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Small is Good
June 19,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on June 2012
In early April 2002, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul were still suffering a brutal winter despite whatever the calendar said. Suzanne and Mike Schumann, owners of St. Paul-based high-end retailer Traditions Classic Home Furnishings, were talking with customer Heather Radke, wife of Minnesota Twins pitcher Brad Radke. She suggested the Schumanns consider a store down Florida way.
We had so many good customers who were having us ship furniture to Naples, said Suzanne Schumann, president of the now three-store furniture retailer. Heathers mom was from Fort Myers, and she said we needed to open a store in the area.
So, seeking escape from the lingering northern Midwest winter, the Schumanns headed south.
Heather came in the Monday after a blizzard with her spiel, Mike Schumann recalled. It was near the end of the Florida season, so we went down on a cheap flight. When we left, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and we got off the plane to 72 degrees and palm trees.
We fell in love with it instantly, Suzanne said.
The couple began checking out possible places to live.
It was the April after 9/11, and the real estate market was in a mini-collapse, and a number of people flipping properties were panicking, Mike said. We found a house we really liked and made a low-ball offer. We flew home, and the offer was accepted the next week.
We flew back down that Friday, and a commercial realtor showed us around. A high-end art gallery specializing in original artRembrandts, Warholshad gone bust. The owner said he couldnt convince people it wasnt a museum, that the pieces were for sale. We had a lease in two weeks.
The Schumanns now spend a lot of time on airplanes.
It was an impulse movewe really didnt understand the ramifications of having a 14-year-old who needed adult supervision, so were commuting back and forth all the time, Mike said. If wed gone through the whole thought process, done a whole business plan, we never would have done it.
A PLAN THAT WORKS
Traditions Classic brought the same model that worked in Minnesota to the now-thriving Florida operationa commitment to keeping its floors fresh that inspires customers to check out whats new, and a lean approach to business that helped the retailer weather the economic storms of the past few years.
The bottom line is when you go into our store, the look and feel is the personal passion and style of Suzanne and her employees, Mike said. If youre looking for very contemporary, thats not who we are. We dont think it through real hard, we just try to buy stuff we love.
If they love the look, we communicate to our customers, We can make your home look just like this.
Suzanne is the stores merchandising and design leader, while Mike runs the back office. Mike, a self-described former computer geek with Honeywell and Hewlett-Packard, said the business arose from
Suzannes dissatisfaction with her job.
We were living in St. Paul in the mid 80s, and Suzanne was working as manager of a high-end wicker store, Mike said. She got frustrated with her bosshe wouldnt even buy them a printer.
A block and a half from our house was a building that had been vacant for around 20 years, and we opened a store there (in 1987) with 1,500 square feet. The neighborhood was in transition. Selby Avenue was a vibrant street in the 20s and 30sF. Scott Fitzgerald was born thereit had been an upscale neighborhood, but by the 60s most of the buildings had been boarded up. It was still pretty rough in the early 80s.
Traditions was the second business to open back up on Selby. Since then, the whole neighborhood has gotten very upscale. The store later moved to Grand Avenue, but its still in the general area.
A key to Traditions Classics growth was its ability to get on its high-end clienteles bee path.
Were very small and we take that high-end boutique approach to a furniture store, Suzanne said. Our store is always in motion. Since were happy to sell off the floor, from week to week well see 20 to 30 pieces leave. The result is customers stop in to see whats new.
Mike added that customers coming in a month after their
last visit wont see something a little different, its completely different.
The atmospheres the same, but at least half the items werent on the floor the first time you came in, he said. And, if it was on the floor earlier, its not in the same place in the store, not in the same vignette. Our target customers are affluent women, and weve gotten on their regular circuit along with their hairdresser. People come into our store when theyre recreationally shopping.
The advantage to that is though our stores average 3,000 square feet, effectively theyre much larger. The amount of product we can expose to our customers is two or three times the square footage we have.
CONSTANT CHALLENGE
Keeping the floors that fresh is a challenge.
What you have to understand is that what we do involves an incredible amount of work, Mike said. Every Wednesday, for example, in our Naples store, guys from the warehouse are juggling the store layout for two to three hours in the morning. And its not just accessoriesits large items, moving sectionals and cases around. Suzanne and her staff spend the rest of the day re-merchandising the store.
The model took some figuring out on vendors part as well, and Mike said it took some convincing on the Schumanns part.
Most vendors have standard rules on how much floor space has to be dedicated to their line, and some minimums are larger than one of our entire stores, he said. Our vendors, over the years, have gotten to understand our model and bent the rules.
A commitment to maintaining its merchandising philosophyand a conservative attitude toward debthelped the store during the recession. While many stores kept showing the same merchandise, Traditions Classic always had a new look to interest the shoppers that were out there.
We got a lot of gray hair and more wrinkles, Suzanne said of the downturn. We went very, very lean on inventory, but continued to change out the floor constantly.
The Schumanns also had ways to keep employee spirits up during downtime.
We took the opportunity to freshen the stores, Suzanne said. In Naples, they said its quiet, well just paint the store. They took the lead, and everyone ran with it. We kept the energy going just by keeping ourselves moving.
INSPIRING CONFIDENCE, LOYALTY
Mike said Traditions Classic had a couple of things working in its favor.
One, from the day we started our business, we were very well capitalized, he said. From day one graduating from college, Ive been big on staying out of debt. Our business was pretty much funded with cash, and weve never financed our inventory. Weve bought some buildings, so we have a couple of mortgages, but thats it.
When the recession hit, that did two things for us: A, it let us survive; B, it opened doors with a lot of vendors who might not have done business with uswe always paid our bills.
The second key was the loyalty of Traditions Classics staff.
Our employees work on commission, and they took a huge hit in the recession that theyre just now recovering from, Mike said. If they hadnt hung in there, we wouldnt be around now. We were lucky enough that we didnt have to lay off a lot of people since we were already so lean. They made less money, which preserved their jobs, and now things are recovering.
Theres a reason for that loyalty.
Something thats very frustrating to me, you get legislation that says you have to give unpaid leave for family emergencies, and business complain that theyre being forced to do this, Mike said. Weve had this policy from day one to bend over backwards to accommodate our employees lives. So many businesses treat their employees as a commodity. In the end, your employees make you.
SPREADING THE WORD
How does Traditions Classic express its retail vision in marketing and advertising efforts?
Most of our marketing is print and direct mail, Mike said. The biggest challenge is getting people in the door the first timewe found that 15 to 20 percent of the people in the St. Paul stores neighborhood had never been inside. We have people who come in saying theyd driven by for years without stopping and within weeks had bought $10,000 worth of furniture from us.
Word-of-mouth works very well for us, and we do advertising in regional magazines and newspapers. One problem is that people are inundated with magazines. In Naples, it seems like everyones second career after retiring there is putting out a new home furnishings magazine.
A clean, visual approach that projects high-end appeal helps Traditions Classics advertising make a connection with its upscale target audience.
We dont clutter them with a lot of verbiage, Mike said. All the images we use are from vendors. We tell them if you have great photography, youll be in our ads.
Direct mail works better than anything else. Two-thirds to three-fourths go to our existing customer base, the rest to new blood, like people whove just bought a house. HFB