Home Stagers Work Together Through "Stage It Forward..." to Create Home Staging Industry Leadership

Lately, with each day, it seems that yet another cyber milestone takes place on the explosive real estate industry network know as Active Rain (www.activerain.com). With so many wonderful “success stories” being shared their daily, the impact of just what Active Rain is capable of has definitely been proven. Plus, considering the site is yet not even 1 year old, it blows one’s mind to think what is possible for its members in the future.

While Active Rain has helped many Realtors from across the country, it is the Home Staging Industry that can attest to just how powerful an impact it has made to help develop and unite this young but growing industry.

For the first few months after Active Rain first launched itself on the web, few home stagers took part. But the very day Active Rain added the "Group" functionality... the Stage It Forward group (www.activerain.com/groups/StageItForward) was born and more and more Stagers joined. Today, that small group hit its own milestone... the 300th member joined. (Actually it hit and surpassed 300 as I was writing this article.) And while that might not seem like a big deal to most... considering the group is just under 4 months old, it is major accomplishment for the growing Home Staging Industry.

To date, Active Rain has an astounding 22,000 members representing every segment of the Real Estate Industry (13,250 are Real Estate Agents). With the vast amount of information being written and posted on a daily basis, the developers of the site created a “Groups” feature to help manage, subcategorize and maneuver through all the information. Now, with over 650 sub-groups, the Home Stager’s Stage It Forward group consistently holds the position of “Top 10 Most Active” groups in the “Rain”. This group, freely accessible to view and join, has become a gateway resource to valuable information that is respectfully passed on to home seller, Realtor and Home Stager alike. Each day, members and the general public can read well articulated stories of staging from all across the USA and Canada.

Realtors and home sellers, who never have used staging to help sell a home, can go there and be bombarded with visually stunning examples of what a professional Home Stagers can do. Stagers are relentless in sharing all that the can to make sure Realtors and sellers “GET" the benefits of what Home Staging can do for them. Still not sold on staging? Then all you need to do is go this group to read stories of success, one after another, after another.

But what is most surprising to see is how Stagers help and support each other. You see the Home Staging Industry has for a long time been saddled with underlying negativity that was keeping it small. For while the ‘concept' of staging has been around for years, a separate and distinct national staging industry is just now beginning to come into existence. Unfortunately, up until now, there was a network of “feudal warlords”, within the industry, who have developed their own staging kingdoms... and were battling it out. This feuding has kept the "industry" small with no industry-wide leader rising out of the bickering bunch.

Tired of the fighting, individual Stagers have risen up to unite and lead each other together. Within Stage It Forward these stagers are creating synergy and harmony at the BIRTH of an industry. The site and the group are working wonderfully. Participation in the Stage It Forward group, gives Stagers, Realtors and home sellers easy access to a vast amount of information on home staging. But more importantly, with each day and each new member, home stagers can see how powerful sharing and respecting diversity can help move the Home Staging Industry forward into the future.