Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
September 13,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on September 2012
The recession hasnt been easy for any business, but it gave high-end Texas home furnishings retailer The Arrangement a one-two punch.
First, a sour economy put a dent on consumer appetites for buying anything they couldnt do without. Second, The Arrangements next-door neighbors on both sides of its Dallas storelocations for Bombay Co. and Linens n Thingsshut their doors.
The Arrangements response: Increase advertising.
We pretty much lost the walk-ins, said Katherine Snedeker, who goes by the title chief of The Arrangement, which has a location in Houston that opened to complement the Dallas store. The spaces on either side of us were vacant for three years. We were in this strip center sitting between two big holes. Fortunately, The Arrangement had a compelling story to tell. Since she bought out her partner in 2004, Snedeker had been building a niche in offering a lot of products customers literally cant find anywhere else by custom-ordering most of what they see in the storesall with a Modern West personality.
You never stop learning, Snedeker said of the past couple of years. Our focus was to keep our clients and keep ourselves in business, so the priority was to get more unique product and make ourselves more meaningful to the clients we had.
Customers have responded: Sales are tracking to reach near $15 million this yearup around 20 percent from 2011at The Arrangements 15,000-square-foot location in Dallas and 10,000-square-foot Houston store. Two warehouses of 26,000 square feet in Dallas and 10,000 square feet in Houston support the operations.
LOOKS FOR THE NEW WEST
The Arrangement today is an incarnation of Snedekers vision of a modern western style.
Snedeker began working at The Arrangement part-time in 1989. Founder Dave Hiller had opened the store a year earlier.
Her background was in fashionSnedeker ran a fashion advertising company in New York City before her husband was transferred to the Dallas area.
Snedeker had always been a fan of Western styleshe bought her first pair of cowboy boots in New York, and likes wearing that footwear most of the timeso she was excited about a move to the Big D.
But when we moved down here, I was looking around and their seemed to be a gap in that style, she recalled. I wanted to find out where were the rock starts, the country western stars were shopping.
At the time, she said, The Arrangement was an amalgam of looks.
We moved into a flavor of Santa Fe, and we had local resources for the product, a mix of low-end to mid-range pieces, she said.
When Dave Hiller died, his son Jeff Hiller took over the operation, and he and Snedeker became partners in the business.
I was the lead designer at that point, and we decided to go high-end, she said. Im a risk-taker, and we wanted the store to be different. We still lean Southwest, but we headed more Texas Western. That meant a lot of furniture styles, since homes here were originally furnished with antiques from all over. You might find a French country piece or another style.
Now, we have an environment inspired by the West, but its modern.
Snedeker bought out Hiller in 2004. Hiller, who runs his own sales and marketing company, also went on to serve several years as the president of the Sustainable Furnishings Council until Margaret Casey assumed that post earlier this year.
Weve done everything we can to brand (The Arrangement), so both stores are very similar in design layout and presentation, Snedeker said. There are subtle differencesone market might lean toward long tables with leaves, the other might prefer round tables.
BESPOKE MERCHANDISING
Both stores definitely share bespoke atmosphere, something easier said than done.
We sell off the floor. Its very complicated and a lot of work, Snedeker said. Well probably run two trucks (from the warehouse) today to get the floor ready for tomorrow morning.
We have a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces. With the economy, people arent stocking so much, and we have an instant-gratification clientelethey want it right now. You have to have more inventory to pull it off. We want product with an atmosphere of magic, elusiveness, something you havent seen anywhere else.
While maybe 15 percent of The Arrangements sales are special orders from customers, in essence most of what one sees on its floors is special orderfrom the retailer itself.
We do a huge amount of custom ordering, Snedeker noted. We pick our leathers, our fabrics, our styles. When I bought out my partner in 2004, there was a deliberate effort to go high-end with a unique look. We no longer order product as-is from vendors.
The customers end up liking what they see on our floor as it is because they havent seen it anywhere else. We create our own bespoke product.
Inventory and constant re-stocking of floors arent the only challenges of The Arrangements merchandising scheme.
Its a lot more work, and a lot more investigation, cherry-picking of lines, and the vendors dont always like that, Snedeker said. Were probably going to go into custom building with some vendorswe have to have unique product.
The retailer takes its well customize for you approach to its clients doorstep.
We do house calls differently than just about anyone, Snedeker said. Well load up furniture and accessories, and take it to the house. We put it in place and take back what the client doesnt want to keep.
We create a complete environment. One client had all this wood from an old barn that we used as art.
The client was pleasantly surprised with the result: Hed had all this amazing material and hadnt known what to do with it, Snedeker said.
IMAGE ADVERTISING
The Arrangements advertising buys concentrate on image and brand-building through television and print.
Were very folksy, very accessiblethe voice-over is male, and its got a little of the twang, but very sophisticated, Snedeker said. Its all image-building: We have this great look, and we can make your home elegant and comfortable.
Instead of shooting ads in the stores, The Arrangement uses multi-million dollar homes, fully outfitted with furniture and accessories.
We also do trade outs with realtorsthey can show houses with our furnishings in place, Snedeker said. We shoot print ads and television ads at the same time, and if we really love the house well switch out the settings for other ads.
I learned that from the fashion industry. Donna Karan would shoot her entire year in one photo shoot.
Social media plays a role as well.
We have Facebook and a couple of silly, fun things on YouTube, Snedeker said. We purchased 12 chairs from one of our vendors, and well use those as prizes for a photo/video contest.
Viewers can vote on entrants use of the chairs in photographs and videos.
LOOKING AHEAD
With business on the rebound, The Arrangement is taking steps to increase its reach among consumers in the markets it serves, through both brick-and-mortar and online initiatives.
Were probably going to expand the Houston store another 4,000 square feet, Snedeker said. Were negotiating the lease right now.
The Arrangement also is revamping its Web site, and the new version, in beta testing during July, was set to launch the first week in August.
We had an e-commerce site wed set up five years ago, Snedeker said. The technology has come a long way in that time, and what we had was cumbersome compared with what you can do now. It will be more value-added for our clients.
Adding value involves an advertorial approach on the new site that gives practical advice on how customers can achieve looks they might have seen on home and gardening channels.
The DIY programs dont really help them make decisions
for their home, Snedeker said. We want to make it fun and
interesting. Well put some of our personal opinions and experiences on it.
Visitors to the site might find The Arrangements folks take on restaurants and the local scene, even Claymation videos. Its all about personality, connection and positioning.
You cant compete in price if you only have two stores, Snedeker said. You have to stand for quality, originality and creativeness. HFB
September 13,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on September 2012
A perfect storm of advancing mobile technologyand consumers ever-increasing ability to access anything and everything shopping-related via their smartphone or tablet devicemakes showrooming a critical trend retailers face in their fight for business.
Even if you havent heard the trend defined as showrooming, youre likely familiar with the concept: Someone visits your showroom floor, scans a QR or manufacturers SKU codeand looks for a better price online.
A BIG ISSUE
Showrooming is getting a lot more attention from clients of furniture retailing Web site specialist Furnituredealer.net. Founder Andy Bernstein is counting on DoBizzBuzzwhich can serve retailers as a social-network-style platform connecting products to specific storesto help.
Showroomings been a big issue for us the past several months, and we think DoBizzBuzz addresses all three points in the marketplacethe retailer, the manufacturer and the consumer, he said. It starts as a strategy to help the manufacturer. The biggest problem we see is making it so local stores have a chance. They need to get found when people are looking for product.
Mobile devices have compounded the same things that worried retailers about the Internet in the first placeconsumers shopping their store and buying elsewhereand retailers
have to broaden their online outlook
in response.
Our attitude used to be, How do we make it as easy as possible for a retailer to have a Web presenceto get found online, and to have a Web site that meets consumer expectations of what a site should offer?, Bernstein noted. They have to extend the same effort to mobile (technology).
HERE TO STAY
The emergence of mobile commerce and its attendant issues are pretty much out of retailers hands, according to The State of Retailing Online 2012: Mobile Marketing, a recent report conducted by Forrester Research for Shop.org.
Phone and tablet commerce is growing rapidly, primarily due to consumer demand rather than specific effort on the part of retailers to actively drive traffic to those devices, the report said. Anecdotally, many large multi-channel retailers say that a double-digit percent of daily traffic comes from both smartphones and tablets, even though many of these companies to date have invested little in mobile or tablet-specific content.
With rapidly growing consumer adoption of smartphones and tablets and the promise of mobile success, retailers are eager to learn more about the channels, but what efforts to make and where to invest are still questions without clear answers.
The report also said retailers look to metrics such as revenue to measure their mobile success, but with mobile-generated revenue still in single digits, that inhibits their willingness to invest in richer programs.
Retailers instead should focus on the metrics that make sense for smartphones versus tablets and that are more likely to reflect how consumers are likely to use each device type, the report suggested. For example, measuring consumer engagement on smartphones in terms of QR code downloads, product searches, and app downloads will more accurately reflect how consumers use the smartphone as part of the shopping process.
By contrast, the tablet device is quickly rivaling the desktop Web experience, and thus, more standard e-commerce metrics (e.g., average order value, conversion) still make sense for this platform.
Another problem the report found is that retailers have not figured out the most compelling mobile device features to offer.
Across the board, most retailers simply replicate much of their existing site functionality on mobile and tablet devices, according to the report. While there are some nuances in execution (e.g., payment options, barcode scanning capabilities), the most common features that are garnering investment this year are product and price information, customer ratings and reviews, and store location information.
The report cited Starbucks as an example of a retailer that created customized solutions for very specific cases: Starbucks, for instance, is arguably one of the more successful mobile retail executions, offering customers an app that has become very popular and primarily focuses on mobile payments that are synchronized with the companys loyalty program.
EMBRACING THE CHALLENGE
Theres not much sense in fighting showrooming, said Kevin Doran, vice president and co-owner, R&A Marketing, Columbus, Ohio.
Showrooming is a big thing for any retailer that has a bar code or manufacturers SKU number in the showroom, and its really just the world we live in now, he said. Ninety-two percent of Americans use a cell phone every day. One-hundred and ten million access Web sites and social networks online with their phones. Eighteen percent of mobile users bank online. One-fifth of smart phone users make purchases on their mobile devices. If your Web sites and social media arent mobile-friendly, that customer is not going to participate.
Let them shop how they want to. How can you afford to potentially lose that customer? Everyone says with furniture, you have to feel and sit. Well, theyre going to your showroom to feel and sit, and going back home and price-shopping you; or, at 9 oclock that night theyre ready to buy online from you and they cant.
Embrace showrooming, said Sev Ritchie, executive vice president of Atlanta-based consultant Web4Retail. He believes a customer checking prices online in your store means that customers serious about purchasing.
If theyre on the floor and say, I see this product for this price somewhere else, ask Whats the shipping cost? he said. Embrace it, its definitely a buying signal. In most cases, the prices theyre pulling are off the major online stores. If they have a problem there, whos going to fix or service that?
If it comes down to a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person, I think you can overcome showrooming.
Customers are going to get on their smart phone no matter what you do, but retailers can take proactive steps.
The key is to try to keep them in your interactive environment instead of going straight to Google or Ikeas Web site, Doran said. Use POP with QR codes that take them to your own Facebook Page, Pinterest site or Twitter for a discount offer.
Make their first mobile move to your online environment instead of Google, Ikea or another store. Make sure they can find ways to get discounts, price quotes, design tips or how to deal with a salesperson. Let them do what theyre already doing, but have them do it with you.
How does your stores online presence deal with showrooming?
Showing a sofa/loveseat from a particular manufacturer on your site? Give it a name of your own, suggests Ritchie.
If we put a (vendor name) out there, were asking to get showroomed, he said. By putting your name on it, its simple and easy for the consumer to pull the trigger, because if they Google it, theyll come right back to your site. HFB
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
September 13,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on September 2012
After years of watching from the wings, more traditional furniture stores are taking the stage in e-commerce.
Last month, for example, Gardiners Furniture, an 80-year-old, five-store Baltimore-area retailer pulled the trigger on e-commerce when it launched a shopping cart on its Web site.
The reason, according to Advertising Manager Kasee Lehrl:
We know that online sales of home furnishings is the fastest-growing segment of sales for the industry, and in order to grow our business we needed to have
e-commerce on our site.
And those growth numbers are compelling. According to an IBISWorld study released in April, Online Household Furniture Sales in the U.S., online retailers accounted for $6.3 billion in furniture sales in the United States last year, a 7.5
percent increase over 2010. Thats expected to increase in 2012 to $6.9 billion, a
9.9 percent increase.
Thats on top of a 6.3 percent rise in 2010. But hold on, one might say, 2009 was a terrible year, so any numbers are going to look good. Not so fast: Even during the depth of the recession in 2009, online furniture sales weathered the storm pretty well, falling off just 0.7 percent from 2008.
By 2017, IBISWorld predicts online furniture sales will total almost $10.8 billion.
Its not just knick-knacks selling via the Internet. The study broke down categories as follows: living room, 37 percent; dining and kitchen, 30 percent; bedroom, 23 percent; and outdoor furniture, 10 percent.
It wasnt too many years ago that many in our industry said people would never buy furniture onlinetoo much touch and feel involved. Well, consumers are touching and feeling alrightin your storeand more and more retailers have decided they want a piece of that action.
GETTING INTO THE GAME
Gardiners had a Web presence for a long time before opening for business online, with help from Internet site developer and consultant FurnitureDealer.net.
We could not have launched e-commerce without all the hard work from their team, Lehrl said, adding that the store is moving into e-commerce gradually to ensure service levels.
Currently we are limiting purchases to stock merchandise and to our delivery area, Lehrl said. We hope to expand our e-commerce merchandise selection to include some special-order case goods, accessories and area rugs in the near future.
Each night, Gardiners system updates, so the product assortment available for online sale may vary as the store sells out of certain things and receives new merchandise in the warehouse.
Looking ahead, Gardiners is tracking sales to determine which categories to add into its e-commerce mix.
Once we have enough orders to start trending our online sales we may feel the need to increase certain categories to give customers more options at the best selling price points, Lehrl said. In order to get some of those extra products on our site like accessories we need to work out direct shipping with the factories.
Rugs should be easy because manufacturers direct-ship those now to our customers; other accessories might be more challenging since they ship on pallets or require order minimums.
BORN AGAIN
The Bombay Co. brand is eschewing bricks and mortar for the time being as it returns to retail. BombayCompany.com, which launches this month, will offer a range of furniture, accents and décor, gifts, textiles, seasonal and holiday items.
Wil Hollands, president of The Bombay Co. brand parent Hermes-Otto International USA, discussed the new approach during an August interview.
So how is the new site different from online efforts in Bombays prior life?
Well be bringing a specialty-store environment online, so in that way its the same, Hollands said. Whats different is that how you sell and merchandise, how you communicate online is different. Social media, newsletters and design tips will be embedded in the site, so it will be very interactive. ¦ Bombay fans are die-hard, and we want to make sure we deliver on the brands promise.
Bombay has a furniture license with Powell Co. for accent furniture and youth furniture, but that line is mainly for independent retailers.
Our Web site would be sourcing directly through Hermes-Otto and marketing directly to the consumer, Hollands said. Eventually, we might put some of (Powells) items on the site, but thats not the focus. What we carry on the Web site will not be available anywhere else. Were taking a Best of Bombay approach.
Service and delivery are particular challenges with e-commerce, but fulfillment is an area where Hollands believes BombayCompany.com will shine.
The great thing about the site is thats the hallmark of Hermes-Otto Internationals expertise, he said. Our company is the largest logistic expert in Europe and second-largest there in e-commerce after Amazon, so theres a lot of experience. All warehousing and facilities management (for the Bombay site) is in the United States.
Social media played a role in developing the site.
We are a well-known national brand, and weve kept in touch with consumers through social media, Hollands noted. I used social media to help design and define the site.
Any chance of a bricks-and-mortar presence returning?
Its not in my immediate plans, but its not off the table, Hollands said. Consumers today are very savvy, but especially for the younger generation of shoppers, the Web is critical to growth, and growing a brand with a b-to-c Web site is a great place for our business right now.
SOCIAL IMPACT
Along with e-commerce-enabling features such as shopping carts for their Web sites, retailers are getting the hang of using social media to build their business. Theyre also figuring out how assess its quantitative value.
Through Google Analytics, Web4Retail has been tracking social medias impact on actual sales.
One client, promotional retailer Carls Furniture City in Utica, N.Y., for example, put its online shopping cart on Facebook. One month showed three sales totaling $2,100 from Facebook.
That ties the business back into social media, said Sev Ritchie, executive vice president at Atlanta-based Web4Retail. These are people who didnt even want to leave Facebook to make a purchase.
Speaking of shopping carts, Ritchie noted that retailers who commit to doing business on the Internet are giving their store more protection against getting shopped than those who dont.
What were seeing a lot these days is the safety net feature of a shopping cart, he said. In a lot of cases, a customer doesnt have time to go back to the store, or theyll default to the vendor even after youve given the feature and benefits presentation.
With shopping carts, were seeing a lot of those people were physically in the store, Ritchie continued. And if the salesperson properly logged their customer, (their commission) is protected.
NEW TAKE ON FLASH SALES
Another creative use of social media puts a new spin on flash saleslimited time, limited-entry online sales. Some furniture retailers have tried sites specializing in the technique such as Groupon, but results have not been all that great in many cases.
With flash sales, I think of the Groupons or Living Socials of the world, said Kevin Doran, vice president and co-owner of R&A Marketing, Columbus, Ohio. We dont see that being very beneficial for furniture stores except maybe for mattresses because you have to give up so much margin and share your profits from the sale.
But you can turn what youre doing in social media into flash sales. We have an application called Share & Save. ¦ They see a call to action on Facebook: Thanks for being a fan, heres your discount. You set up a minimum number of participants and a maximum of who gets the discount. And since youre doing it yourself, you set the limit on the time the deal is available.
Customers get people they know that might want the deal to generate critical mass for the sale.
You can protect yourself doing this on social media because you set the price and the margin, Doran said. If youre not set up with you floor priced right to take that hit, you lose with something like Groupon.
Ritchie agrees. What weve been seeing is the modified version of the flash sale with social media, he said, pointing to another example from Carlsa bedroom set priced to move at $299. Put a photo out there with a price and information, and this sells within hours.
The technique also avoids paying a Groupon a hefty share of profits on merchandise you have discounted.
In this case, youve set where youre going to be on the clearance side, whether youve written down the product or youre at the point you want to move it out of the store, said Ritchie. They had five of these this week, and all five went.
SOCIAL STILL MEANS SOCIAL
Whatever its monetary contribution, social media remains an important part of some pretty smart retailers presentation to their customers and their community.
At the recent Las Vegas Market, three dealers shared how they look at social media when GE Capital hosted a seminar, Building Business with Social Media. The retail panel included Jeff Child, CEO of R.C. Willey, Salt Lake City; Nick Gates, general manager of Gates Home Furnishings, Grants Pass, Ore.; and Jim Navarra, director of marketing at Jeromes Furniture in San Diego.
They discussed how their approach to online socializing has developed, and how they believe it affects their business.
Jeromes has changed its approach to social media, making it more ... well, more social.
We went from the promotional route to doing no sales, no promotions, Navarra said. To do that, you need to have things in your business to talk about. That led us to focus on the merchandise, and explain to the consumer why the values theresocial media is a perfect vehicle for that. Value for our part includes knowledge and advice.
You have to figure out what content people want. Recently we decorated the house of a reality television star. We took photos with fans and posted them on our Facebook Page. There was a snowball effect with all the likes, comments and responses to the comments.
The biggest change social media had at R.C. Willey regards the retailers interaction with the consumer.
Five or six years ago, we started having negative reviews pop up online, Child said, noting that social media is a great way to deal with such issues. Most people will become an advocate for the business if we respond helpfully.
For years wed assumed our Internet site was a reflection of our company, when in reality the site was a reflection of the store. (With social media) consumers tell us what they want, and we tell them what they can do.
Heres an idea: R.C. Willey has started posting groups its considering at furniture Markets on Facebook and asking fans what they think.
Consumers love to give their opinions, and if you can channel that in a productive way, it can help your business, Child said. At Market we showed several groups we were thinking of buying, and the post generated 700 comments. We ended up not buying one of the groups, and for the product we did buy we included as picked by you on Facebook in the ad.
Gates Home Furnishings had a Facebook Page, but it sat there for a while. What really made it take off was when we provided the furniture for an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, he said. That began a lot of conversation on our Facebook page.
Conversations sometime takes strange turns, but that can provide personality.
One time we put a recliner on the site we wanted to get out the door, Gates said. We tried to take a good picture of it, but it was just an ugly recliner. People just ragged on us about it. At some point we had to stop responding, but if you go way back on our page, its still there. I think it adds some character to our page.
Jeromes Navarra considers consumer sites such as Yelp social media.
We have a full-time sales manager who monitors negative reviews and responds to them, he said. Seventy-five percent of people we respond to respond back, and 50 percent respond positively.
Dont forget to acknowledge praise, he added: Its important to respond to positive reviews as well as the negative ones.
COMMITMENT DEMAND
The major cost of an effective social media program, the panelists agreed, is a valuable commodity: time.
We have a 25,000-square-foot store in a town of 38,000, and we have 2,500 followers, Gates said. You have to be viewing it all the time, just knowing the status of your Facebook Page. ¦ Knowing whats on your Page is very important.
R.C. Willey has a full-time person handling social media, who seems to be on it 24-7, Child said. The more content you have, the more people are reading, the more people comment, that all takes time.
R.C. Willey has contests and giveaways on Facebook, where the store posts as many as five entries a day.
We also have a woman who puts out a blog with seven to eight thousand followers, Child added. Its not all about home furnishings; well have contests, even recipes. For us its a continually ongoing process. We have more than 85,000 followers.
The key is to have enough content and things going on to keep people interested. R.C. Willey used to promote educational seminars in the paper and would get 25 people to show up.
Now well do an e-blast and put it on Facebook and (have) 200 show up at each store, Child said. Youre reaching the people who are interested enough to know whats going on with you.
Jeromes has one full-time person
handling social media and two contributors writing blogs. Responding to comments and dealing with customer problems demands that attention at a store Jeromes size.
Look at social media like you would the telephone, Navarra said. Youd pick up the telephone if someone called your store. HFB
September 12,
2012 by in UnCategorized
By Aggregated Content in Financial Reports on September 13, 2012
from http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/pier-1-2q-profit-rises-lifts-fiscal-2013-2457144.html
More people shopped at Pier One Imports and they spent more on average, driving the home decor company's fiscal second-quarter net income 58 percent higher as a key revenue metric improved.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based company raised its fiscal 2013 adjusted earnings forecast for a second time.
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