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October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Every other month or so, always on a Saturday morning, I make my way to one of my favorite places to shopHoldrens Country Store in Vinton, Va. The store is a former mill that ground wheat, corn and other grains for farmers until the 1950s. It was purchased by a local family and was originally a farm supply store. It now sells feed for wild animals, pet supplies and seeds for gardening.
One reason I shop there is I can buy food in bulk (50-pound bags) for my birds and squirrels. I also can pick up a salt block for the deer that visit our yard on a regular bases. What can I say? We enjoy watching nature in its natural habitat.
Saturday hours at Holdrens are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., so I always go early in the morning. Its not convenient; actually its out of the way and not close to my regular stops. In fact, it takes me a little over an hour round trip, excluding shopping time, to visit the store. They dont have the lowest prices, but they are competitive. My wife often asks me why I pass half a dozen stores that sell the same products versus making this hour trip.
We only get one Saturday a week, why not go somewhere more convenient? Thats what she thinks.
Well, here is why. I enjoy the experience. I remember going to similar places with my dad on an early Saturday morning. The dew is still on vehicles, folks are just getting the morning started and Im out and about. Its enjoyable for me. I like the old building theyre housed in; hardwood floors and the additions that have been made over the years.
You can always find an old timer or two with mud on his boots, holding a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I can see them right now, steam rising as they are blowing in the cup in an effort to cool the coffee. Sometimes you might find a group standing around telling lies with the staff or whoever is listening. You are welcome to jump in to about any conversationthe weather, current events and my favorite, college football. It makes no difference what your background might be, no one is judging. Its just friendly people starting a Saturday morning.
As far back as I can remember, they have had the same full-time staff. They have a few regular college guys and one lady (I believe they are family members) that help out in the summer. The guys are country strong and the young lady (and she is just that a young lady) doesnt miss a beat when working with them. Its nice to see them growing up year after year and becoming adults. They are always friendly and ready to give advice on about any question. They never get in a hurry, and you might even have to wait on them to finish a bite of the morning biscuit before checking out, but Im OK with that. They always smile, and thank you for the business. It always seems genuine.
My question to retailers is this: What buying experience do you offer consumers? Do you have designers on staff to help customers see the finished product? Do you have an area to entertain kids so mom can stay in the showroom a bit longer?
Maybe you need a place where dad can sit and watch the game to avoid hurrying mom out the door. Any of these will be an experience for the kids and/or dad, so mom can stay in the showroom a bit longer. The longer shes in your showroom, the better your opportunity to sell her the dream.
Id love to hear what you do that helps create an engaging shopping experience. Feel free to pop me an e-mail and let me know.
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Welcome to Home Furnishings Business fifth annual Retail Look Book. In the pages to come youll read about how various stores brought fresh thinking to bear on their business to separate themselves from the crowd.
We kick off this years Look Book with a look at ways to liven up your stores visual impact, moving beyond 20% Off Sale signs in block letters into eye-catching displays and graphics that resonate with your customers on an emotional level without emptying your bank account.
Retail showroom consultant and Affordable Design Solutions CEO Connie Post has two words for furniture retailers when it comes to visual display: modern and change.
Too many stores, she said, rely on stodgy, stale graphics that dont give shoppers much reason to get excited.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Moreover, those shoppers often see the same thing when they come through the doors, even if its been months since their last visit. Relax, you dont have to change the entire store at once. Post suggests concentrating on the first 500 to 1,000 square feet at the front.
Thats the first and last impression the customer has of your brand, she said. Its what they see when they enter and what they see when they leave, and thats the place for change.
Change can be as easy as springing for a couple of gallons of paint.
Sherwin-Williams is doing HGTV paints now, Post noted. Select some new paint colors and do co-brandingmaybe post a card saying this is an HGTV paint. Youre strengthening your brand with the HGTV association, and youre showing customers something trendy, colors theyre seeing on television. Id be doing that at least every six months.
Need an affordable way to celebrate the changing seasons?
This can be as simple as a big vase of flowers in the front of your store, Post suggested. In spring, fill it with daffodils; maybe daisies in the summer; mums in the fall. Look at the floorsyou can change out your flooring easily and not very expensively with vinyl wood.
Lifestyle graphics are another way to make an impression and set an inspirational and/or aspirational atmosphere for your customers.
We recently did an update for C.S. Wo in Hawaii that concentrated on lifestyle graphics, Post said. You cater to the market, and they show lots of photos in the entrance of Asian families.
At Boulevard in St. George, UtahUtah has a large Mormon presence, and family is very importantthe graphics are all about family and holidays.
Such graphics arent dated or static. Theyre celebrating life and how the house is a home.
In the first 500 square feet, the customer knows what the home is all about, Post said. It stages the customers emotionally the moment they walk in the door.
What are some ways to lend an avant-garde, design-savvy look while keeping displays at a reasonable cost? How do you make it affordably stylish but not cheap?
At Delaware retailer Furnitureland, Post installed sheer fabrics as room dividers in their bedding area.
Were not talking an eight-foot square of fabricthese go to the ceiling, she said. Removing walls and utilizing drapery or sheers adds drama. ... Theyve had double-digit growth in their bedding department since we did it.
Post has designed several vendor showrooms, always with an eye toward giving retail customers ideas for visuals in their store. The Bermex showroom, for example, has muslin dining room dividers.
For Folio 21 were creating Folio Studio, a retail concept in the showroom to show bedroom and dining room, and using muslin room dividers, Post said. This doesnt have to be expensivemuslin costs as little as two dollars a yard.
LOOKING OUTSIDE
Post also pointed to retailers in other sectors who excel at visual display that doesnt break the bank.
Target comes to mind. The stores have the same basic big-box format, but when they have an event or seasonal saleback to school, saythey do it right, she said. When you come in the door you know somethings going on. Its always first-class and very modern.
With furniture, we use too many old signs. You want to celebrate seasons, events. Use a younger, hipper graphics person.
The Gap is another example.
The Gap has historically done a better job because they use graphics effectively, Post said. They show people wearing the clothes.
Yes, a retailer might say, but graphics, visual design talent cost money.
You always have the naysayers: Theyre a big chain and can afford to do all that, Post said. But in every marketplace youll find design students, colleges. Partner with local colleges, community colleges, art schools, vocational schools that teach graphic design. Give it to them as a project Tell them youll donate x-dollars to their department, award the student, have them at the grand opening.
Professors and teachers love a project that is actionable, not just theory. It also shows youre involved in the community.
HIGH IMPACT, LOW COST
In designing showrooms in High Point, Las Vegas and Atlanta for lifestyle furnishings vendor Four Hands, Visual Merchandising Manager Frances Weil incorporates a wealth of inexpensive, found materials, that bring a sense of discovery to everyday items. Its green as well, as much of the material had no destination beyond a landfill.
She calls it upcycling.
Some of the visuals Weil has produced in Four Hands showrooms can be labor intensive, but can be worked on during slow periods on the floorand give your employees a sense of teamwork and ownership in their selling space.
Its been fun for us to allow the entire office and group to work together to express their creativity and have a hand in merchandising, said Weil, who got her degree in retail merchandising and advertising from the University of Texas, and joined Four Hands upon graduation, having spent her last college internship at the compnay. They have some ownership of our showrooms.
Weil gave HFB a tour of Four Hands new World Market Center showroom at this summers Las Vegas Furniture Market to illustrate some of the ways Four Hands repurposes everyday materials and items for visual effects that dont bust a budget.
TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE
One display consisted of empty paint cans attached by their bases to a wallthe cans interiors retained the color of the paints they contained.
Those cant go into landfills, so we called the City of Austin, and they save them for us, Weil said. It gives you lots of instant color.
Old wrapping paper tubes gave a wind-chime effect further along the same wall.
Painted in any color or left in their natural state and hung with fishing line, you can use them along walls, or create a room divider for some separation of areas, Weil noted.
Sheets of old recyclable paper were painted for a graphic landscape effect. Can you get hold of some chicken wire? Weave colored tissue paper in and out of the openings, and twist it to any shape that fits your interest for a wall piece, or suspend the array from the ceiling with fishing line or wire.
An eye-catching shelf display featured origami books.
We took old books people didnt want, Weil explained. You can fold the pages in any combination of patterns.
Four Hands also incorporates old books wrapped in an assortment of colored or patterned papers on bookshelves and tables.
You can get color and design in a simple, easy way, and you can change the papers quickly for seasonal colors or other themes, Weil said. We go to Books A Million, where you can get old books by the yard. You can request certain kinds, say encyclopedias versus paperbacks.
Bottles are pretty easy to come by. Use an assortment for vases.
What happens to all the packing material at your store? Four Hands puts it to work in the showroom. One wall display consists of pleated packaging paper for an attention-grabbing texture.
As a shipping company, were always trying to re-purpose packing material in imaginative ways, Weil said.
RE-PURPOSING
Think about visual elements in already in your store and how they can be repositioned. Four Hands, for instance, had a large clock face its used on various walls in the showroom. At Las Vegas Market, Weil repositioned the clock face so it was hanging horizontally above a dining table.
One of my favorite things is keeping some of the existing elements and using them in new ways, Weil explained. This clock, weve had for several shows and weve moved it around in different settings and different positions.
Check out flea markets and garage sales for vintage finds at a bargain, and use them to accent your displays.
We have a city-wide garage sale in Austin every two months that we always go to, Weil noted.
Four Hands also avails itself of Habitat Restore, a sort of Goodwill Store for old building materials and architectural elements such as molding and trim. Weil indicated a wall display over a dining setting near one of the Vegas showrooms entrances.
We get these pieces of old house trim that we repurpose, she said. Well find whatever (Habitat Restore) has in a large quantity that we can get inspiration from to use in different ways.
String wall art is another easy, extremely flexible visual.
All you need is nails, a board and string, and you can create any pattern you want, Weil said. Just about anything can be re-used in different ways, repurposed to keep visual displays exciting and changing on a budget. HFB
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
While any furniture store had problems enough dealing with the recessions impact on business, Del Sol Furniture got dealt three bad cards in the last few years.
The Phoenix furniture, electronics and appliance retailer faced not only a brutal economy, but also new, powerful competitors for its traditional customers, and problems among that Hispanic customer base itself.
We lost about 60 percent of our sales from 2007 to 2009, said Vice President Alex Macias. The recession hit, plus a lot of customers who were immigrants became troubled with the political situation surrounding immigration.
He and his sister, Minerva Macias-Maestas, both graduates of Arizona State Universitys W.P. Carey School of Business, are leading the company their parents, Venancio and Rosa Macias, founded in 1997 into the future.
At the same time the recession hit, Del Sol faced new competition for its traditional Hispanic customer as well, with the expansion into the region of Mexican retail powerhouses Famsa and La Curacao.
They came in strong, and they came in loud, with advertising all over the television, said Macias said. Wed actually been partnering with Famsa for export services on our sales that went to Mexico.
Famsa made an offer to buy out Del Sol, but the family took a pass.
Our stores at the time were around 10,000 square feet, and theres were 35,000, so they only wanted to buy the inventory. We just felt wed put too much into it for that.
Del Sol knew it could compete with big-box selection, and didnt have the budget to match its larger competitors flood of television advertising.
We decided wed beat them on service, Macias said. We made a lot of changes to how we handled things like returns, warranties, going out to the home, and deliveries.
With returns, for example, Del Sol instituted a policy that gave customers three days to return undamaged merchandise for a full refund or credit toward another purchase.
A lot of customers left to try the competition, but they came back, Macias noted.
A new mission statementand the way it came aboutgot employees enthused about the changes.
We went to all our people and asked for the words you think about with the company and got those into the statement, Macias said. That had a big impact with the employees, because they felt a part of it.
Whenever anyone has an issue or question they arent sure how to handle, we say, Read the mission statement, and that will tell you what to do.
At one time Del Sol had six locations, but the recession forced the closure of three smaller, under-performing stores. It also forced Del Sol to re-examine its brand and customer base. Venancio and Rosa Macias had moved 15 years ago from El Paso to cater to what they saw as an under-served nicheselling furniture to Phoenixs large Hispanic market with installment payment contracts.
With a Hispanic population marginalized by anti-immigration sentiment and not in a buying mood and an ongoing recession, Del Sol had to broaden its appeal.
For years wed been Muebleria Del Sol, but we started branding as Del Sol Furniture. We started doing more bi-lingual advertisingmostly English with some Spanish, Macias said. 2009 was our worst year, and thats when we started changing our advertising.
Macias said its hard to quantify the exact Hispanic/Anglo demographic breakdown of the customer base, but credit classifications reveal a couple of things.
First, weve had a big change in the type of people we extend credit to. Before they were mostly self-employed, first-generation immigrants. Now 70 to 80 percent of our Hispanic customers are second- or third-generation, the children of the original customers. They prefer to speak English. Within that Hispanic tradition, we got a more credit-friendly customer.
Second, when we advertise Del Sol Furniture, we got everyone else from the melting pot who needed credit.
Concern about more accounts going to collection also led the store to float another brand concept in the marketplace when it converted one Del Sol location to a new model, Red Tag, which attracted a new, value-oriented customer base.
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Online home furnishings retailer Hayneedle.com concentrates on removing consumers perceived barriers to buying products via the Internet.
Donna Faust, director of brand management and media relations at Hayneedle, said the company uses real-life experience for continuous improvement of the sites user-friendliness.
When you look at how we developed the site, we have an in-house usability testing center, she said. We show people the new iterations of our shopping experience, see where they click and what they look for so we can learn from their behaviors and how they navigate the site.
That allows Hayneedle to tweak its presentationFaust offered a brick-and-mortar store analogy: If you walk in my showroom, and I see you spark to certain chairs, I change my pitch.
An eye for motivated talent in the recruiting process, in-house service on best-selling items, and consumer-friendly policies also grease the wheels for online purchasing.
We opened our Omaha customer service center in Summer 2010, and all our customer service is in-house, Faust said. Customer service isnt measured by time on the phone, but by closing of sales. That means were giving the customer the best experience by finding the right thing for them.
Weve done research on different categories as to why people by something online or not. We work on processes to reduce that friction, that resistance to making a purchase online. If youre not selling online, you might lose that opportunity to make that sale, because customers can find it online. You have to understand the friction point and work to remove it.
An investment in in-house product training also helps make shoppers more comfortable about buying big-ticket items such as sofas online.
We do significant in-house product training in our customer service center, Faust noted. Last year, we sent them to learn about high-end outdoor furniture. We have product training specific to questions that customer care rep has experienced with that product.
Hayneedle also promises free shipping on nearly everything, even 3,500-pound bathtubs; easy, hassle-free returns with no re-stocking fees; personal shopping assistance to help customers find their style; and 3 percent back in Haybuck Rewards on every purchase.
Reducing friction points in online purchasing is only a set-up for what Hayneedle has to offer shoppersbreadth and depth of product selection. The company sees itself as the place to find everything homefrom club chairs to rain barrels and coffee makers to cuckoo clocks, with complete selections for every room, style and budget,
In a retail store, youll see three, at most six colors of a patio umbrella, Faust said. You cant provide in the store the selection you can online. We pride ourselves on our selection. We have more than 1,500 vendor partners for drop-ship. We inventory our top sellers and product exclusives, also based on customer feedback.
Hayneedle recently added 500,000 new products, and continues to add new product categories and SKUs.
The recent consumer-sourced site improvements Faust mentioned, designed to empower shoppers to more easily develop complete room solutions and facilitate their purchase process, have immediately garnered strong responsecustomer satisfaction metrics have increased up to 300 basis points, and conversion is up 15 percent.
Those upgrades include improved category navigation and enhanced search capabilities that generate a more honed merchandise selection; enhanced product pages that better illustrate item details, including more images and larger swatches to help shoppers more accurately assess and match colors; a shipping calculator that estimates an orders date of delivery based on location ZIP code; crowd-sourced customer service reviews that highlight item pros, cons and suggested uses; social shopping functionalities that share trending items and what others are buying; and social media connections with like, share, Google+1 and Pinterest buttons.
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Located in a small town, Furniture & Home Center doesnt have the immediate market to support a store with an 80,000-square-foot showroom, but the retailer attracts customers from six states in driving distance. A lot of those customers are driving 100 miles, and they pass other furniture stores along the way.
I was getting my first billboard when I had an idea. They needed to know how to get there. I said to put down SelmerIts worth the drive, said Tom Hendrix, who co-founded Henco with his wife, Sherry. Ive never done an ad since when I didnt say that. I can walk down the street in Memphis, and people will say Its worth the drive to me. People will ask their friends, Where is the worth-the-drive store?
Most advertising is on television, and Hendrix believes in treating potential customers with respect to inspire them to make the drive.
I dont talk down to people, he said. I have to visit in their living rooms year after year, so I have to wear well over time.
The Hendrixs children and two grandchildrena 10-year-old granddaughter and 8-year-old grandsonappear in ads as well.
Those grandkids can be in the commercial, but I want them to speak clearly, he said. They look straight at that camera, and they speak clearly.
That respect carries through on the sales floor.
We have one everyday price, Hendrix noted. We do have a no-sales-tax promotion, and once a year we have a clearance event. With that, you have to make sure its honestIf we say its at cost, its at cost.
Hendrix, who grew up on a farm, respects hard work and those who do it. He and his staff know better than to judge customers potential by appearance alone.
A family came in not long ago, he said by way of example. He looked like a farmer who didnt have two nickels to rub together, he had that look that you couldnt tell him anything.
Hendrix engaged the man.
I say, Tell me about yourself, he recalled. He said, Betty and I saved every nickel we could get to buy 800 acres, and now we have 3,000. ... Betty and I have been on the road for three-and-a-half hours from Marks, Miss.
He bought $20,000 of furniture, high-quality furniture, got in his car, waved at me and said, Well be back, Hendrix said. Im better able to work with that guy knowing what hes about.
That kind of treatment, plus Hencos prices and wow factor, have been a winner.
You walk in my store, and people have their mouth open, Hendrix said. We have waterfalls, trees, soda fountains, a restaurant, we have two acres of furniture arranged in shopping strips so they walk by everything in the store.