Giving you and your business the internet presence it deserves at a price you can afford!

Articles - UFA 2003

Sitting in Samantha Kurtz’s vibrant seminar at the Unfinished Furniture Trade show in Indianapolis in June, my mind was spinning and my pen raced across the back of an envelope, writing down all her ideas, and remembering old ones.  I applauded those who came early to the show to attend education day.  Walt Disney made a fortune by placing himself in situations where ideas can be generated, and that is what the annual UFA show is all about – possibility and regeneration.  Not just making orders on the show floor.  Samantha’s reoccurring theme about the untapped depths of our market and the missed sales made me go home, write up her notes and dredge up some of previous notes from my own lectures and earlier UFA education day sessions of years gone by.  And here is a synopsis of all of it, organized in a logical fashion for you to act on. 

 How do you market your goods?  Do you promote personal expression, creativity, real wood, customizing options and tremendous value?  Or does your advertising program scream cheap, low end, and bargain basement?  Do you look like a furniture store or an outlet store? Does your store meet the needs of the humans who buy furniture? Do you make a space for their comfort, where they can linger and make decisions?  What does the look of your store say about you?   What does your service policy say about you?  How do people feel when they enter your store?  How do they feel when they leave?  Are you masterminding a concrete vision of your store that is consistently conveyed, or is it just up to chance?

 The goods you sell, your customer service policy, your sales training programs, and your marketing policy and your store’s image all affect your path to profits.  There is a known formula developed across all industries that provides a roadmap to success.  This article examines marketing and sales concepts, and then provides specific strategies for you to adapt for your store.  Each sales and marketing concept is in bold italics followed with an action list.

But I don’t have the time! I know you will be thinking this as you read this article so let’s address this issue up front.  The third stage of business planning is delegation: You should not be doing most of the things listed in this article. As the storeowner, you are leader of the pack, captain of the ship.  You must trust that good marketing will generate the sales to cover your costs.  But marketing is not even that risky – the formulas are pretty tried and true.  Proceed with your plan in stages, measuring your progress as you go, spending in a rational manner. But if you do not delegate and outsource, your store will be the way it is now 10 years from now, and you will be just as tired 10 years from now.   Whether it is hiring a temp to update the prices on your website once a month, having a party planner set-up your next client event or contracting with a decorator to design your store windows, the options for one-time outsourcing and delegating are endless.  I have highlighted some of the delegation opportunities in this article in red.  You know how to outsource – most of you don’t change the oil in your car, or grow your own food, or weave the cloth for your clothing.  Why is it some of us know how to manage time in our personal lives and then become control freaks in our businesses?  Start honoring yourselves and your business plan more than your interruptions.  

Generation x offers a huge market waiting to be filled.

Large national store chains such as Target purposely plan locations where the population is heavily generation x – they love to shop and buy.  Generation x represents that age group from 22 to early thirties.   They have these characteristics:

1. #1 marrying population
2. First group raised with a computer
3. They hang out at gathering places like Starbucks
4. Crave relationships because parents were always working
5. Love retro everything
6. Love arts, crafts, and shaker looks
7. Will give up income to have more time
8. They like to have their children with them

What can you do to capture market share with generation x?  Let’s review – they are married with children, like antique, shaker, arts and crafts, computers, gathering, events, and love to shop.  You must accommodate the “way” they love to shop.

1. Change some of your print ads to lifestyle ads – newlyweds or couples with kids.
2. Supply computer access on the showroom floor for the customer.  I love stores that have a computer with Internet access on the showroom floor.  Generation x’rs love to use “your digital catalogue” on your website – they can look for more pieces at the links to your manufacturers sites.  Think of the ways you could use a computer kiosk in your store. 
3. Play great music – it puts people in a good mood!  They buy more when they are happier.  Let your salespeople pick and set up the music – they sell more when they are happier.  You will be happier.
4. Do vignettes (hire a decorator) featuring country, contemporary and shaker. The nature of your product lends itself to creativity.
5. Your cable television ads should be an event in themselves: funny, witty and driving home the value and creativity of unfinished furniture. (Have an ad agency design the ad).
6. Provide stain centers as a gathering place in your store where customers can be comfortable, relax and select their finishes.  Display your sample blocks at eye level, showing all the colors that are popular with today’s buyer.  Have comfortable seating and a table where people can test the finishes.  This is a great opportunity to blend a couple of upholstered pieces and a few interesting finished end tables and a coffee table to show how well they work together.  All of your display furniture should say cool, custom, upscale, exciting or wow!  (Contact your stain manufacturers for specification and instructions on how to set up a center.  Hire a manufacturer to build the case goods in the center. Contract with a student decorator to pick out a couple of pieces of comfortable, current furniture).
7. Prominently display notices for a wedding registry.  Wedding guests can pay for a share of selected pieces of furniture.
8. Constantly find ways to demonstrate value.  Buy a finished piece from Restoration Hardware and put a comparable unfinished piece right next to it.  A 55” white Cornwall Pedestal table from Restoration Hardware costs $1195.  The 60” fluted pedestal table from John Greenleaf retails for approximately $815.   Add a can of stain and you have value!  Or put a John Greenleaf Avignon chair  ($119) for next to Restoration Hardware’s Logan x-back dining chair ($189).  Ask the customer to compare.  They will figure it out.
9. A web site is a must.  The web provides a catalog and saves generation x’rs time.  Your store provides the tactile purchase experience. (Hire someone to do your website for you).
10. Accommodate their children in your store.  Two income earners feel a need to have children with them during non-work hours.  Women appreciate the ability to have a place for their children nearby in the store. (Put one of your sales people in charge of the project)

·        Provide a secure child-care area with television showing Disney style films.
·        Stock it with models of children’s furniture that you sell.
·        Set out small tables with puzzles. 
·        Put out an oversized stuffed animal for children to play on.
·         Provide activity books for kids.
·         Provide a clean, pleasant restroom with a baby-changing area.  Folding wall units are available.  Restrooms are very important!
·        Provide valet parking during big sales.
·        Meet your customers needs. Provide a coat rack or a place customers can put packages and strollers.

Give consumers a reason to come back to your store.  What can you do?

Give generation x and every one else fun, interesting reasons to come to your store.  Create constant change within your store and your advertising program – Americans love new!

1. Move furniture, change out finished pieces of furniture, repaint, and rotate accessories continually.  Make a sales person responsible for “their” section of the store. Award a prize at the end of the year for the best job.
2. Change your vignettes and store fronts regularly.
3. Use movable walls to create new looks within the store on a regular basis.  (Prebuilt, movable walls available from www.conniepost.com)
4. Set up one or two big round accessory tables right at the entrance and change them every month.   Set out finished and unfinished versions of the small furniture items that you sell, along with a couple of plants and any other accessories that you sell. Hire a decorator to do the first few if you are “decorating impaired”.  Some thoughts on merchandising with accessories; remember that you are selling furniture!  Go slowly, buying only a few accessories at first. Be aware of the mood of your market, not your personal taste!   Remember, design for the market, otherwise you will end up marketing your design!  To get a list of gift trade shows scheduled by the month, http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-a=00031ee6-sp00000000&sp-q=gifts
5. Create advertising opportunities with events. Rather than promoting a fire sale, (telling people to hurry and come get it before you burn it), promote an in-store event that is fun such as a craft show featuring quilting, pottery, stamping, stencils, a local artist, etc. Anything – think and grow rich! Hire an event planner to help you.  Here are some more ideas:

	Conduct an in-store staining contest for customers.  Give them specific categories such as modern, shaker, or vintage.
	Ask a decorative painter to do demonstrations for you and give their students a discount.
	Have events for children: a rocking chair contest– who can rock the longest, or schedule a “paint your own furniture day” each month.  All you need is a couple of kids painting furniture in your showroom to ramp up the energy level.
	Conduct annual client appreciation event (private sale by personal invitation, held after hours, walk-ins are not turned away!) Hire an event planner.
	The Great Pumpkin Give-away (give away pumpkins at your store front)
	Family fun day (clowns, magician, free soda and pop corn)
	rees for life program – give away tree seedlings with each sale.

6. Colored furniture is becoming a bigger item each year – stain a few pieces in red, black, or yellow, etc. and put them on your floor.  Keep changing them.  Put them back in storage, and bring them out a second or third time before selling them.
7. Change at least the home page on your web site on a regular basis.

 Customers buy what they can see, not what is going to be.  Most are decorating impaired.  What can you do?You must provide ways for people to complete the feeling that brought them to the store.

1. Change your windows to reflect custom, creative, value, and real wood.  Fill your windows with colorful finished pieces right next to the same unfinished piece – a “before” and “after”.(Hire a decorator).
2. Hire a finisher to make finished display samples – don’t sell them!!!!  If you sell a floor sample, it is one event.  If you keep the sample on the floor, you will make 10 more sales.
3. Keep your showroom floor and shelves filled!  Full shelves promote confidence.  Empty shelves make people wonder if you are going out of business.
4. Have an idea book in your stain center.  To get one started, go to http://www.buyunfinishedfurniture.com/Idea%20Book/ideabook.htm.  There are two files formats (Word or PDF) there that you can print out and use in your stain center.  The more “how to’s” you give customers, the more they will buy (you are making the purchase safe) and the more likely they will be to finish it themselves
5. Constantly photograph pieces that you finish in the store and provide copies with staining instructions
6. Have an annual finishing contest to get more pictures.  Promote it in your stain center and on your web site.
7. Display trend boards with pages of magazines (House Beautiful, El Décor, Better Homes and Gardens, etc.). Mount on foam board with spray glue.  Add sample paint chips. (Contact an interior design college and get a student to put it all together).

Customers expect and are willing to pay and wait for custom goods. How does that affect you?

1. Don’t give away your staining services.  People value their time.
2. Under- promise and over-deliver.  Don’t tie yourself to stress by promising quick delivery.  They may ask for fast delivery but they don’t really expect it.  Don’t let the whiners dictate your policy – be tough.
3. Start spraying to speed up your delivery process.  Today’s water base finishes are easy to spray and do not require specialized spray booths.
4. Draft a detailed price list for your staining services, offering highly customized (two-tones or glazed pieces) for a higher price than a one-finish stain. Your strongest position is to have everything in writing.  The customer can choose what they want from the list.
5. Expand your resources for staining. Contact woodworking classes in your local technical and high schools.  Approach antiques dealers and refinishing shops.  Lease space in your store to the refinisher, a decorative painter, or a local artist – just like the hair salons do.

 Consumer’s most precious resource is time.  How does that affect your business relationship with them?

1. When a delivery is botched, they give up valuable vacation or personal time.  It does matter.
2. Consumers go crazy if you don’t have a web site so they can do preliminary research from home.
3. Consumers go crazy if you don’t have inventory on your site.  The “stop in our store and browse around” line with a couple of pictures of furniture just does not work with everyone any more.
4. Consumers go crazier when your treat prices on your website like a state secret.  Anybody can find out by calling. The point is they just want the information fast in this new information age.  And they will move on to a vendor that honors them with the information necessary to make shopping decisions from the leisure of their home.  Not to mention the time you spend answering their questions by phone or email.  If you don’t have time to update the prices for your site, hire a temp to make up a list and send it to your webmaster.

 The 5^th stage of business planning is collaboration.  What can you do?Start setting up business partnerships with all the people that surround the furniture buying experience.  

1. Lease space in your store to anybody involved in home goods.  Depending on your current location, this could be a separate storefront or just one simple 10 x 10 section of floor space.  Lamps, kitchenware, silk plants are examples of goods.  The services mentioned earlier, decorative painters, local artists or refinishers would enhance the draw to your store.
2. Seek reciprocal relationships with antiques, refinishers or decorators.
3. Seek out local vendors for accessories that can be arranged in your stores on consignment, such as silk flowers from a local florist, or crafts from local craftsmen.
4. Give design consultants a commission on goods that they sell, rather than a steep discount.

 Customers expect knowledgeable service.  Take care of the person that cuts your paycheck.Personal service and customer care is how you differentiate from the big box stores. You are not a box store – don’t try to behave like one or compete with one.  You offer something entirely different. Box stores offer everything under one roof practically 24 x 7.  Customers don’t expect great customer service at these stores.  Your store is experiential, offering personal customer service, advice, and options for customization and creativity– promote that difference!  The web has neutralized product and brands – the focus is on service more than ever because people can find any product that they want from multiple sources.

1. Require your sales staff to read the book “Furniture Facts” (available at 800-444-6141),  as part of their basic training.  Surveys indicate that consumers expect small store sales staff to know more than the big box stores.  That’s why they are in your store!
2. Require your staff to watch the finishing videos that you use – they are great training tool!
3. Give away staining videos free with purchase – they only cost a couple of bucks and providing them with the purchase will prevent a lot of headaches.
4. Make it easy for customers to select their finishes.  Make sure stain blocks are well displayed and brochures are readily available.  The availability of good color merchandising tools is critical to what the consumer walks out the door with.  A lot of customers are not receptive to buying a piece of furniture until they find the color they want.  Effective color merchandising enables you to be perceived as the color authority to the consumer.
5. Provide detailed product cards on each piece on your floor
6. Put prop boards featuring the different specialty finishes (faux, crackle, distressed, etc.) around the store with directions on back.  Hand out copies of specialty finish instructions to your customers.

 How your store looks is very important – what can you do?Your store’s exterior affects 74% of the decision of what is inside. The interior of a store represents 40% of the store’s brand identity.  A store’s exterior should signal what is in the interior. The style of the building will affect the perceptions of the product offered inside. 1 in 7 customers never get out of the car because the exterior did not match expectations created by advertising.

1. Good-looking awnings add architectural interest and help control light on the interior.  Use bold or soft colors, stripes, etc.
2. Add pots of seasonal flowers out front.
3. Put furniture out on the front porch in fair weather, especially rocking chairs.  If you are using the same unfinished furniture over and over again, top coat the furniture with a clear water base.
4. Clean is good. Clean windows.  Clean floor. Clean people. Clean clothing. Make each sales person responsible for maintaining a section of the floor.  Have them tidy up their section every day, shutting drawers, organizing accessories.  If you have aisles, keep them straight. When you wash the windows, don’t forget to wash the sign.  Also, let them accessorize as they wish – their results will surprise you, allows them to express creativity and it makes good use of any “down time.”
5. Create ambience, excitement and feeling. Hire a decorator to stage your store window two or three times a year. Hire a decorator to update your vignettes. Dump the mauve flowered wallpaper with pale blue borders and get a look that is now!
6. Use softer elements in your store. Bring in seat cushions or cloth placemats
7. If you are a warehouse store, the customer should walk thru the vignettes as they enter the warehouse portion
8. If you have fluorescent lighting, switch to color corrected bulbs and add track lighting to highlight appropriate areas.
9. Add floor lamps to vary the lighting.
10. Put lit table lamps near your windows to give the store a sense of being open.
11. Give the vignettes in your windows views from both sides.
12. Change your windows to reflect custom, creativity, value, and real wood.  Fill your windows with colorful finished pieces right next to the same unfinished piece – a “before” and “after”
13. Burn candles around the store – in safe containers!14. Put mini vignettes on each end cap. Add a piece of finished furniture and an accessory or two.

 Human behavior during the sales process is predictable.  What can you do?

1. May I help you?” “No, just looking.”   Don’t believe it.  They didn’t fall off a pumpkin truck, bump their head and wander into your store by accident.  This standard answer just means they just want safety.
2. Consumers need 15 feet of space to adjust to feeling safe in your store. If you watch a customer come in, your will see them transition by slowing their pace, visually scanning the store, looking over the flow of walking spaces. What can you do?
3. The first 200-300 square feet of floor space is the first and last impression. Have lots of color and interest in this area.  Finished pieces, tables with small items stacked on them, some finished, some not – accessories if you carry them.  Your stain center should be located close to this 15-foot zone.  As a welcoming and naturally colorful space, your customers will be immediately drawn to the stain center as a safe and interesting place.  Having your stain center located here also helps your sales people in their initial approach – it becomes a “collection area” with lots of neutral conversation starters to talk about.  Provide a sitting area in your stain center for couples to discuss decisions, with free snacks.  Provide complimentary coffee/tea/hot chocolate/water. In addition, customers can touch and carry the stain blocks and self-engage themselves into the sale. Because our world is so virtual, consumers are more touch prone.
4. hey want safety!  Don’t pounce on them in the first 15 feet.  Call a greeting if you want, but give them a few minutes before you approach.  This is not the time to ask open-ended questions.  Save those for later
5. Put out a piece of furniture that is half finished so they can feel the difference between raw wood and the final finish.
6. Make sure customers see the fronts of furniture in this area, not the backs.

Contact Us On Line
or call 800-700-3695
to set up a free web marketing consultation for your business