Monthly Issue
From Home Furnishing Business
May 1,
2013 by Powell Slaughter in Business Strategy, Industry 
New Ways to Sift, Think About The Information that Matters to Your Store.
“There are lies, there are damned lies—and then there are statistics.”
It’s an old saw, and while outfitting customers with products that match the lifestyle of their dreams takes a human touch, today’s furniture retailers—especially if they’re running operations employing more than a few people—can’t ignore the numbers that tell them what they’re doing right and also where they could make some improvements.
Analyzing your stores numbers is more than bean counting. It’s about pulling what’s really useful out of the huge amount of information generated even by basic store operating systems. As important—communicating what you find to your sales team and management personnel in an effort to help them do their jobs more effectively.
Numbers alone aren’t enough, said Bob George , CEO of Impact Consulting/FurnitureCore—it’s more about understanding what they mean, and using them to execute a business plan.
At the recent High Point Furniture Market George gave a presentation, “Big Data,” on how retailers can better utilize the huge amount of information their Web sites and store systems generate.
“The key to utilizing data is understanding the sorts of information; using it to identify customer segments and the opportunities they represent; using data for better promotional execution; and monitoring the results,” he said.
That can be a daunting task considering how much information a store automation system can generate. The first step is to create a place where that data can be organized and accessed, and George used the smart phone as an analogy.
“Every one of you probably has a smart phone,” he said. “Think about how much information you have on that phone—pictures, addresses, contacts—you’ve probably become dependent on that phone.
“Take one piece of data and expand it from there—it’s the what you did with your phone—your kids pictures, your calendar. Do it with you business in the same way.
Take that concept of all that information you have and layer it in. … If you don’t integrate that data and pull it together, you can’t use it.”
Create a place to store that data.
“The cost to store that data has fallen dramatically, and you also need the speed to get at it,” George said. “Where it should end up is where the rubber meets the road—in the salesperson’s hands. How can you use that data to influence the sales process?
“With ‘Big Data,’ the goal is to be able to say, ‘Bill bought something, but I knew he was going to buy it.’ He went to the Web site and asked about this SKU. Help your salespeople facilitate that movement from ‘I think I need some furniture’ to ‘I’m going to buy some furniture.’”
TAKING MEASURE
Traffic measurement, along with inventory, closing rate (both team and individual) and average sale, are absolutely critical sources of information, said Profitability Consulting Group CEO John Egger.
You might have those numbers, but understanding what they really mean takes deeper digging. Analyzing traffic numbers, for instance, is more than counting bodies.
“If you want to, drill down and use cameras at your door you can measure things like groups of people, family, ethnicity,” Egger said. “If the raw numbers say 80 people came in, that drill down will tell you that you had, say, 12 families, six groups of women, etc.”
Again, looking beyond the numbers, analyze where shoppers go in the store. Where do they stop?
“What if 70 percent of people stopped at a particular vignette?” Egger said. “That’s going to tell you something you can use in your merchandising.”
Say you’ve been gone for a week, and sales were half of what you’d counted on for that period.
“Your immediate reaction is to get all over the salespeople, but maybe there was a storm, maybe you were understaffed,” Egger said. “There are a lot of things that could have happened to let you know if there was a real problem with your people.”
DIGGING DEEPER: INVENTORY
Knowing how much furniture you have in your warehouse and on your floor, and how often you turn your inventory hopefully got covered in Retail 101.
Knowing you have X dollars in hand and that you turn it X number of times a year is fine, but if that’s where you’re stopping, those figures don’t really help you figure out how to make that investment in goods make money.
Do you know what part of that inventory has been sitting around for a while? Staying current on aging inventory is critical, Egger said.
“Someone has to be in charge of an aging report, and keep track of ‘not in location’ or ‘not available for sale’ items,” he noted. “That stuff can stack up to thousands and thousands of dollars. Suddenly you end up with $500,000 in dead items that could be cash. Someone has to be accountable for that.”
Egger shared an analysis Profitability Consulting Group performs for clients—slot cost.
“We go into a warehouse and see how many slots can be filled there,” he said. “We take total occupancy cost and divide that by slot—that’s the slot cost.
“If you have X amount of slots, we know that piece of furniture costs you X amount of money to sit there. If you have 1,200 slots that are (not in location) or (not available for sale), that could be replaced with merchandise that’s making you money.”
DIGGING DEEPER: TRAFFIC
While more than 50 percent of American retailers have installed traffic monitoring systems, they don’t always apply the information gathered to improving sales, according to Michael Bunyar, president of Montreal-based SMS Store Traffic.
SMS’ furniture retail clients include names such as Ashley Furniture Homestores, City Furniture, Dufresne and The Brick.
Today’s traffic counting technologies now provide queue management data, age and sex recognition, hot spot identification, group counts, employee elimination, dual view cameras and more. But retailers can do more to apply what they learn from those numbers to convert shoppers into buyers.
In applying store traffic to your operation, Bunyar said customer-to-staff hour ratio is one of the most useful ratios you can generate.
“That’s total traffic divided by the number of staff hours you use in a given day, or period of the day,” he said. “If your customer/staff hour ratio is 15, that means everyone on your floor dealt with 15 people. When you get to 30 or more, there is simply no available service. The floor staff is getting pulled every which way.
“When you look at that ratio on a daily basis, people agree that Saturday and Sunday are the big hours. The ratios for those times are typically the worst of the week, meaning your highest traffic is getting the worst service of the week.”
That ratio could well be an acceptable 15 on Tuesday or Wednesday, but if it’s 25 or 30 on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, you might be burning turf customer-wise.
“Just re-establishing staffing levels, bringing a little more available service to your key selling days has a huge impact,” Bunyar said. “The bottom line is that most retailers are desperate to increase sales. It’s all about your conversion rate. Are you selling 1 to 2 percent of your traffic? That’s a problem. Just adjust staffing so when people come into your store you can give them the service you need.”
Are you already selling 20 to 25 percent of your traffic? Taking it to 26 or 27 percent represents a huge impact in sales.
“It’s an easy fix, it’s a quick fix, and it’s an inexpensive fix,” Bunyar said. “If you talk with store managers, you find they’ve been petitioning their head office for years to get more people, but are told they’re staffed properly for their sales level. Improve the service, and you’ll improve the sales.”
DIGGING DEEPER: SALES
Jeff Winter is an owner at Discovery Furniture in Topeka, Kan., along with brother Jamie Winter. The operation includes Discovery Furniture, RoomMakers stores carrying Ashley goods Mattress Headquarters locations in Topeka, Kan., and Lawrence, Kan.; and an Ashley Furniture Homestore in Salina, Kan.
Discovery/RoomMakers has deepened its sales analytics in the past couple of years. More important, management puts the information it gets to work on managing and counseling its sales team and managers to help them perform more effectively.
“All the information is in our computer systems—what was purchased, who bought it, who sold it,” Winter said. “We have several components in the analysis we do. That includes normal sales specialist measurements like sales per hour, sales per guest, average sale, sales productivity.”
Discovery analyzes by week, month and year for each person; and it graphs that information by performance, and by furniture category.
“The manager sits down with each person so they know where they stand,” Winter said. “It’s making it so you can change and improve. … You can’t improve what you can’t measure, and it all leads to communication.
In the past year Discovery has added protection sales and delivery into the measurements the business tracks.
“We put those in because people who purchase product protection and delivery are our happiest customers,” Winter noted.
Sometimes, for example, customers decide to pick up the furniture themselves, and end up damaging it.
“That’s not our fault, but you still have an unhappy customer,” Winter said. “Say a customer opts out of delivery. We’re able to identify that, and help (the salesperson), coach them.
“With a lack of information, people tend to think they’re above average. Everyone wants to do a good job, it’s a matter of helping them with specific things, specific sales tools.”
Discovery looks at those same measurements by store and by each category. On a graph, a gold bar indicates expectations are met or exceeded; green means performance exceeds the prior period of measurement, be that year, month or week; and red indicates performance trails the prior year.
“We’ve formatted how we get that information into people’s hands, and it’s compiled every hour,” Winter said.
Daily text compare performance by day, week, month and year; and store managers see not only their store but also every other store.
“We also have merchandising tools, managing that in a real-time war room,” Winter added. “We determine what’s generating our gross margin dollars.”
It’s all part of re-thinking the way retailers can apply the numbers available to them in their business. HFB
Inset Story
Lessons from Outside
How Retailers in Other Sectors Use Numbers to Increase Sales Conversions.
SMS Store Traffic has been providing traffic counting systems to retailers for more than 40 years, and while the technology involved generates more information than ever before, retailers don’t always tap its full potential.
That’s according to Michael Bunyar, president of Montreal-based SMS Store Traffic.
While accurate counting is important, how the retailer applies the data is the key to using traffic information to impact sales in a major way. SMS has examples of client retailers outside furnitureland who are doing just that.
DOUBLING CONVERSIONS
Eric Champagne, was vice president of information technology and logistics at Liz Claiborne/Mexx Canada from 1997 to 2011, where he in doubled the chain’s conversion rate over a three-year period using a traffic counting system from SMS.
He said at first there were some reluctant store managers who felt the system had a “big brother” feel to it.
“I told them I’m giving you a tool that will double your sales,” Champagne said.
The process began with a discussion with store managers about what they could affect, and what was out of their hands as it related to increasing store sales. Ultimately, they came to understand that they could directly affect their closing ratio and average dollar per transaction using information provided by the system, which provides combined traffic and sales information they can use to guide their sales efforts.
“In retail, driving sales with numbers is probably the most difficult thing to do,” says Champagne. “The sales force wants to be on the floor and selling is very emotional. But once they understand these numbers, they can take them and focus those emotions and energies toward the customer.”
One of the fundamental was to identify key traffic patterns at each store on a daily basis.
“Traffic behaves in such a predictable way that it’s scary,” Champagne said. “Within a few weeks of collecting data you can forecast how many people will come into your store on a Wednesday afternoon at 2 o’clock.”
In the vast majority of stores, the answer to increasing sales lies in providing more effective customer service during the key traffic periods identified by the software. This can occur in a number of ways, from altering staffing to provide more consistent customer service, to training, to setting more specific performance targets and standards.
Another way is to ensure the top-selling personnel are on duty during the peak traffic periods.
At Liz Claiborne, the changes increased closing ratio from 8 percent to 16 percent, all with the same amount of traffic.
DE-“BUGGING” TRAFFIC
Larry Lombardi, vice president of stores for 8 years at the 1,100-store Fashion Bug chain, reported a similar experience.
He led the retailer on project to improve conversion rates at approximately 75 Fashion Bug locations.
In instituting the SMS system, a training program was designed to be more customer focused at certain times of the day and less task-oriented. Fashion Bug also altered the way it scheduled sales staff to capitalize on identified sales windows when there were more people in the store.
Prior to the project, conversion rates at Fashion Bug were a little more than 20 percent. After several years, the conversion ratio had risen to 29 percent. The chain ultimately adopted a similar program at the rest of its stores and some related brands.
Lombardi said viewing data at “face value” is the biggest obstacle to maximizing the value of traffic counting—i.e., “traffic is up, traffic is down.” He adds that there must be a commitment of time and resources as well.
“Some people look at the information from traffic counting and say, ‘it is what it is,’ but it’s not,” says Lombardi. “It’s what you do with it.”
April 1,
2013 by Powell Slaughter in Business Strategy, Industry
Traditional Furniture Stores Continue to See Competing Channels Emerge.
It doesn’t look as if there’s any end in sight for new consumer alternatives to traditional home furnishings stores.
For instance, high-end furniture retailers that haven’t lost sleep over different ways consumers might find the sort of product they carry might want to check out Chairish.com.
The online consignment shopping site for upscale home furnishings launched in late February specializing in good condition, upper-end furniture, accessories and accents.
A browse through the site indicates the concept can move product—a fair amount of what you’ll see already is labeled “sold.”
Chairish aims to meet two needs in the marketplace. First, well-to-do and wealthy consumers who are moving or giving their home a makeover have a vehicle to get some cash out of their old furnishings versus giving them away or storing them.
Second, it makes gently used, but high-style furniture available at a savings to aspirational consumers, or those who while well-off, still want a value.
Think about how the value of that new car drops the moment you drive it off the dealership’s property. (I know I’ll probably never buy a brand-new automobile again.)
The site serves customers anywhere in the United States who have a major credit card, and offers white glove-shipping as well as a standard 48-hour return policy on all items.
For sellers, Chairish offers to levels of service: first, a standard service anywhere in continental United States. Sellers complete an online form, share the story behind their piece and upload photos. Once Chairish curators approve the listing, it is posted and ready for purchase. Listing is free, and Chairish receives a 20 percent commission upon sale. There is a $250 minimum listing price per item.
The second seller-service level, Concierge, is currently offered in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Chairish is based, and will roll out in additional major markets. With this service, a Chairish representative comes to the seller’s home, inspects the furnishings, writes the listings, take the pieces from the home via white glove movers, puts them into secure storage, and professionally photographs the items. When the piece sells, Chairish manages payment, shipping logistics and only takes a 40 percent commission. Listing is free.
The site brings plenty of e-commerce experience to bear, with its founding team includes entrepreneurs from places such as Hotwire, TripIt, Yahoo, Expedia, eBay, and Levi Strauss & Co.
A DEVELOPING STORY
Chairish is one of the latest examples of how people are finding furniture in new places.
Greensboro, N.C.-based furniture marketing consultant Joe Carroll has long maintained a list of distribution channels for furniture.
His updated list, which he shared with Home Furnishings Business, stands at 86 now, same as last year, but it has changed slightly, losing “computer specialty” stores and gaining a new category, “sleep specialty” stores.
“Sleep specialty used to be under ‘product-specific specialty stores,’ but bedding specialists are one of the fastest growing channels within that group, so they rated their own listing,” Carroll said.
With retailers such as CompUSA no longer in the picture and consumers now purchasing office furniture at other electronics outlets such as Best Buy, Carroll felt the computer specialty channel had pretty much gone away.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people, and they say computer stores just aren’t carrying furniture anymore,” he said.
WHAT’S HOT
Along with “sleep specialty” stores, Carroll said he’s seen most growth in the “multi-regional chain,” “regional chain” and “national chain” segments among furniture stores; “online furniture retailers”; and “flash sales sites.”
“Online furniture retailers also have divided into three kinds: furniture retailers selling on line, wholesalers like Amazon selling online and the Internet-only dealers like Wayfair,” he noted.
Flash sales sites are a permanent part of the home furnishings distribution picture, he added.
“Flash sites are reminiscent of the ‘80s when catalogs came on, or when Internet sales began,” Carroll said. “Everyone said those would always be a small part of furniture sales, and now the Internet has $5 billion. Flash sales sites are growing, and they’re here to stay.
“That turned out not to be a ‘flash in the pan.’” HFB
April 1,
2013 by Sheila Long O’Mara in Business Strategy, Industry
As of press time, the country was just going into the Final Four weekend of March Madness of the NCAA championship. The four teams—Louisville, Wichita State, Michigan and Syracuse—have made their way to Atlanta, soon to be followed by ardent fans of the sport.
I absolutely love college basketball.
Some of that love comes from growing up in North Carolina where passions run deep and rivalries are hot. Back in the day, who could argue with the strength of Tobacco Road, and its majestic cluster of basketball powerhouses? Much of my love for the sport comes from spending my college years in Chapel Hill, N.C., at THE University of North Carolina. (The REAL Carolina, for all my friends in Columbia, S.C.)
While my beloved Tar Heels fell to the Jayhawks of the University of Kansas in the third round of play, I’m still watching. My bracket, chosen through loyalties to the ‘Heels and the Atlantic Coast Conference, started to fall apart weeks ago. It’s pretty much disintegrated now with none of my chosen four anywhere near Atlanta. Every year, I say I’ll fill in the bracket without following my heart. THAT isn’t likely to happen—EVER—and even if it did, given this year’s topsy-turvy, unpredictable month of games, my picks still would have gone down. I might could have improved my chances of winning the pool had I collected a few quarters and opted for a heads-or-tails strategy.
That’s the beauty of March Madness. Short of my team winning it all, the craziness and excitement of the unknown keeps me tuned in for “just one more game.”
I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck college basketball, March Madness and the Final Four has to do with the furniture retailing business.
The way I see it, retailing, like college basketball, is an extremely competitive sport.
To succeed and play well, it takes practice, the right tools and of course, some information on who your competition is. I have no doubt that each of the teams playing in the Final Four in Atlanta have been studying and reviewing the other teams to decipher their strengths and weaknesses in an effort to develop the most effective game plan. Coaches and assistant coaches are all poring over strategies that have been successful in previous games, but to do that, they must know their competitor.
Preparation is the key to success. Knowledge is power.
Who is your primary competition in your market? Is it Amazon? Your neighborhood pharmacy? Walmart? Target? The local bookstore? The Best Buy in the local shopping hot spot? Look around, you’re likely in the fight of your life with someone other than what we think of as a “traditional” furniture retailer.
Duking it out for those elusive consumer dollars, and the consumer’s time and attention.
So jump in with both feet, figure out who your competition is and be ready for the big win. Find the tools that make the most sense and put them to work in your operation. You’ll be thankful when you come out on top.
Now, back to basketball.
Thank goodness for Cinderella teams, underdogs, enthusiastic players and coaches with the desire and will to win. Going into the weekend of play, my heart lies with the Wichita State Shockers—a fabulous mascot given the circumstances.
April 1,
2013 by Howard Whitman in Bedding, Product
Here’s one you probably don’t hear often: Imagine a store that, when it doesn’t have what a customer is looking for, refers them to a competing retailer.
That’s exactly what Martin’s Town & Country Furniture, a longtime seller of bedding and furniture based in Canby, Ore., does. It’s one of the many ways the retailer will go the extra mile to ensure that customers are well taken care of, whoever they ultimately end up buying from.
“We don’t want to close the sale today and give somebody something that might not be what’s best for them just to get a few dollars in the till today” said Martin’s owner/president Neil Martin. “We want to get something that’s right for them, and if we don’t have (it), we’ll look it up online and find where they can get (it).”
This philosophy pays off in the long run, he added: “They’ll remember that. They’ll remember the honesty, and, I think, the integrity, and come back and see us when they do have something that we can help them with. So those are the long-term relationships that we’re trying to build and keep going for generations.”
Runs in the Family
Generations are something Martin knows about—he’s part of the third generation of Martin family members to work in the Canby store, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year.
The business actually began in 1947, when Martin’s grandfather Walter opened his first Martin’s Furniture and Appliance Co. store in Molalla, Ore. During his daily commute to and from his home in Canby, a plot of property in his hometown caught his eye. He bought the land, and in October of 1963, a new store, Martin’s Town & Country Furniture, opened.
Walter’s son Robert joined the business in 1965, as did his brother Neil eight years later. When the store’s longtime delivery person retired in 2000, Robert’s son, also named Neil, joined the family business, which he now owns. While the Mollala store has closed, the Canby location continues to serve the rural community of Canby and its surrounding area.
Sharp Focus
Martin’s is a full-line furniture store, but the company has done well with bedding by keeping its offerings in this category sharply focused. The retailer has carried Sealy for, in Neil Martin’s words, “as long as I can remember,” but added Tempur-Pedic in 2004.
This has been a successful move, in Martin’s opinion: “It’s a good line and we’re happy to have it. Everybody seems to be really, really happy with their purchase. We’ve had two comfort returns in the last five years and one was not really a comfort return—it was just a size return, the twin was too small and (the customer) wanted to go to a full. The other, the fellow was commenting that he loved the bed, thought it was very comfortable but he was just having a little difficulty turning. So I said, ‘Why don’t you come in and try that new Tempur-Weightless collection—it’s like your Cloud Supreme on the top; it just has that Tempur Float layer in there.’ So we switched him out and he called a few days later and said ‘It’s perfect—exactly what I was looking for.’ We’ve had a couple of switches in the last five years, but they haven’t switched to another brand in the line.”
Going the Distance
Martin takes the concept of “going the extra mile” literally. Not only does the business offer free delivery on beds and other furniture, but Martin and his co-workers have been known to go great distances to take care of customers.
“We’ve had deliveries that were over 250 miles one way,” Martin said. “A lot of the deliveries that are farther out are maybe people that live closer but have a second home in central Oregon over the coast. But it’s not uncommon to have folks from 30, 40 or 50 miles out come in because they’ve seen an ad or heard about us from a friend. They come in and give us a shot.”
While shoppers may come from far and wide, Martin still attributes much of his store’s staying power to his loyal, local customers.
“We have a real supportive community,” he stated. “It’s not really big—maybe 16,000 people. We’re just about halfway between Portland and Salem, about 30 minutes from either. It’s just a little community here, but there are a lot of outlying communities, at least another six or seven ZIP codes within a 15-mile radius, so we have a pretty big area that we service here.”
Family Practice
Tradition is important to Neil Martin, and his fidelity to his family elders influences his store’s bedding sales approach.
“There are really only five people who have worked on the sales floor in the whole 50 years,” he recalled. “We’ve never had any commissioned salespeople on the floor. I think that creates a different approach right there, because we’re not worried about getting a sale today. If we don’t and (the customer) comes back tomorrow or a week later, maybe (another staffer) gets a part of that. … It seems like the different positive comments we get about the store are related to the fact that they can come in and look around, do their research; we’re here to answer their questions but there’s not pressure. So when somebody walks out and doesn’t buy something, I don’t look at that as any kind of failure or lost opportunity. If we’ve done our job, we’ve answered their questions and had the time to get to know them a little bit … I figure when they’re ready, they’ll be back. I really think our ‘be-backs’ are somewhere around at least 50 percent.”
This care and respect shown for consumers doesn’t just occur in the store—it also is the way Martin’s does business in customers’ homes.
“When we deliver a bed, we often vacuum the floors when we pull the old mattress set out, help them clean up,” Martin said, “because it might be another 10 or 20 years before they get under there again. Any little thing that we can do to help them get that (good) feeling—many stores used to do this naturally, but it’s harder and harder to find customer service at the level that we try to maintain. … So I really don’t see much competition in the way of stores like us. There are other stores that sell the lines that we have. … But with our service, and with our (low) prices—my (family owns) the building and property, so our overhead is very low, so all things considered, it creates an unusual business model.”
The Next Generation
Is there another generation poised to carry on taking care of Martin’s customers in years to come?
Neil Martin may have a few contenders: “I have a four-year-old son and a newborn son about a month old. We’d love to see this go to a fourth generation. … Certainly, once I got here and got to know more about the business, and then take ownership in it, it’s something I take a lot of pride in. … I feel grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to be here.” HFB
April 1,
2013 by in Retail Snapshot
By Powell Slaughter
An eye for opportunity and continuing development of new market segments and services has Stacy Furniture & Design staking a claim in the highly competitive Dallas/Ft. Worth market for home furnishings.
Last year, Stacy racked up more than $42 million in sales at its Grapevine and Allen, Texas, namesake stores, an outlet store at its Flower Mound distribution center, and another location at a
former Robb & Stucky store in Plano.
Since incorporating as a retail operation in 1991—prior to that it was a wholesale furniture distributor, serving dealers in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana—Stacy has grown into a full-service home furnishings resource, building its price points into the middle and upper end, and offering full design services.
FROM WAREHOUSE TO SHOWCASE
The showrooms Stacy’s customers see today are a long way from its beginnings as a store. The retail operation opened initially in the warehouse that served the original distribution business, “selling in and through our racks,” said Dorian Stacy Sims , Stacy Furniture & Design president, and daughter of founder and owner Rick Stacy .
“This proved to be cost effective but made for very difficult conditions for our customers,” Sims said. “The heat in a warehouse during a typical Texas summer can be grueling.”
Despite the less-than-ideal shopping environment, business continued to grow at a steady, dependable pace, helped along by a wave of home developments in the market.
In 1998, Rick Stacy, who Sims called “our leader, visionary, chief ‘dreamer’” decided it was time to build a “real” store, and construction began on Stacy’s Grapevine property. That store opened in July 2000.
“His vision was a one-stop shopping experience for our customer’s home furnishing needs,” Sims said. “The Grapevine property has 40,000 square feet on the first floor dedicated to other needs for the home that Stacy’s doesn’t sell. For instance, we have Carpet One, Morrison Appliance, Yard Art, a drop-in day care facility and a restaurant as tenants.
“The Stacy Furniture showroom is on the second floor featuring 90,000-plus square feet of stained concrete and carpeted areas displaying furniture in both category specific and lifestyle vignettes. Over the years we continue to evolve with our assortment, display and price points due to the ever-changing needs of our customer. In 2003, we opened a similar, one-story footprint in Allen, Texas, and have had great success with that expansion of the market area.”
When Gabbert’s decided to leave the Texas market in late 2005, Stacy looked at purchasing its Fort Worth facility. The structure, however, didn’t fit Stacy’s needs, so while it passed on the building, it expanded its own reach with consumers by hiring the former Gabbert’s Design Studio staff.
“We opened Dorian’s Interior Design studio in Fort Worth in 2005 to expand our selection in higher-end goods and design services,” Sims said.
A new Trader Joe’s grocery leased that Fort Worth property in late 2011, and the Design Studio moved out, but design services for a higher-end clientele by that time were an established part of the retailer’s repertoire. And that meant a new brand to reflect Stacy Furniture’s abilities.
“This dynamic product assortment proved to be a very successful decision and a challenging one at the same time,” Sims said. “We began to incorporate more and more of the higher end lines, such as Henredon, Hickory Chair, Century and Sherrill into our existing Stacy Furniture stores until it became more efficient for us to incorporate the entire mix together and change our company name to simply, Stacy Furniture & Design. Today the customer experience at any Stacy Furniture & Design will host a wide variety of price points from Klaussner to Henredon, custom window treatments, whole house finish out and so much more.”
MAKING MOVES
Stacy will be moving out of the Former Robb & Stucky location in Plano this year. The retailer had a short-term lease on the property, and while Dorian said that location has been successful, the landlord has contracted to demolish the building and replace it with multi-story office towers.
“At this time, we are currently running a moving sale event and negotiating details on another property in the North Dallas area,” Sims noted. “We’re hoping to make a ‘new home’ announcement very soon.”
The product selections between the existing Grapevine and Allen stores are primarily the same, but the feel of the two showrooms is different due to interior details. The Allen store, for instance, is a former Kmart location and has very high ceilings and carpeting. The furniture showroom segment of the Grapevine store has stained walls and tile flooring over much of the area.
“Since starting our moving sale from Plano, we’ve begun to remodel and enhance the displays at our Allen location,” Sims said. “By creating a more open feel in some areas while building smaller, power display opportunity areas the customer can shop the store with ease.”
UPSCALING THE MESSAGE
Stacy Furniture & Design’s primary advertising medium is television.
“Rick and I personally appear in our commercials and try to balance between event driven offers as well as informative messages about products or services,” Sims said. “We are doing more and more social and digital media but are still trying to find the best balance to reach our customer.
“For several years now, biannually we’ve mailed a 44-page Magalog (an upscale catalog) piece that has been very successful in expressing to our customers what we really offer in a format customers are proud to keep on their cocktail table for months to come.”
The retailer also is working on scaling up the brand image.
“Our trade line has always been ‘if you’re not shopping at Stacy’s your burning money,’ but that just is too price-oriented, and that’s not how we want to compete,” Sims said. “We’re working on our marketing and branding to expand and talk to the current customer we’re trying to sell.”
Sims noted that Stacy Furniture & Design is in a very competitive market with very astute independent retailers and successful chain operations.
“It forces Stacy’s to keep on our toes, stay ahead of pricing issues and marketing opportunities, and ultimately makes us better merchants,” she said. “We are different in the respect that we offer a wider variety of price points and opportunities to fully address any customer’s needs—no matter the budget. From the chain perspective, you can never replace the value of a locally owned and operated, family business dedicated to great customer service.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Like most retailers, Stacy Furniture & Design felt the heat during the recession, but Sims is optimistic about the retailer’s prospects.
She said Stacy’s had been on a consecutive sales growth pattern for 17 years until late 2008.
“While Texas was slower to feel the fall out of the economy than other areas, we have felt it,” Sims said. “Sales did drop, significantly at times, and we had to make many changes to our operation costs and cut expenses wherever possible.
“I think the most important thing we’ve learned is, most likely, you can always keep evaluating expenses and overhead to reduce waste, and it should be a priority, not fall to the back burner. For the customer, we continued to partner with manufacturers that have shorter lead times to help manage our inventory costs but also provided the customer with a quicker delivery fulfillment.”
Sims said she’s hearing good things about the housing market picking up in the market Stacy’s Furniture & Design serves.
“By continuing to expand our advertising and fine tune our product mix message, we feel we are doing a better job at reminding them how important it is to make their house a ‘home’” she said. “Boiling it down, we are continuing to advertise as much as possible to remind people that new furniture is a good thing.” HFB