days, the moment has passed, and somebody else showed a price instantly. This is the exact problem I built the Curtain and Blind Calculator and WallpaperCalc for on Shopify - the customer enters width and drop, or the wall dimensions for wallpaper, sees the price and the rolls needed, and adds it to the cart at 10pm without asking anyone anything. I sell these apps, so of course I would say this - discount my opinion accordingly, then go watch what your own customers do when they hit a quote form. The abandonment tells the story better than I can.
What happens when AI assistants start recommending shops?
This is the part that gives me real urgency. People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini "where can I buy made-to-measure blinds" instead of scrolling through Google. An AI assistant can only recommend a shop it can read - products, prices, pages, structured data. A showroom with a Facebook page is invisible to it. And an AI answer is not page one of Google with ten blue links - it names two or three shops and stops. Those slots go to retailers whose products actually exist online, and once an engine learns who to cite for a niche, it keeps citing them. In July 2024 SelectBlinds, an online retailer, partnered with LEVOLOR to push into commercial window coverings - the online players are not waiting to see how this plays out.
Is it too late to open an online store?
No - but every month of waiting is a month a competitor's head start compounds. Reviews accumulate, search history accumulates, AI citations accumulate, and none of it can be bought back later at any price. The shops that went online around 2020 now own the results for their towns. The next set of winners is being decided roughly now, while most of the trade still believes online is only for cheap ready-made products. Fifteen years in this industry taught me the trade moves slowly - which is exactly why the ones who move early keep the advantage for so long.
The showroom will still be there. The question is whether anyone can find you outside of it.
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