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Comfort Zone
September 13,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on September 2012
Furniture vendors and service providers are looking for new ways to help their retail customers do business online.
The Internets been a factor in furnitureland for a quite a while now, but a lot of retailers still arent sure how to make it work for their business.
Shoppers ability to access price information on the product furniture stores sell has many of those retailers leery about what theyre willing to share in the online sphere.
Many of their vendors partners understand the dilemma and are looking for possible solutions. Some examples follow.
GREASING THE WHEELS
One of Stein Worlds goals with its new, interactive Web site is to make doing business online easier for its dealer base. Stein World partnered with Micro D to develop the site, which it introduced to retailers at the summer Las Vegas Market. The new steinworld.com was set to go live late last month.
We feel the timings right for dealers to make it easier for consumers to shop in their store, and then go home and buy the product on the Internet, said Jack Johnson, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Memphis, Tenn.-based Stein World. For that to happen, you need two things. First, the retailer offers to sell over the Internet. Second, they cant find the item at a better price somewhere else on the Internet.
While consumers can buy online at the Stein World Web site, Johnson emphasized its not a B-to-C transaction, but refers shoppers to a local dealer. The dealer gets price protection as well.
Our objective is to have an Internet minimum pricing policy thats attractive to the consumer, yet allows the dealer to make an acceptable margin, Johnson noted. It keeps our dealers from getting shoppedit levels the playing field between brick-and-mortar and online.
We believe our new Web site should be state-of the-art and consumer-friendly, and thats where Micro D comes in.
Retailers who sign up with the Stein World/Micro D program can add the vendors complete online catalog to their stores Web site.
If the dealer partners with Micro D, consumers can enter the online catalog and order any Stein World product
even if its not in the store, Johnson said. The we ship it to the dealer for delivery.
During an interview at Las Vegas Market, Johnson said dealer reaction is enthusiastic: Theyre excited about itthe response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Stein World soon hopes to assuage another e-commerce headache for retailers: delivery.
Its our goal to have our entire line available for drop-ship via Fedex and UPS by April 2014, Johnson said.
BUILDING LOYALTY ONLINE
Design Cliq, a patent-pending Internet marketing process designed to attract and hold consumers visiting a retailers Web site through a tested series of style-preference quizzes, bill its services as New Ways to New Customers.
DesignCliq recently teamed with Atlanta-based furniture industry consultancy FurnitureCore to add its online marketing program and customer development module to the latters suite of services.
According to Design Cliqs testing with retailers (including Havertys, Slumberland, Belfort Furniture and Nebraska Furniture Mart) compared with the typical 4-percent Internet registration rate on a retailers Web site, 39 percent of consumers who start a Design Cliq quiz will register their name, e-mail address and ZIP code.
Upon registration, they are then shown room photos of the retailers products in their specific style preferences and are signed up for a long-term series of helpful home tips and personalized product information.
Results to date show that Design Cliq registrants purchase 17 percent of the time and at an average of 29 percent more than the retailers average purchase ticket.
This is an Internet Marketing concept, which has been tested for over two years with major retailers, said Design Cliq Founder Fred Starr. Combined with FurnitureCores analytics, we can now prove that Design Cliq produces sales and establishes a new, loyal customer base. Were especially pleased to see that 83 percent of our registrants are new customers.
The idea is to cut through the maze of Web sites and information overload. DesignCliq seeks to drive the millions of visitors researching purchase online to furniture retailers.
We talk to some retailers with more than 100,000 visits to their Web sites a month, but when you look at it, its mostly one-way communication, Starr said. Suppose you had a store where customers come in, get information and look around, and nobody talks to them. You can have the best Web site in the world, but theres still this lack of engagement. Meanwhile, theres a consumer thats desperate for assistance. Weve found that 74 percent dont even know their design preferences.
The idea is for the retailer to differentiate itself from the competition by providing information that helps consumers make better buying decisions.
This has nothing to do with midnight sales or percent-off sales, Starr said. Its total, unadulterated helping the consumer. Weve been active for 30 months with four retailers whove been great. Weve spent this time learning our trade and developing the program.
The last part of Design Cliqs puzzle was to validate its contribution to participating retailers business. With one of the four retailers, DesignCliq ended up involved in 15 percent of actual sales over a 27-month periodthat is those sales to customers in the DesignCliq registry.
That 15 percent is more loyal and more trusting because theyve been treated well, Starr said.
Among that 15 percent, their ticket is 25 percent higher. We believe thats from taking the price factor out of the equation and showing them whats going to meet their needs, which theyre willing to pay more for.
They also represent a very high proportion of new customers. Seventy-three percent of the customers in this study were new customers. These people started to trust this retailer. We have a less price-focused, more loyal and trusting customer.
CUSTOMER PERSONALIZATION
We have a full follow-up program designed to strengthen that relationship, again on the theme that we want the retailer to help the customer, find what fits her need, Starr continued. Every three weeks, an e-mail laden with helpful hints on making your house better. We take the knowledge we have of that customer, beginning with a name, leading to style preferences, and tailoring communications to those preferences.
FurnitureCore CEO Bob George likened Design Cliqs information processing to Amazon.coms.
The more you interact with Amazon, the smarter they are about your preferences, he said. In the same way, well get smarter and smarter in our interactions with these customers.
And as a percentage of sales, its less than 50 percent of what the industry pays for traditional advertising.
Thats per FurnitureCores compiled retailer numbers.
SOCIALIZING E-COMMERCE
Home furnishings Internet services
vendor Furnituredealer.nets new
DoBizzBuzz program started as a manufacturers strategy to create business anywhere they have the product locally, making sure consumers can find the local places they can buy the product.
Now, DoBizzBuzz is essentially a social networking platform built on this incredible database weve developed, said Furnituredealer.net Founder Andy Bernstein. Facebook connects friends with friendsDoBizzBuzz connects products with stores. It allows vendors to connect their products with the local stores that sell them.
The concept addresses the problem that so much of the product available through local stores isnt even seen on the Internet.
Part of the problem in our industry is that the national shopping companies have these massive databases of product, Bernstein said. Some of the biggest and best (furniture) retailers dont even show all the product they have available on their floor online.
DoBizzBuzz is a network versus a Web site, he continued. A really good Web site identifies all the products available at that store. What the network does is associate the product with the store: Heres where you can buy that product locally.
The second thing is that once the products are associated with the store, you create a publishing channel, and what a good Web site does is tell that stores story. The network enables telling the retailers story, its store, those services it offers.
Lets say youre a shopper in Minneapolis, and you have four stores offering the same brand of shoes youre shopping for: Target, TJ Maxx, Nordstrom and Goodwill.
The product you find for each online is identical, but the experience is totally different, Bernstein said. What were trying to do is create a platform where retailers can tell their story. If you pull out your iPhone, youre going to se the same product at a price. If your store is doing anything along the way that adds value, you need to show reasons why the customer should care.
The good news (for furniture retailers) is that the vast majority of consumers want full-service assistance in the process of buying home furnishingsspace planning, custom configurations, explaining the difference between a $400 and $1,000 sofa. HFB