October 2014 — The Future of Furniture by RetailerNOW

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INSIDE

14.

OCTOBER 2014

in each issue 04. NAHFA President’s Message 06. Editor's Message 11. Retailer2Retailer/Inspired Reading 12. Connections Meet Your Newest Association Members

24.

29. Community Today Investing in Lives 32. Product Focus Dining 74. Government Relations November Elections 76. The Scoop 78. Industry Calendar 80. The NOW List

features

14. The Future of Furnitue 24. NGN Spotlight: Chris Cannon 37. High Point Preview 49. High Point RRC Section

37.

departments Sales & Marketing

20. Retailer Voice Happy Birthday! 42. You’ve Got Mail Email Marketing Technology

08. TechNOW 26. Embracing Technology 67. Making Social Media Work for You 70. Old School Marketing Tool Membership

48. Flexible Financing Operations

22. Controlling Inventory

We asked five experts to tell us what the furniture industry will look like in a few years. The future begins on page 14. Running a home furnishings store means means long hours and hard work. Chris Cannon tells us on page 24 why he wouldn’t have it any other way. Your High Point Market begins on page 37.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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thePlayers What we are so passionate about. . .

To have the courage to pursue purposeful dialogues that challenge conventional thinking, to engage and entertain our readers by delivering content that creates a fervent following ready to change the landscape of our industry.

Published by the North American Home Furnishings Association 500 Giuseppe Court, Suite Six, Roseville, CA 95678 800.422.3778 • retailernowmag.com

RetailerNOW is the magazine for today’s home furnishings professional. Developed for a specialized community, RetailerNOW brings a unique editorial focus on progressive and relevant issues concerning the home furnishings industry in the retailer’s voice, with a focus on issues impacting retailers NOW.

Contact Information:

RetailerNOW Staff

Executive Staff

Lisa Casinger Editorial Director lisac@retailerNOWmag.com

Sharron Bradley CEO NAHFA sbradley@NAHFA.org

Robert Bell Editor robert@retailerNOWmag.com

Mary Frye EVP NAHFA mfrye@NAHFA.org

Lisa Tilley Creative Director lisa@retailerNOWmag.com

Membership Staff

Michelle Nygaard Sales Executive michelle@retailerNOWmag.com

Mailing – Editorial and Advertising 500 Giuseppe Ct., Suite 6

Cindi Williams Business Development cindi@retailerNOWmag.com

Roseville CA 95678 Online: retailerNOWmag.com Phone: Editorial: (800) 422-3778 Advertising: (800) 422-3778 Social: Facebook.com/retailerNOW

Retail Advisory Team Carol Bell Contents Interiors Tucson, AZ Travis Garrish Forma Furniture Fort Collins, CO

Subscription: $70/year RetailerNOW, ISSN# 2166-5249, is published monthly (except March and December) by the North American Home Furnishings Association, 500 Giuseppe Court, Ste 6, Roseville, CA 95678. Application to Mail at the Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Roseville, CA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please address changes to: RetailerNOW, The North American Home Furnishings Association, 500 Giuseppe Court, Ste 6, Roseville CA 95678.

Rick Howard Sklar Furnishings Boca Raton, FL

If you would like to stop receiving RetailerNOW, please send an email to unsubscribe@retailerNOWmag.com.

Andrew Tepperman Tepperman's Windsor, ON

If you would like to only receive an electronic version of RetailerNOW, please send an email to gogreen@retailerNOWmag.com. © 2014 North American Home Furnishings Association. Published by the North American Home Furnishings Association. Material herein may not be reproduced, copied or reprinted without prior written consent of the publisher. Acceptance of advertising or indication of sponsorship does not imply endorsement of publisher or the North American Home Furnishings Association. The views expressed in this publication may not reflect those of the publisher, editor or the North American Home Furnishings Association, and North American Retail Services Corp. Content herein is for general information only; readers are encouraged to consult their own attorney, accountant, tax expert and other professionals for specific advice before taking any action.

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Jordan Boyst jboyst@NAHFA.org Michael Hill mhill@NAHFA.org

Sydnee Seites HIGH POINT MARKET Webmaster Eric Malone OCTOBER18-22 , 2014 sseites@retailerNOWmag.com emalone@NAHFA.org

Twitter.com/retailerNOW Pinterest.com/retailerNOW

Kaprice Crawford Membership Team Leader kcrawford@NAHFA.org

Jana Sutherland jsutherland@NAHFA.org Dianne Therry dtherry@NAHFA.org Please call (800) 422-3778 for all membership inquires.

Mike Luna Pedigo’s Furniture Livingston TX

Contributors Chris Andresen, Kaprice Crawford, Jeff Giagnocavo, Ken Mahar, Bill Napier, Sydnee Seites and Tom Shay

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Over 4,400 home furnishing partners. 1 retail finance provider. Introducing Synchrony Financial, formerly GE Capital Retail Finance. With over 80 years of retail heritage, we bring new meaning to the word partnership. From the smallest merchants to the largest retailers in home furnishing, we bring together consumer financing solutions and deep industry expertise to help you engage your consumers in new and more meaningful ways. Find out what Synchrony Financial can do to strengthen consumer loyalty, increase average transaction size, and build repeat business at SynchronyBusiness.com/furniture or 1-855-433-3552.

Built from GE heritage.

President's Message President’s

What is the Future of Furniture?

he arrival of the Internet more than 20 years ago created a paradigm shift in the retail world. Who would have thought the Internet would have such an enormous impact on our industry? The idea of buying large durable items online without seeing or touching them was unthinkable. Today billions of dollars are spent over the Internet on just such products. Most brick-and-mortar stores have been slow to embrace technology. Internet-only companies have been changing. They have learned from the brick-and-mortar profit model. Many have struggled and gone out of business while the best of them have flourished. So what does the future hold for our industry? We can no longer be just one model for everyone. The brick-and-mortar version is important, but to grow your business and increase traffic you also need a strong Internet presence. We all need a powerful website that parallels our showroom experience. Most customers today shop online for ideas and decide where they want to do their business. A lot of companies are looking to add Internet sales to their mix; many already have. The companies that are able to do both well will be our leaders.

Bob Dylan said it best: “The times they are a-changing!” Our industry needs to change with them.

Rick Howard

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www.retailerNOWmag.com

4,000+ HOME FURNISHING PARTNERS

1 FINANCING SOLUTIONS PROVIDER Synchrony Financial, formerly GE Capital Retail Finance, is bringing new meaning to the word partnership. We offer credit and financing solutions for small and medium independent retailers as well as top home furnishing retailers. With over 80 years of retail heritage, we have the products, services and industry expertise to help our partners improve customer loyalty and increase average transaction sizes. Find out what Synchrony Financial can do for your home furnishing business at synchronybusiness.com/furniture or 1-855-973-3552. Engage with us.

Banking. Loyalty. Analytics. ÂŠ2014 Synchrony Financial

Editor’s Message

Coming home to High Point— a small Southern town

on’t get me wrong. I like Las Vegas Market. I like everything about the market— the convenience, the M shuttle, the sunlight pouring into the modern showrooms. I like the restaurants, the neon and, when they’re kind to me, the casinos. But I’m going to let you in on a secret: I like Las Vegas, but I love High Point Market. I love the quirky buildings, sleek and modern on one side of the street, old and stately on the other side. I love Main Street’s display windows, bursting with style and color. I love the crowds, young and old, shuffling along, autumn leaves blowing beneath their feet. I love the hot dog vendors competing with High Point University’s ice cream truck. Las Vegas Market is easily swallowed in the glitz and glamour of all the city has to offer. High Point is different. It’s still a small, Southern town of stone churches and wrap-around porches whose residents live for the week.

Sure, I’m biased. You live with someone for 22 years and you grow attached to them. It’s the same with a city. But it’s not just me. In putting together our market issue, I talked with more than a dozen retailers. Pamela Pelett, owner of City Liquidators in Portland, Ore., has been coming to High Point for more than 30 years. You can hear the excitement in her voice. “It’s where you go to find new styles or new ideas,” she told me. “I wouldn’t miss it.” She’s not alone. If you’re coming to High Point, be sure to check out our market preview starting on page 37 . We’re focusing on products that will make their debut at market. I hope you like what you see.

Robert Bell robert@retailerNOWmag.com | (916) 757-1169

JOUCLY T O|B 2E 0R 1|4 2 0 1 4

www.retailerNOWmag.com

Tech

What technology are you using in your store? Let us know at Robert@retailerNOWmag.com!

Hot News

5 Advanced Twitter Growth Hacks

Growing a Twitter following is hard. Here are five Twitter hacks to help.

Make powerful friends A big part of viral marketing is having followers in high places. Companies like Amazon can go viral easily because they have the resources and fan base built up. You can do this too by finding other people in the industry with large audiences and establishing a real connection with them.

Use Twitter’s advanced search Twitter advanced search is its best-kept secret for finding the right people to engage with. You can go beyond following trending topics, waiting for retweets or new fans. You can go right to the people who matter. Twitter advanced search cuts through the noise and finds you the tweeps you’re looking for.

Only pay to promote your best tweets

Cool Apps

And yes, you should be paying. Social media is free; social media marketing is not. So when you are paying to promote a tweet with Twitter’s promoted tweet ads you had better have something awesome to say. Tweeting about a blog post will not get you anywhere. A better use of your money would be to pay to promote your next big sale, event or give-away. Don’t make them work for it, just send them to the sale!

JustUnfollow was created to give Twitter users a more efficient way of managing their accounts. Built to answer the oft-asked question, “Who unfollowed me on Twitter?” JustUnfollow has matured into a holistic friend management platform.

Tweet...and repeat Yes, this is perfectly okay. I’m not saying to spam your followers with the same message. I’m saying tweet your best videos, blog posts, sales and events throughout the day to hit people who may have missed a previous post. Rewrite the message, utilize different angles, and use a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule your tweets.

Tweet exclusive content If your tweeps can get your content on Facebook, or your website, why would they bother following you on Twitter too? You can send out promo codes, images and exclusive bargains so that Twitter users clearly see that following you is worth their time. Don’t be modest—mention it’s Twitterexclusive! Your followers want to know.

Within the application, you can view who doesn’t follow you back, your fans, those who have both followed and unfollowed you recently, inactive followers, your entire follower base, and more. You can also copy others’ followers and check individual relationships for reciprocity. And you can whitelist and blacklist users, too, as noted above. Free for personal use; user & feature costs scale with you. Web, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry.

Education NAHFA launched its webinar series last month. The webinars are free to members ($79 for non-members) and will be archived on the Association’s website. The next webinar, Blending Traditional Media & Social Content, is Nov. 13, 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PST). Visit nahfa.org/events-education/ webinars for more information. facebook.com/RetailerNOW

@RetailerNOW

pinterest.com/RetailerNOW

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RetailerNOW™ is the only association publication delivered to dedicated home furnishings retailers across the U.S. and Canada. We’re devoted to helping furniture retailers grow their businesses—just like you. Reach your potential customers: Breakthrough Online

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JUNE 2014

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Retailer2Retailer

Inspired Reading: The Book of Business Awesome/Unawesome by Scott Stratten Right off the bat you’re getting a deal because Scott Stratten’s book on how to run a successful business is really two—count ‘em, TWO!—books in one. No, really. The Book of Business Awesome /UnAwesome is designed as two short books combined—one read from the front and the other read from the back when turned over. It’s a flip-book, covering key business concepts related to marketing, branding, human resources, public relations, social media and customer service that can easily apply to any home furnishings retailer. The Book of Business Awesome: How Engaging Your Customers and Employees Can Make Your Business Thrive includes case studies of successful businesses that gained exposure through being awesome and effective. Stratten, who spoke at this year’s NAHFA Home Furnishings Networking Conference in Phoenix, can teach retailers how to re-recruit employees, re-court customers and revitalize a tired brand. “We can’t all be Zappos.com or work somewhere supercool like Google,” Stratten writes. “And I’m glad that we can’t, because if we were all the same, we’d all be perfectly ordinary.” Turn the book over and you’ll discover the cost of being unawesome to employees and customers is a steep price to pay. For example, Stratten advises that it should never take 10 business days to reply to a customer. Believe it or not, it happens all the time. For this very reason, Stratten dedicates an entire chapter on how to flip off customers in The Book of Business UnAwesome: The Cost of Not Listening, Engaging, or Being Great at What You Do. Readers will also learn from other businesses’ mistakes, like viral marketing gone wrong, social media done un-socially and just hiring the wrong people, for the wrong job, at the wrong time. So, is your store Awesome or UnAwesome? Read the following to-do lists, and see what tasks look familiar or unfamiliar... UnAwesome To-do List `` Set massive budget for that unawesome billboard ad (don’t forget to include a QR code!) `` Ignore your customers when they reach out to you `` Layoff customer service department `` Don’t forget to add pop-ups to the website! Definitely need animation, with music, something loud.

Awesome To-do List `` `` `` `` ``

Hire awesome people at every level of your organization Listen to your customers Create amazing content that goes viral Reach the Third Circle Own up to mistakes and continue on being awesome

Stratten dedicates The Book of Business Awesome to the entrepreneurs, the lone wolves, and the people who believe a business is built on relationships. And isn’t that what a home furnishings store is built on?

www.retailerNOWmag.com

What’s your strategy when you attend High Point Market? Jeffrey Silverman Loyds Furniture Somerville, N.J. “We’re a store that prides itself on always being on the cutting edge so when we go to market we’re always absorbing what’s new and trending. We’ll meet with our vendors but then we’ll spend the rest of our time keeping our eyes open for new great items that are different but are a perfect fit for our store. High Point’s the market for finding new, unique pieces.”

Jason Abdalla

Jason Abdalla Adams Furniture Everett, Mass. “We like to meet with our top three to five vendors first to see what they have. We want to get that out of the way first and then just kind of wander around and see what’s new, what’s different that our customers might like. We’ll stay in WinstonSalem so we’re not on top of everything. It’s a lot quieter and more comfortable and gives us a chance to relax after a long day.”

Pamela Pelett City Liquidators Portland, Ore. “We make some appointments, but most of our time is spent looking for new vendors. We take one building at a time, start at the top and work our way down. That’s how we find the new vendors, the foammattress company from China that’s been very successful for us or whatever. By the end of the week, we’re pretty confident we’ve seen everything.” OC TOBER | 2014

Membership

Meet Your New NAHFA Members NEW MEMBERS FROM JUNE – AUGUST, 2014 Map is color coded to reflect the territories for membership representatives.

OREGON PAMELA PELETT City Liquidators Portland, Ore.

“The financing options made it a great deal, but it’s more than that. There’s a good opportunity to network with others like us. And your magazine isn’t just another trade magazine. It’s very thorough and knowledgeable about the industry (and) provides us good ideas for improving business.”

Pamela Pelett, City Liquidators, Portland, Ore.

CALIFORNIA RUSTY ROBINSON Thomasville at Riverpark Fresno, Calif.

“You get a good deal on the supplies. (NAHFA’s) prices are about half of what I’d pay if I bought my supplies locally at, say, Lowes. The association is still about 25 percent cheaper if I were to buy bulk elsewhere.”

Fortunato Cortez, Pacific Furniture, Stockton, Calif. Joel Goddard, The Caretakers, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Rick Goldstone, American Country Collection, Santa Fe, N.M. Allen Lee, J.A.Y. Furniture Company, Corona, Calif. Douglas Luc, American Living Furniture, Livermore, Calif. Lorrin Meronoff, Metro Furniture and Mattress, San Diego, Calif. Cristina Oregel, Ideal Furniture, Fresno, Calif. Patricia Perez, Emmanuel’s Furniture, Delano, Calif. Melanie Pizzonia, Exquisite Design, Albuquerque, N.M. Rusty Robinson, Fresno Thomasville at Riverpark, Fresno, Calif. Natividad Sanchez, Naty’s Furniture, Bloomington, Calif. Richard Thompson , Mary Lake Thompson, Oroville, Calif. Gerald Torres, Five Points Furniture, Oxnard, Calif. Juan Tovar, Woodland Furniture, Woodland, Calif. Christina Yturralde, Yturralde Interiors, Calexico, Calif.

(800) 422-3778 12

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Membership

Dion Harrison, Uptown Furniture, Kenton, Ohio Lisa Jilbert, Naturepedic, Chagrin Falls, Ohio Fred Kaji, Famous Furniture, Rochester, Mich. Clifford Stevens, Furniture Depot, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio Jack Basir, Valley Discount Mattress, Spring Valley, N.Y. Denise Fishetti Seneca, Speedy Furniture of Monroeville, Monroeville, Pa Tiffany Musko, Speedy Furniture of Cranberry, Cranberry Township, Pa.

OHIO

“For us, as we start to grow the retail side, we were looking for more resources to tap into and NAHFA seems like a perfect fit – especially with GE and its credit.”

“The services NAHFA offers, like freight and in-store financing, were just too good to pass up. Financing was top on our list. We went straight to GE and they told us we could get a better deal through NAFHA. They were right!”

LISA JILBERT Naturepedic, Chagrin Falls, Ohio

NORTH CAROLINA ANDY BIRMINGHAM Beaufort Furniture Company, Beaufort, N.C

Andy Birmingham, Beaufort Furniture Company, Beaufort, N.C. Michael Grimme, AMC Liquidators, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

TEXAS Robert Cobb, Comanche Appliance Co., Comanche, Texas Jeanie Hood, Three French Hens, Grover, Mo. Mitra Mahmoudi, Elegant Furniture, Dallas, Texas Montell Vogt, Uptown MarketPlace, Weatherford, Okla.

ROBERT COBB Comanche Appliance Co., Comanche, Texas

“I stopped by the NAHFA booth in Vegas in January to talk about insurance. I was getting my insurance through BrandSource. Your program offers me the same coverage for half the price. I’m saving about $500 a month. I’m telling everybody about you.”

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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Cover Story

THE FUTURE OF FURNITURE

he future of furniture is an enormous showroom with trapezoid display windows and a moving sidewalk (there are always moving sidewalks in the future) pushing shoppers along. Eventually a 30-something woman in a jumpsuit steps off the human conveyor belt to view several sofas displayed on a large screen. When she finally finds the right style, she pushes another button and—voilà!—that blue sofa now has stripes. Another button and the decorative pillows turn from green to coral pink. The woman smiles and pushes another button. Sold! By the time she gets home later that day, the sofa is waiting for her. No messy boxes or shrink wrap to bother with—just an angry-looking husband—who told her to stop spending so much money—sitting on it.

OK, technically that vision of furniture’s future came from a Jeston’s cartoon my daughter watched on a rainy day at the beach this summer, but admit it: Just for a minute you thought it all 14

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possible. And isn’t that the point of predicting the future? That no mater how crazy or far-fetched the notion, anything’s believable? Hologram catalogs? Drones dropping off sofas in the driveway? Same-day delivery on custom orders? If you’ve been to your share of furniture markets, you’ve heard, seen or discussed our industry’s future. Perhaps in retrospect, those versions are sometimes quaint, always telling. Year after year home furnishings’ future has been dreamt, designed, drawn, described and usually discarded for a newer future. Some splashy visions belly flop, some slowly sink to the bottom; a few have actually sailed their way into the present. We asked five industry experts to peer into the future and tell us what they see about the economy, manufacturing, the workforce, operations, and technology. The good news for our industry is there are no eulogies. The bad news is there’s still no jet pack.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

LABOR

Cover Story

Furniture isn’t going away anytime soon

ECONOMY

I remember visiting the “Phoenix House of the Future” back in the 1970s. It was a compact, efficient home where all the furniture was built-in and served many purposes. Will we see this in the future? Sure, but today we have 133 million housing units. If we build 1 million new dwellings this year, that’s only 0.8 percent of the total home base. It will take a long time for our homes to change so selling furniture seems a sure bet for the future.

TECHNOLOGY

MANUFACTURING

The easy assumption about furniture retailing is to claim the Internet will dominate in the coming years. But a recent Bain & Co. study believes otherwise. The study notes that the Internet is growing by about 15 percent a year. That sounds impressive until you realize that figure is half the annual rate for the last decade. Today, e-commerce is 6 percent of all retail, and 11 percent of Forrester’s top 30 product categories. Forrester predicts this 11 percent will triple by 2030.

OPERATIONS

Further, that figure will be higher in some categories like music, books, movies and entertainment and less in more difficult items like perishables and large bulky items. The best retailers will be “omni-channel”, offering the best of assortment, pricing, convenience and logistics in both brickand-mortar stores and Internet. Digital devices help us discover, evaluate, purchase, use and return product, but they cannot provide the touch and comfort of your store. And on larger ticket items, who will service and stand behind the product?

This will create opportunities not just by age, but also by incomes and by our increasingly diverse ethnic mix. We are all seeing foods, apparel and brands we’ve never seen before. Expect more of the same for furniture in the future. Here’s what else you can expect: `` Smaller, highly focused specialty stores `` A rebound of high-end stores offering custom, and one-of-akind elegance for the top five percent incomes Many more variations as to what days and hours stores will be open, more mixing of new and consigned furnishings, more integration of floor coverings, appliances and consumer electronics, and lower gross margins that will level the field with internet sources. Does this scare you as a home furnishings retailer? It shouldn’t. Don’t be afraid of the future, embrace it. And while you’re embracing it, be glad you’re not selling clocks, land-line phones or cameras. Jerry Epperson has studied the furniture industry for more than 40 years. His monthly newsletter, The Furnishings Digest, publishes detailed studies on the economy. He can be reached at 804-644-1200 or wwe@maeltd.com0

Millennials won’t have your work ethic. Hire them anyway.

LABOR

The employees you’re going to be hiring for your furniture store in the future? They’re going to be completely different from the ones working for you today.

ECONOMY

The Millennial just isn’t going to want to put the time and effort in like you did. They’re not going to want to work a full week, maybe 20 or 30 hours tops so they can have time for themselves.

TECHNOLOGY

The coming years will see the three distinct consumer universes (the 77 million Baby Boomers now 50-68; the 47 million Generation Xers aged 36-49; and the 75+ million Millenials, now 17-35) and each will have distinctive needs and tastes—a dramatically different market from the last 40 years when all retailers chased the Boomers.

I sold greeting cards door to door and had a paper route in Toledo, Ohio growing up. I knew if I had the initiative I would be rewarded. A Millennial doesn’t always think that way. I just got back from Portugal. There were a bunch of 20- and 30-something men and women, mostly Americans, over there. All they wanted to do was work just enough to get some wine and lounge around. They’re not as concerned with the rat race as Baby Boomers. They want to live their lives now.

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Cover Story

Millenials might not want to work a full 40-hour week, but they know what their peers will like in home furnishings. Retailers need that insight.

Now here’s the thing: That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hire them. The opportunity in the coming years is going to be great for smart retailers. If you want to survive, you need the fresh blood, the new perspective Millennials can bring to your store. They’re going to see the world of furniture differently than you—and that’s good because they’re going to see it like their peers who will be shopping with you. They are passionate. They’re not going to have the company loyalty we grew up with. If they stay with you three, four, five years you’ll be lucky. But the good ones will have a passion for it while they’re there.

LABOR

ECONOMY

I think furniture stores are going to have to be smarter than ever with their hires. There are too many people selling furniture today. You simply can’t have the same staff five or 10 years from now that you have now. If you do and you’re successful,

TECHNOLOGY

MANUFACTURING When I try to envision what the future holds for our industry, I look through the lens of unsettled regulatory issues.

OPERATIONS

Today there are measures being debated that will impact every company that markets home furnishings in the United States. Somehow, the industry must remain a visible and vigilant participant in these discussions. A few of the most pressing issues include:

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you’re doing something the rest of the world will pay you to teach them. So if you’re working with a smaller staff, you need to make smart hires. When I interview a Millennial for a job, I tell them, ‘Look, I don’t care if you’re here three months or three years, I’m going to help you no matter where you want to go. You want to join the Peace Corps and bring fresh water to Africa? Great! I’m going to give you the skills to convince others to put you on that team. You want to work with Spielberg on a movie? I’m going to teach you how to sell yourself.’ Bob Phibbs, aka the Retail Doctor, is a frequent guest on MSNBC’s Your Business. He has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He can be reached at Bob@retaildoc.com

Laws that limit us. PROPOSITION 65. Last year, nearly 200 notices of Prop 65 violations were filed against furniture companies for failing to notify California consumers that the furniture they purchased contained a chemical “known to the State of California to cause cancer.” This year, month after month, bewildered companies doled out tens of thousands of dollars in settlements. Without intervention by industry associations working on behalf of their member companies, that fleecing will continue. Fortunately, AHFA, NAHFA and other industry associations are working with the state to identify a “general retail warning.” Five years from now, we predict this general warning, along with a better understanding of Prop 65 on the part of manufacturers and retailers, will at last keep the litigation wolves at bay in California … at least on this issue.

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UPHOLSTERED FURNITURE FLAMMABILITY. With the elimination of California’s open flame standard for upholstered furniture, the future holds fewer chemicals for our industry. Five years from now, look for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to follow suit, with a smolder-focused federal flammability standard in place. Unfortunately, every step forward on the health and safety front in our industry seems to come with a new required label or hangtag or sign—or all three. So, along with the revised California standard came an addition to that state’s compliance label—every manufacturer is now required to check a box indicating whether or not their products contain flame retardant chemicals. After a handful of states attempt to follow suit, we expect the California labeling requirement will become a de facto national standard, just like the original TB 117 did. And that will be among the measures leading to a … LABELING BONANZA. Efforts to ensure that products comply with the growing number of federal regulations—from formaldehyde emissions to lead content to the origin of wood used—will result in the growing length and complexity of furniture labels. Transparency will be among the top industry trends over the next five years, as manufacturers and their retail partners strive to label products with a growing laundry list of product construction and content details—information in which our end consumers may or may not have any interest.

LABOR

ECONOMY

Andy Counts is CEO of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, which serves manufacturers and importers of residential furnishings for the U.S. market. He can be reached at andycounts@ahfa.us

TECHNOLOGY

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MANUFACTURING

Here’s the thing about 3-D printing. It’s like the Internet. By that I mean it’s coming and retailers who ignore it are going to be left in the dust.

OPERATIONS

Think of 3-D furniture and 3-D parts for furniture much like iTunes when you go searching for a song. You can search, download and be listening to that song in two minutes. A few years from now it’s going to be just as easy for your customers to buy an armrest for a broken dining room chair, or buy matching end tables or design their own sofa and have it ready in a day or two—maybe just a few hours. This is going to be good news for retailers because they’re not going to be as reliant on manufacturers. When a lady walks into your store today and says, ‘I love that table! Do you have it ivory?’ Well,

Start capturing those missed sales! Call us at 800-535-4087 ext. 6553 www.TidewaterFinance.com/IncreaseSales

Cover Story It wasn’t but a few years ago there were maybe seven or eight items you could print. These days there are thousands of applications. Dita Von Teese wore a 3-D dress to the Oscars. We’re already seeing designers creating their own pieces of furniture or accessories from 3-D printers. Retailers need to be the place customers turn to for those exact pieces or if they want to design something of their own.

LABOR

Let’s say you’ve got eight inches between your sofa and the wall. The floor lamp at the store needs 10 inches to fit, but another retailer can give you a 3-D printed lamp that only needs 7½ inches. Who are you going to buy from?

ECONOMY

Think about the thousands, in some cases, millions of dollars in furniture you, as a retailer, import from overseas manufacturers. Think about much you’d save with printing. The furniture industry has never been an early adopter of technology. Here’s your chance.

TECHNOLOGY Photo ©Justin Beaumont 3-D printed chair. first of all you better hope the manufacturer has it in ivory. But then you have to tell her it’s going to take a few weeks to get the table and hope she’s still interested. 3-D printing will change that. When the lady says she wants that table in ivory you can send the design to the manufacturer or, if she has a printer, she can do it herself.

MANUFACTURING

OPERATIONS

Bill Decker spent 30 years starting businesses on five continents. He is director of the Association of 3-D Printing and can be reached at bill@3dprintingchannel.com.

The future of your brick-and-mortar home furnishings business will hinge on you making changes. If you’re like most furniture

The Consumer-driven supply chain

businesses, your store looks and operates almost exactly like stores did in 1957. Nothing much has changed. Except the consumer.

quality reviews, price point, location and taste.

She views the product. (Yes, she’ll still go to a store and talk to a Today, customers want what they want, where they want it, when person.) they want it and at the price they want it. They buy online, expect the product to If she respects the product, the person and the store, she’ll make be delivered to their home, and want to all her customized selections on her own mobile device and check return it to the store. They window-shop herself out on the retailer’s web platform. online, and shop for price on their mobile phones while at the store. There is no sale written by a salesperson. There will rarely be any physical cash transacted. Forget paperwork. Customers are in the driver’s seat, and innovators like Amazon continue to push the With the fusion of technologies such as 3D visualization room envelope and influence their expectations planners and an integrated Retail Management System, brick-andwith disruptive service enhancements. mortar stores will serve as places where customers can interact with the product and business in real life. However, actual transactions Over the next five years—if not sooner—new consumers and the will be made online or through mobile devices, even while at the shopping experience that they will demand will dominate your store. business. As your business seeks to thrive in an economy driven by demand, Your supply chain will need to be completely integrated across you should look to build supply chains that are capable of rapid multiple channels to accommodate the new purchasing process: adaptation to market conditions, as well as new rules being set by consumers. The consumer sees something they like somewhere. She requests information through one of her many devices. She only gets results within her desired minimum standards: 18

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David McMahon, director of consulting & performance groups for PROFITsystems, has worked with home furnishings retailers for more than 15 years, helping them grow revenue, profit, and cash flow. He can be reached at 866-325-0020 or www.profitsystems.com.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

Retail Voice

Everyone has a birthday. Use that special occasion to get them into your store.

by Jeff Giagnocavo

ith the summer selling season behind us, and winter approaching it is time to pull up your marketing boot straps and do some more promoting and advertising.

As you may have noticed most of my marketing and inspiration comes from outside our industry. That’s not to say we don’t have our own share of creative ideas, I’m just always on the look out with my marketing radar turned on. No matter where your store is located, how many you have, or what you sell there’s one “holiday” that’s celebrated around the world and one we can all use in our marketing. The birthday! Think about it ... every one of your customers has a birthday, which gives you a reason not only to contact them, but also to offer them something extra for their special day.

If you are averse to using a customer’s actual birthday, simply use their purchase date. Of course this isn’t a birthday but it is an anniversary and allows you more opportunities to promote to your customer list. All six of these steps apply to both the birthday and purchase anniversary.

1. Create a Memorable Program

The first step is to create and name your birthday program if you don’t already have one. Come up with something exceptional, fun and something you yourself would want to be a part of. Don’t just slap something together, give it some thought and put some creativity behind the name and what you’re going to do to acknowledge a person’s birthday. If sending a gift, make it fun, different, valuable and time sensitive.

2. Collect Birthday Information

I love what they do at Famous Dave’s BBQ (and, yes, their BBQ is not bad either). They have put together their P.I.G. Club, which stands for Pretty Important Guest. I never imagined I would knowingly sign up for something that called me a P.I.G., but Famous Dave does it so well, I couldn’t resist. They offer an offline sign-up form every time you eat at their participating restaurants.

When you join the P.I.G. Club they ask you for your birthday (and There’s great value to creating or improving an existing birthday mar- that of your spouse, which is pretty smart). Then they send you keting program. To help you get started, I want to share seven tips. valuable offers via email, including a free birthday gift.

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Retail Voice

Chances are there is somewhere in your customer or prospect funnel where you can easily ask for the date of their birth. I would not recommend asking for the year, only the month and possibly the day. Some retailers only ask for the month and then create a birthday promotion for anybody who has a birthday in that month. Can’t wait to build up your birthday list? You can purchase an email list of local individuals with birthday information. Even though this would be “cold marketing” it still has a greater potential to get noticed by the recipient by the very fact that you’re recognizing their birthday. The key to cold mailing is to make it as personal as possible.

3. Make Facebook Work for You

Reaching out on Facebook to wish a happy birthday is easy and painless as long as they are your Facebook Friend. Once they become a friend, Facebook makes birthday information available (provided the customer supplied that information to Facebook) and you can easily send birthday greetings and special offers. This can be a powerful form of marketing for anyone who has a lot of likes and is still looking for the return on the Facebook investment. Using your Facebook friends’ birthdays is a great way to monetize your social media efforts.

4. Send a Belated Birthday Message Most of us won’t have a problem with this one, since most of us probably forget a birthday or two from time to time. So if you find yourself behind on your birthday marketing, don’t let a month go by, send a belated birthday promotion.

5. Make Your Own Birthday Cards!

Standard birthday cards are fine, but why not make your own? Again using birthdays in your marketing is about making it a personal connection. A plain vanilla card that was obviously bought by the case does not help you make that connection.

6. Consider Other Celebrations

If you’re worried you might scare somebody who doesn’t know you or your business (e.g. cold marketing), consider celebrating your birthday, your pet’s birthday, someone famous or a local personality.

There are many different ways you can tap into the power of the most celebrated holiday in the world and it’s only limited by your imagination and willingness to do something 97 percent of business owners would never imagine doing. Jeff Giagnocavo is co-owner of Gardner’s Mattress & More, Lancaster, Pa, co-founder of Mega Mattress Margins and regularly speaks at industry events on successful retail strategies.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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Operations

Controlling Inventory

By Tom Shay

When it comes to buying merchandise, don’t just think about how much you’ll be spending. Think about how much you can save.

was in a store recently watching the owner look over the inven- What had started as a hobby while they worked their day jobs grew tory with a sales rep in tow. The rep was holding a note pad while to the point they both quit and were now working full time in their the two of them walked each aisle and looked at the bins of parts. store. They managed to pay off their home, the building they bought for the business and were in the process of developing a sizable nest The owner of the store would pull out a bin so that he could see how egg for retirement. many of that part he had, and with a brief hesitation would say to the rep, “Give me two of this.” Their method of ordering was the same as the example previously described. However, when they added their newest warehouse, the You could tell much thought was being given to the process because couple decided they no longer had to order on a ‘onesie-twosie’ basis. he would occasionally correct himself: “Give me four of this … no, They figured they could finally order in larger quantities and get a make that just two.” better price. In today’s world, that technique for ordering has given way to The teacher in my class correctly asked, “Why would a business that automation. As dealers sell furniture and home furnishings to their has profited so much from ordering in a conservative manner change customers, their point of sale system tracks how many and when to another manner?” each item is sold. The system then calculates a frequency rate and produces a report telling the buyer how many to reorder. When you are ordering merchandise there is a lot to be considered. The cost of any item is more than just the price you are paying. With This usually works, but what happens when the store has a transac- many manufacturers, they have minimum quantity or minimum tion out of the ordinary. Perhaps a customer orders an abnormal dollar amount for orders. Perhaps the manufacturer has a service fee quantity of something. Maybe a manufacturer ships an incorrect for orders that do not meet this minimum. Either or both of these charges should be a component of what is referred to as the ‘landed’ cost.

piece or color. The retailer decides to keep the error and does sell it but does not want to stock the item. Yet the system doesn’t know this and wants to reorder in advance of this unusual order happening again. When the merchandise does not sell, the store finds itself in an overstocked position.

For example, let’s say you order lamps. If you do not meet the minimum and incur a service fee, the cost of this fee should be added to the cost of the item before you consider the selling price.

Landed cost also refers to an item once it has arrived and is placed on the shelf in your warehouse. There is an expense your business incurs with the person taking a case or pallet off the truck, unpacking it, and placing the items on the warehouse shelf. Add to that the freight factor and/or the service fee and you likely have a very Inventory control is important to any store. With most stores, inven- different cost for that item. tory represents the biggest investment of money; the only possible other sizable investment being the building that houses it. How much warehouse space does that product consume? If you look at your storage area and consider all of the operating expenses for I remember attending a class on inventory control where the teacher that area, the rent or mortgage payment, you can determine a “cost told a story of a small mom-and-pop business. The couple began the per cubic foot” regardless of whether or not an item sits on the shelf. store out of their garage and slowly grew the business to where they Traditional retail uses a “cost per square foot.” However, because we had the need for a shop and sizable warehouse for all the products have shelves with items stocked above each other, we could use a they had added to their selection over the years. cubic foot consideration. 22

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Operations

A big consideration is the money being saved as well as the money not be paid to a credit card, this is interest that your money could being spent. Yes, there are savings you may have by buying in quan- be earning if it were doing something else for you. tity. However, you have to consider what else that money could be doing for you if you did not buy so many. Think if you were to invest that money in a money-market fund that earns 1.3 percent over a year. Now that product that is sitting This could be a sizable addition of business for the store, but only if on your shelves after the thirty days is costing you the opportunity there was money available to put the necessary parts on the shelves. to earn that amount of money. Past the consideration of adding this new category of products, any inventory sitting on a shelf can become expensive. This is not to be a long and complicated calculation that you should be doing with each and every item that you order. Instead, these Think about purchasing any part. Our example manufacturer gives examples are cause for you to think about how you buy. terms of 30 days to pay for the item. If the item is sold within the 30 days, our store has received the item and received money for the Once you have paid the manufacturer and it is your money that is item before having paid the manufacturer. We refer to this as “play- sitting on the shelf in the form of product, you need to ask yourself ing on house money” because the store has no exposure. if that is the best place for your money to be sitting. The other side of the scenario occurs when the store pays the manufacturer with a credit card. If the credit card is charging interest from the time of purchase, then that interest should actually be a part of the cost of the item.

If the answer is ‘yes’, then congratulations! You have demonstrated some savvy buying decisions. If the answer is ‘no’, then as you sell down that inventory, look for other products, or ways, to get the most from the investment you have with your money.

If the store owner buys a dozen of an item and has that initial 30 days to pay for the twelve, then any of the items still sitting on the shelf after 30 days is also incurring interest. While this interest may

Subscribe to Tom Shay’s e-ret@iler, a free monthly newsletter packed with tips for improving the profitability of your store, at profitsplus.org.

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Next Gen NOW Spotlight

GETTING TO KNOW

Chris Cannon President

Cannon Home Furnishings, Elizabethton, Tennessee : Were you pushed and prodded into the family business or did you go without a fight? Chris: Definitely came in on my own.

When I was nine, I wanted to be a firefighter—or at least be the guy driving the fire truck. When I was ten, I was sweeping the warehouse floor. I made 75 cents for every appliance I cleaned. Pretty good money for a ten year old.

: So you went from pushing a broom to president? Chris: Well, there were a lot of jobs in between. I started off in the warehouse and then moved up to delivery. Then I worked in sales and eventually management, so I’ve seen and done a little of everything.

: Is there a common thread between those jobs? Chris: Probably work ethic and how to

take care of people. Obviously you need to take care of your customers, but you need to take care of your employees, too. I think we model that caring throughout the company.

: How did you prepare to join the family business?

FROM SWEEPING FLOORS TO SWEEPING UP Chris Cannon wants to show other young professionals the succesful side to home furnishings 24

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Chris: I was probably late into high school

or early into college when I sat down with my family one night and we talked about what the company’s weaknesses were. We came up with advertising, marketing and interior design and those are the areas I focused on in college.

Next Gen NOW Spotlight

: You and other children from family-owned stores are the exception. How does a furniture store hire good employees out of college? Chris: That’s one of our biggest challenges. The industry doesn’t

always do a good job of showing younger people how attractive it can be as a profession, but it’s there. Younger people who get it and know how to work at it can be very successful, but you have to put in the hours.

: What can younger employees offer the home furnishings industry? Chris: A perfect example would be technology and customer

contact. New customers, that is to say, younger customers want to be dealt with in a different way than our traditional customers. They want to be texted before a delivery is made. They want to be emailed a quote. I’m not saying seasoned employees can’t do that and use social media, but our generation understands it better. We grew up with it and know how to use it.

: What’s one of the frustrating obstacles of hiring younger people for your store? Chris: Well, first there’s the hours. There’s no getting around that.

They’re long and hard. But there’s also just knowing what we sell. When you think about it, you go into any other sales job and you don’t have to know nearly as much as you do as in a furniture store. We have 200 lines you need to be on top of and they’re changing throughout the year. That’s a lot to ask of someone.

: What has sitting in a tree stand taught you about running a furniture store? Chris: Hunting teaches you a lot about opportunity. You always

need to keep your eyes open because you never know what may be coming or when it will come. And you may have only a small window to act so be ready.

: Twenty years from now what if the kids tell you they want to be a part of the family business—what will you tell them? Chris: Oh, we’ll have the conversation long before 20 years. And

I’ll tell them the same thing my parents told me. I’ll tell them to follow their heart. Do what they want to do. If their heart leads them here, that’s great. If it leads them somewhere else, well, that’s great, too.

: What will your industry look like for them in 20 years? Chris: I think we may actually see more of going back to the

old-fashioned way of business. People are going to want more individual service. I’m not saying online is going to go way, but more people are going to want to go to the store, sit down on the furniture, touch the fabric. That’s what I hope, at least, but whatever they choose we’ll be ready to provide it for them.

: Part of the mission of NextGen NOW is to bring new ideas to the industry. How would you help educate a sales team? Chris: More information. Our industry suffers from manufacturers who aren’t getting the information to the people who sell their product. There’s a lack of training among the sales reps. Months go by, I’m talking four or five months before we see anyone who can tell us more about what we are selling. Other industries’ sales people are required to be there once a month, educating you on their product. If you’re selling medical supplies you know exactly what materials are involved in making the product. There are times I can’t find out what type of wood a table is made out of.

: When you’re not in the store where are you? Chris: Home. We’ve got two kids (20-month-old Cooper and 5-month-old Reagan). We’ll go to the beach or the lake and I like to hunt, but obviously I can’t hunt as much as I used to.

When he’s not in the store or hanging out with his family, Chris Cannon is in the woods looking for dinner.

Next Gen NOW (NGN) is a community of young, passionate, engaged industry professionals whose mission is to give a voice to the needs and goals of the up-and-coming future generations. NGN strives to educate the industry on how and why it should attract and keep young talent. The NAHFA supports NGN by facilitating meetings and educational opportunities and introducing the industry to its members through RetailerNow. Connect with NGN members at ngnow.org or on Twitter @ngnow.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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Technology

Why is it a person who runs a retail store wakes up in the morning, after sleeping on their advertised bed, on their advertised mattress in their advertised pajamas. They will bathe in their advertised tub, shave with their advertised razor and shaving cream, have breakfast with their advertised juice, cereal and toast…. toasted in their advertised toaster, put on their advertised branded clothes and quickly glance at their advertised watch. They will catch the news on their new advertised flat screen that they purchased at heavily advertised store. They will ride to work in their advertised car, sit at their advertised desk and write with their advertised pen or utilize their advertised computer, tablet or phone. Yet it’s ironic that when they’re approached to advertise their business, they say advertising doesn’t pay…..until the business fails and then they’ll gladly advertise their sale and liquidation of the business…… Why, you ask, are they advertising now? So people will come and purchase or liquidate their advertised assets.

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found the this snippet of advice years ago when I was trying to get retailers to advertise their stores to increase their sales velocity. In today’s home furnishings’ retail environment this has become even more relevant with one word driving the path towards retail failure or liquidation.

Technology. Technology before the sale, technology during the sale and technology after the sale. We call it the Brick to Click Solution. Everything about advertising has changed, especially in the last five years. Retailers are still focused on traditional outbound marketing: television, radio and newspaper. They want to get their message or promotion out to the masses and hope someone will see the message, like it and buy something.

Technology

That strategy is failing miserably, and we can see that with the overabundance of failures in the retail and brand sector of our industry.

2. INVEST IN YOUR WEBSITE AND OMNI-CHANNEL MARKETING If you don’t have a great website, one that’s loaded with brands, products, pictures, content and an e-commerce platform allowing consumers to buy online as well as in-store, you will fail in today’s wired economy because 75 percent of consumers won’t even know you exist!

Why so many failures you may ask? Lack of Of course, to have a great website, retailers need to deal with the manufacturers, many of capital, poor planning, bad merchandising, whom, as mentioned, have not embraced technology. too much inventory and so on. But this is only the first level where technology has changed everything. Consider these facts To compete in today’s economy, most re- where technology drives every aspect of the retail pathway to purchase. Don’t forget, and search tailers say they have to be more consumer engines do not see pictures...just words/content so pretty websites that lack content, fail miserably. friendly, train their sales people better, have a strong community presence and so on. All of this is true, but if consumers don’t know you exist, your efforts are a waste of time, resources and capital. This is where in-bound marketing comes in to play. In-bound marketing is being everywhere today’s consumers want to find you and how they want to find you The biggest reason our industry is struggling is because manufacturers and retailers have been slow to embrace technology—if at all. Many retailers have become irrelevant in the consumer’s mindset and may soon be extinct. Technology has changed everything, from how we find a brand or product to how we interact with these products and how we choose to purchase them. Here’s what manufacturers and you need to do.

1. GET WITH THE PROGRAM

Many manufacturers in our industry have hundreds, if not thousands, of SKUs. In the old days...and even today, they use catalogs to show a picture and then the sales rep would “write an order” and probably call it in or fax it in. Sound familiar?

Manufacturers need to standardize and push out product information to their retailers, who in turn can push it out to the 75 percent of consumers who are looking for it online. This should be done daily, weekly or monthly. The data should be updated and cleaned so that discontinued product is eliminated, new product and specials are added—whatever it takes to simplify the total selling process from rep to retailer to consumer.

`` 15 percent of furniture sales are made online. This is expected to grow to over 32 percent in five years. (Business Insider Intelligence, March 2014)

`` 71 percent of customers expect to be able to view in-store inventory online. (Forrester) `` 75 percent of consumers exposed to home furnishings’ traditional advertisements later look-up the advertiser online. `` 76 percent of home furnishing shoppers rely on the retailer’s website. `` 65 percent of home furnishing shoppers are not sure what retailer they would purchase from when they searched products and brands. `` 70 percent use mobile phones in a store to research and accompany their shopping experience. `` 77 percent of smartphone purchases happen in the store, not later online. `` By 2016, 86 percent of all digital shoppers will be mobile shoppers as well 3. EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY EVERYWHERE Once you’ve attracted the consumer, now the hard work begins. How do you manage the complete selling process? Do you have a POS program that manages the complete supply chain process? I’m not just talking about placing orders and taking delivery. I’m talking about having complete control of your business by instantly knowing what’s happening, when it’s happening, where it’s happening and how it’s happening. That requires technology.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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Technology

Integrating technology into your business means instantly knowing: `` Purchase Orders— expected deliveries, in stock, out of stock, custom orders `` Vendor Management—product info, orders, returns, balances `` Shipping & Deliveries—tracking shipments and delivery dates. Maintaining control of back-orders. `` Employee Management—employee scheduling, commissions, team activities. `` Customer Management—CRM; rrganizing your customers, tracking, negotiations and sales. Managing appointments, email marketing and more. `` Omni-channel Marketing—knowing where consumers are coming from, where they spend the most time and how to maximize that channel on your website, social marketing and more.

And then we start the cycle all over again, every minute of every day. That’s how brick-and-mortar retailers compete with online retailers like Wayfair and Amazon. If you don’t embrace technology in every aspect of your business, you will become irrelevant—sooner rather than later. Think Levitz, Blockbuster, Montgomery Wards, Borders and countless others that were comfortable with their business model and got ambushed by the new consumer who embraces technology in everything they do. I’ll be speaking more about how to create and implement an inexpensive omni-channel strategy at the High Point Market Retail Resource Center on Sunday, October 19. I hope you can join me. Bill Napier is managing partner of Napier Marketing Group. He has been the chief marketing officer of several small, medium and large companies throughout his career. He can be reached at billnapier@napiermkt.com or 612-217-1297.

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Eastbrooke Collection

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Community Today

Furniture banks offer people a second chance, but the charities could use more help from retailers By Robert Bell

ot wanting to miss anything, Betsy Reynolds took her time walking through Chattanooga Furniture Bank’s utilitarian showroom with its scuffed linoleum floor and furniture lined up in center-facing rows.

Chairs to the right, sofas to the left. A smattering of tables and mismatched chairs off to one side. There is nothing fancy to the outdated tweed and plaid furniture that fills the showroom, but try telling that to Reynolds. “Everything’s so beautiful it’s tough to choose,” said Reynolds, a woman who knows a thing or two about toughness. After living on and off in shelters throughout Tennessee and Georgia, Reynolds was finally able to find a permanent job last spring cooking at a restaurant. The job helped her secure a year-long lease to a two-bedroom apartment. But a roof over your head isn’t always enough. When you’re trying to get back on your feet, it helps to have a place to rest them at the end of the day. So on a Saturday morning before work this summer, Reynolds and her two teen-aged daughters were given the chance to fill their new home with furniture: a sofa, a dinette table with three chairs and—most important to the girls—mattresses they could each call their own. The Furniture Bank Association of North America has more than 90 organizations around the country helping out in their communities. Retailers interested in partnering with a local bank can find a list of members at www.furniturebanks.org

Reynolds looked at her bounty stacked in a truck and smiled. “We’re going to be living good from now on,” she said. “I don’t think the girls ever thought they’d be going to be in a place where they could sit down on a couch and call home, somewhere they’re proud of.”

Reynolds’ story plays out every day of every week in hundreds of furniture banks around the country. But for all the success stories like Reynolds, furniture banks could use some much-needed help from the home furnishings industry.

Recent immigrants Samamtu and Ismaila Yaha were able to furnish their apartment thanks to The Barnabas Network, a furniture bank in Greensboro, N.C.

A furniture bank is no different than a food bank only the organization provides donated furniture to people or families recovering from traumatic life situations or acute financial problems. Most furniture banks offer their goods to clients who have been referred by area churches or social agencies.

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Community Today

The furniture must be clean and useable; the mattresses are sanitized before being turned over to their new owners. Sometimes the furniture is free to clients in need, sometimes there’s a nominal charge. “Anyone in need we’re here to help,” said Bill Lemke, who runs the Northwest Furniture Bank in Tacoma, Wash. Lemke started the furniture bank in 2005 after visiting a San Francisco food bank with his son and other volunteers. “It just hit me that what they were doing with food—giving it to people who needed it so it wouldn’t go to waste—could be done with furniture, too,” said Lemke, a wholesale furniture representative at the time. Lemke eventually quit his job as a rep to dedicate himself to the furniture bank. Today Northwest Furniture Bank furnishes the homes for more than 100 needy families every month. “I liked my old job, but it doesn’t compare to what I’m doing or how I feel today,” he said. “We’re changing lives here. When you give a child or an adult a mattress to sleep on, imagine how much better they’re going to perform at work or school the next day.” Furniture banks and home furnishings seem like a natural fit for stores seeking an outreach program in their community, but surprisingly not a lot of furniture banks and stores have relationships.

furniture bank gets some much-needed inventory and that will go to a family in need. Everyone wins.” More than a decade ago, North American Home Furnishings Association (NAHFA) member John Klopfenstein, president of John Klopfenstein Furniture in Leo, Ind., partnered with Mustard Seed Furniture Bank of Fort Wayne. Klopfenstein offers the services of his delivery crew to any of his customers who are having furniture delivered to their home. After setting up the new furniture, the workers will deliver the old furniture to the Mustard Seed. The customer gets the tax deduction and a family in Fort Wayne gets some much-needed hope in the form of a sofa, mattress or other piece of furniture. “It costs me a little bit of money since the drivers are on company time, but this is my community,” said Klopfenstein. “There’s more to life than constantly looking at the bottom line.” In Dallas, Freed Furniture has a strong partnership with its local furniture bank. The showroom has plenty of signage promoting the local furniture bank and helps customers arrange delivery of their old furniture to the bank, which assists homeless veterans. The store donates damaged and discontinued furniture to the Dallas Funriture Bank. Store owner Howard Freed even hooked up the bank to buy product at better pricing from his vendors.

There are dozens of furniture stores within a 30-miles radius of The Barnabas Network, the furniture bank serving Greensboro, N.C., yet the store relies mostly on hotels and the “There’s such a natural fit between the bank and what we do,” said community for its inventory, said Erin Stratford Owens, executive Freed. “More stores can and should be helping where they can” director of Barnabas Network. Lemke said there’s another reason for home furnishings store “For whatever reason we haven’t built the relationships with (fur- owners to help their local furniture bank. “It’s been proven many niture stores) that we’d like,” Owens said. “I know they have a lot times over that the public wants to buy from businesses that give to offer us—not just in furniture, of course, but in getting our back to their community,” he said. message out to people who might have items they no longer want. We’ve got to do a better job.” Lemke said store owners can invest a lot of time and effort—such as Klopfenstein offering free delivery—or they can simply put broOwens, Lemke and other members of the Furniture Bank chures for their local furniture bank in their store to let customers Association of North America want to make that happen. “When know of the service. you think about it, it’s a win-win-win for everyone involved,” he said. “The retailer is solving a problem for their customer who’s “There’s really so many levels a store can choose to participate in,” asking the question, ‘What do I do with my old furniture?’ Your he said. “It’s just a matter of jumping in.” 30

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Product Focus

Coaster’s Mullingan group has optional bench seating, a growing trend in dining.

The Tables Have Turned in Dining

By Lisa Casinger

Formal is out, casual is in. Retailers who offer a wide selection and know how to display it will succeed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that luxury consumers are ditching their dining rooms and turning the spaces into everything from home offices to libraries. Shelter magazines have pages devoted to revamping or repurposing your formal dining room. The National Association of Home Builders predicts that single-family homes of the future will get smaller: the average home size will be 2,150 square feet in 2015, down 250 square feet from this year and almost 400 square feet from 2007. According to the survey, most builders expect to see more great rooms—a combination of the family and living rooms that flow into the kitchen—and more eatin kitchens and fewer formal dining rooms. This begs the question, are the dining rooms and the furniture we put in them in for some radical changes? RetailerNOW talked with three companies that produce and/or distribute dining furniture to get more insight into the category— Mike Cohen, vice president of sales at Coaster, Bill Herren, creative director, Woodard and Adam Tilley, vice president of product at Stanley. Before you panic and start unloading your dining room inventory, relax. Dining is not dead. It represents more than 25 percent of Coaster’s business, it’s Stanley’s second largest category (at 30 percent) and for Woodard it’s a little more than 40 percent of sales. 32

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The dining room is evolving and so is the furniture. Über formal dining rooms are a thing of the past, according to Tilley. “In the 80s and 90s dining rooms were very formal; you needed a table pad, you were worried about scratching the surface. Folks struggle with really formal furniture,” he says. “People are shying away from that at a mass level; they still want the big table that seats 8-10 people, they just don’t want it to be stuffy.” The larger tables are important, people still have dinner parties and family gatherings and, as we all know, the kitchen (or kitchen/dining room combo) are always the hot spots for any soiree. Cohen says casual dining is also growing and in fact gathering tables with benches are very popular. Herren says the 48” round table is always popular, but lately they’ve also had requests for more ovals and rectangles. Woodard is an outdoor furniture manufacturer, but they are starting to see outdoor furniture inching inside, particularly in homes with children or pets. “At premarket in Chicago I showed a dining set and people said they’d use it inside,” Herren says. “On the seating they’re using a lot more of that inside, especially on the woven because it’s virtually indestructible.”

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Product Focus

Fairlane, from Stanley, has several tables, including this oval that transforms into a round for smaller spaces.

Tilley agrees that display and merchandising are key. “When a retailer offers a $6,000-8,000 dining room table they really have to display it well. You can’t just take that table and stick it out there next to the bedroom furniture. The total room experience is so important.” He also cautions retailers not to skimp on Dining is a category retailers and vendors alike have been strug- space by trying to show a large table without its leaves—it has gling with, Tilley says. “It’s a category that’s had its ups and to make a grand statement. “Retailers who are doing well are downs; as an industry we’re trying to figure it out.” taking a Disneyland approach to displays and are having fun with it and creating rooms consumers fall in love with.” So with all of that—how can retailers be successful in this category? Stanley, Coaster and Woodard have different approaches when it comes to product roll outs. Cohen says his best customers offer selection. “The majors that do well will always have a full product selection with all styles.” Coaster’s new collections typically include options for living, Retailers need to have “a logical plan for good, better, best. It’s dining and bedroom. Cohen says customers appreciate seeing not always about price-point. As Mattress Mac says—SKU up.” these options and having the styles shown across all categories helps them make purchasing decisions. Merchandising and color, Herren says, are important. “Our best customers show it all decked out, [accessorized] to give Dining has become more important to Woodard, Herren says. the consumer ideas,” he says. Also, “the more color you show, When they introduce a new seating group they now introduce even if they aren’t going to buy it that way, the more it gets dining as part of the collection. “People are spending so much their attention.” more money on their outdoor areas,” he says. The seating and Consumers are looking for dining options that satisfy their sense of style, meet their needs and require little maintenance. Herren says “I notice people are getting away from glass on dining tables—they want something that’s easier to take care of.”

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Larger options are in as Woodard’s Casa dining table shows; this table comfortably seats up to 10 people.

dining don’t have to match “but they do have to blend, not different styles but different finishes and fabrics.” Stanley takes a two-pronged approach. In the higher price-point category they roll out whole-home, 100+ piece collections, but “they are more of a collected lifestyle look,” Tilley says. There are mixed materials and different finish options so the overall style is the same, but with different variations. “You can tell a story about a customer that lives in a home that is fully furnished with one collection that looks like a curated group that goes together,” Tilley says. At starting price points Stanley offers portfolios, which focus strictly on categories. “This is for the retailer who might need to fill in their dining room gallery for example,” Tilley says. “It has a lot of style and value but you don’t have to buy a 100-piece collection. Louis Philippe bedrooms sell well, but not dining room, for example. This option helps our turns and the retailers’ turns and it’s easy to buy, advertise and sell.”

“Dark finishes are still hot, unique styles get attention,” Cohen says. “And commodity, inexpensive looks will always be top sellers.” Cohen thinks the trend in dining over the next 10 years will continue with smaller dining rooms or no formal dining rooms because of new home and apartment construction, but he also sees gathering and expandable tables, well...expanding. “People are getting bigger, so there’s a need for bigger furniture,” Herren says. “We also have more requests for a softer looking contemporary, not so angular.” Tilley says there is a strong business in solid wood casual dining, particularly the Amish look. He admits it’s hard to figure out the category but Stanley is refocusing on dining and based on introductions at the summer Las Vegas market, he’s optimistic. He sees products that do double duty becoming even more important, for example étagères that double as bookcases or office pieces, tables used as desks or console tables that collapse into themselves or buffets that turn into media consoles. “Multi-purpose products are important.” “We know there is business to be done there,” Tilley says. “Dining is one of the areas of the home that people are going to come back to and start spending on as we emerge from this great unpleasantness [economy]. If you figure out how to do it well, you’ll take a lot of the market share in the dining category.”

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High Point Preview

IN HIGH POINT

Looking for something new and exciting to offer your customers? RetailerNOW gives you an early peek at some of the many new products that will make their debut at this month’s High Point Market. The market brings more than 75,000 people to this charming Southern town. Be prepared to scour about 180 buildings and view furniture, accessories and art from more than 2,000 exhibitors to find exactly what you need to entice new shoppers and satisfy your existing ones. While you’ll obviously visit with your current vendors and scout out new ones, make sure to browse through Interhall in IHFC. It’s usually filled will exciting examples of high design and cutting-edge looks. Check out page 11 for retail tips for shopping market and stop by the North American Home Furnishings Association’s Retailer Resource Center, first floor Plaza Suites, for business resources, educational seminars, refreshments and membership information.

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High Point Preview

Howard Elliot Howard Elliott (IHFC H224) has added the Helios mirror to its extensive collection. Fashioned to look like the sun, it has a gold faux leather inset and is finished in gold leaf. The 36” diameter x 2” starburst has a 23” inner diameter and is $625.

Modus Furniture International The Urban Retro collection from Modus (IHFC C806) is crafted from a combination of sustainably harvested solid mahogany and walnut veneers. The collection includes a nightstand, dresser, mirror, chest and queen bed, ($798 for bed).

Hooker Hooker Furniture’s (IHFC C1058) Studio 7H collection is a new concept for a new audience. The 75-piece collection is epitomized by three styles—Mid Century Modern in walnut, Rustic Chic and Scandinavian. The credenza, shown ($1,399), is reminiscent of the vintage stereo cabinets of the late 50s-70s; it can be used to store albums and vintage record players as well as other media. Tommy Bahama Outdoor Living Tres Chic Chaise Lounge is part of the Tres Chic outdoor collection by Tommy Bahama Outdoor Living (1300 National Hwy. Thomasville) crafted from teak with a hand-rubbed oil finish with stainless steel accents. The suggested retail is $2,190.

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CR Laine The Sweeney leather chair ($1,620) from CR Laine (Hamilton-Wrenn, 310 N. Hamilton, Space 201) adds a pop of color in Cosmic Emerald. The legs have a walnut finish and it’s shown with an optional nail trim application in a Greek key pattern.

High Point Preview

Hekman The Renaissance dining and bedroom collection from Hekman (IHFC C735) is made with white oak veneers and select solids finished in a rich, golden brown with taupe glazing. The hardware and ferrules are brushed nickel. The king linen panel bed, shown, has an MSRP of $1,350. Riverside The Belmeade L-Desk and return from Riverside (IHFC C302) is a sophisticated yet relaxed European cottage farmhouse design, inspired by antiques of the early 20th century. Pierced-back drawer pulls are true to hardware elements used in that time period, while the sweeping arches add a feminine touch. Constructed of poplar solids with cathedral oak veneers, the warm Old World oak finish lends an aged timeworn appearance.

Pride Family Brands Pride Family Brands makes its High Point debut in IHFC M105 with the Bellagio collection. The cast aluminum set includes five cushioned dining chairs, a cushioned swivel rocker and a 78â&#x20AC;? round dining table for $11,937. The tailored cushions are available in solution-dyed acrylic fabrics and the frames feature a fourstage finishing process and hand-applied antiquing with hundreds of options.

Inada The leadership and innovation you expect from Inada (Showplace 5300) can be found in DreamWave ($9,499). The massage chair has been designed to enhance the healing power of shiatsu massage and features impeccable Japanese quality and design.

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High Point Preview

Treasure Garden Treasure Garden’s (Showplace 2600) cantilever umbrella measures an impressive 10’ x 13’ for maximum coverage. It features a foot pedal to easily rotate canopy for full 360° shade. The weather-resistant outdoor fabric shades are also fade and stain resistant and there are multiple base mount options. Suggested retail, (depending on fabric grade) $1,450 to $2,470.

Selemat Selemat’s (IHFC Interhall, IH004) 4-Season Regent arm chair is crafted from an aluminum frame, making it suitable for indoor and outdoor use. Shown here in antique red, the chair ($1,162) is available in five powder coated finishes and comes with a Sunbrella loose cushion, which is made with outdoor-grade foam and Velcro tabs. An optional backcushion is sold separately. John Richard John Richard (200 Steele Street, Suite 1) debuts A Moment in Time ($1,485), a hand-finished piece by Mississippi artist Dyann Gunter. It is a cross of vibrant color highlighted by large gold mica flakes that shimmer in the light. The piece measures 56”W X 56”H X 1”D.

Omnia Leather The sophisticated new Tratto sofa from Omnia (IHFC D1102) features motorized headrests and chaise cushion recliners for ultimate personalized comfort. Subtle contrast stitching and chrome legs only add to its refined silhouette. Suggested retail begins at $2,700.

Younger Furniture This velvet, peacock blue sofa with walnut-finished feet is Pulse ($1,699) from Younger Furniture’s Rhythm collection. You’ll find Younger Furniture’s NC-manufactured furniture in 220 Elm, space 214.

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Sales & Marketing

But are you using it to your advantage?

recent survey found that business owners said 23 percent of their revenue came from email, up from 18 percent a year ago. While these weren’t all furniture retailers it begs the question—how much business could you be driving from a wellexecuted email campaign? Email marketing can be one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal provided you follow a few fundamentals and avoid some common pitfalls. Let’s start with the fundamentals. Get these right and you’ll be giving yourself the best chance of having a winning campaign. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. 42

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Sales & Marketing

FUNDAMENTALS 1. Address your audience’s interests. Nobody wants to receive irrelevant email. What do they have in common? What would they be excited to learn about? What would they find entertaining, funny or worthy of being forwarded? The smaller your niche (we sell organic cotton futons to women in their 30s) the easier it is to zero in on content, but that doesn’t mean if you’re a full-line furniture retailer you can give up. Dig deeper: Who is your target market and what interests do they have? Start your campaign ideas there.

2. Always add value.

Now that you have identified your audience, make sure your email content is adding value to their life. Furniture is an infrequent purchase so your email campaign has to be good enough to keep them around long enough for their next purchase. If your content is all about you, announcing yet another sale, you’ll lose them before they are ready to make their next purchase. Instead delight them with something fresh—designer decorator ideas, household howto’s, moving tips, easy furniture repair, flea market finds. Whatever your audience would be into deliver it and they’ll love you, forward you, and stick around to read your next sales message.

3. Frequency.

I haven’t found any compelling reason for a furniture store to email its audience more frequently than once a month. That’s not a hard and fast rule, and perhaps you have an event so good that it justifies two emails, but for the most part one is enough. I know others do it (I’m looking at you, Pottery Barn), but if you want engaged readers three years from now, flooding their inbox is the wrong strategy.

With a little effort and some programming, you can easily send out automated messages that deliver true value. How about a birthday card since your finance customers all supply their birthdates? How about a reminder to turn their mattress every six months after their purchase? Maybe a “dining table repair” email one year after a dining table has been purchased. What about an adjustable bed message sent to people over a certain age who have not recently bought a mattress? You can easily set up these messages in advance, and automatically launch them each day as programmed. My research shows that automated emails have a 24-percent higher open rate and a 47-percent higher click through rate than standard emails.

3. Poor graphic design and ignoring mobile.

Why is it many retailers who live and die by design invest thousands of dollars in a beautiful showroom only to turn around and use a basic email template where they’ve simply dropped in their logo and changed a couple of colors? Those same retailers typically also have no plan for the fact that 44 percent of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Be sure to invest in a custom email template that you feel proudly conveys your brand. You’ll also want a “responsive design” that automatically responds to a small screen by resizing it’s images while keeping the text full size. Trust me, if people have to scroll and pinch and zoom on their phone, you’re going to lose them. The extra investment is going to raise your brand image considerably and you’ll get more from every email you send.

4. Not knowing when to get help.

Anyone can send out lousy emails. Just check your personal inbox for proof. If you want email to make a significant impact in your If you’ve worked hard to master those three fundamentals, don’t sales and you don’t have the experience in house—you may need help. It’s OK to admit that! Self-awareness is an underrated charshoot yourself in the foot by making these common pitfalls: acter trait. A good email marketing partner will have the graphic design, copywriting, coding and, most important, strategy that you COMMON PITFALLS need to be successful. It’s tough to do everything well. Why not focus on becoming the best retailer you can be and look for help 1. Weak content. with the ancillary services that can help you succeed. You may be Could you throw a great dinner party the same day you had the surprised at how affordable it is when compared with the in-house idea? Then why subject your potential customers to poor preparaeffort required. tion? Relevant, compelling content takes time to research, cultivate, curate, edit and refine. If you’re trying to write this month’s email, skip it. Work on next month’s instead so you can publish some- Next month, I’ll talk about basics like list building for those yet to thing truly worthy of your audience’s attention. Their attention is start their campaign. valuable. Don’t waste it by rushing something out.

2. Ignoring trigger messages.

Most retailers think of email marketing as a “newsletter” only— something they send out to everyone. In reality it’s much more.

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Ken Mahar had a successful career in retail sales, including furniture, before founding Email Broadcast. That retail experience has helped him become an expert in email marketing. Learn more about email marketing at www. emailbroadcast.com or call 206-714-4767.

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Grant Laidlaw VP of Sales Eric Clarke President

Locations: Puyallup, WA Mira Loma, CA • Morganton, NC Fax: 828-764-4461 • Phone: 855-208-6377 Email: sales@NWFXpress.com Please contact Grant Laidlaw VP Sales at 778-549-3188 or glaidlaw@nwfxpress.com to review your transportation needs.

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Membership

By Kaprice Crawford, NAHFA Membership Director

n today’s retail environment, offering consumer-financing options not only helps close sales, but it’s also often expected by your customer. Retailers who don’t offer financing options can be at a disadvantage, because it’s likely the competitor down the street does.

Retailer Advantage for NAHFA Members

with deferred interest and the other, equal monthly payments with no interest. Both programs are available through NAHFA.

Stimulate Repeat Purchases

Often, consumers are approved for more than their initial purchase, resulting in an ‘open to buy’ credit line that can be used at your store in the future. You can access lists of these cardholders from the Synchrony Financial Business Center and use the complementary Marketing Toolkit to build a direct mailer, inviting these loyal customers to come back and shop with you.

Some consumer-finance program rates are based on annual sales and offer standard, non-customized programs and pricing. Working in collaboration with North American Home Furnishings Association (NAHFA), Synchrony Financial (built from GE heritage) offers low every-day rates and special financing promotions Additionally, applying for credit means your customers provide specifically designed for association members. you with contact information, which lets you build a database for your marketing campaigns. By reaching out to this database with well-crafted messages you can drive repeat business and stimulate Multiple Reduced Rate Options Many consumers use in-store credit because they want to, not referrals. This can be as complex as sending a parent a flyer about because they have to. They like having choices in both their a sale on youth furniture, or as simple as sending a customer a home furnishings and the way they pay for them, and appreciate birthday card with a coupon. the convenience of longer, deferred interest promotion periods. Twelve-month deferred interest is a standard option, but 18- and No matter who your customers are, offering financing options 24-month deferred periods are also common. These longer terms helps build new and repeat customer relationships and close more and a range of holiday specials are available to NAHFA members sales. Use the NAHFA member-only discounts and rebates from at discounted rates. the Synchrony Financial program to drive traffic, increase sales and lower your operating costs. Being able to offer your customers a choice in financing options lets them choose the one that best meets their needs and increases Call NAHFA, 800.422.3778, for complete pricing and program options. the likelihood that they’ll buy from you. Two main categories of Visit the Synchrony Financial Program representatives at the Retailer Resource financing have evolved: One offers minimum monthly payments Center, 1st Floor Plaza Suites, at this month’s High Point Market. 48

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Advertising Concepts of America . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Fisher Printing, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 FurnitureDealer.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Knorr Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Mail America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 21 Moso Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Spectrum Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Tropic Survival Advertising & Marketing . . . . . . . 14 RM Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

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SOFTWARE

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Furniture Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 MicroD, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 2 Myriad Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40, 41 PROFITsystems, a Highjump Product . . . . . . . 22, 23 STORIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 25 VividWorks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 28

WAREHOUSE & DELIVERY 37

Cory 1st Choice Home Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5 Diakon Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Dispatch Triack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 United Steel Storage, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

INSURANCE & WARRENTIES Risk Assurance Partners, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

ENTRANCE Brought to you by

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www.retailerNOWmag.com

High Point Market RRC

Plaza Suites | 1st Floor | 222 S. Main Street

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18

MONDAY, OCTOBER 20

8:30 - 9:30am

Greetings That Close More Sales

8:30 - 9:30am

The Revolution of Next Generation Web Design

10:00 - 11:00am

Turn Showrooming into Sales

10:00 - 11:00am

Difficult Customers

Philip Gutsell, GutSELL & Associates

Bonnie Melcher, Netsertive

Jesse Akre and Ron Gordon, MicroD, Inc. Margi Kyle, The Designing Doctor, LLC

11:30am - 12:30pm Create Your Own Money Making Referral & Testimonial Machine 11:30am - 12:30pm Amazon Marketplace 101: Selling on Amazon Jeff Giagnocavo, Automated Mattress Profits/ John Reisen, Sr. CMM—Lawn & Garden

Mega Mattress Margins

1:00 - 2:00pm

The He Said She Said of Selling

2:30 - 3:30pm

Making Money with Mattresses

2:30 - 3:30pm

Martin Roberts, Martin Roberts Design

Brad Huisken, IAS Training

4:00 - 5:00pm

Ten Top Trends for 2016

4:00 - 5:00pm

Profit is EA$Y!

1:00 - 2:00pm

Joe Milevsky & Lorna Hunter, JRM Sales & Management

Michelle Lamb, The Trend Curve

7:30 - 9:30am

NAHFA Board and Membership Meetings

10:00 - 11:00am

State of the Industry Jerry Epperson

John Reisen, Sr. CMM – Lawn & Garden

2:30 - 3:30pm

It’s Time To Embrace Omni-Channel! We’ll Show You Why & How

Bill Napier & Patrick Bain, Napier Marketing

4:00 - 5:00pm

4 Digital and Direct Mail Power Plays that Drive Traffic!

Doug Knorr, Knorr Marketing

Eric & Brittany Highland of Knektion Sponsored by LHI Designer

The Psychology of Sales!

John Egger, Profitability Consulting Group

8:30 - 9:30am

Successful Direct Marketing Strategies

10:00 - 11:00am

Customer Experience: Your New Competitive Advantage

11:30am - 12:30pm Promotional & Digital Strategies to Help You Finish 2014 Strong 11:30am - 12:30pm Brad Lebow, Horich Hector Lebow Advertising 1:00 - 2:00pm Amazon Marketplace 101: Selling on Amazon

Engage & Gain Clients Through Social Media

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19

1:00 - 2:00pm

2:30 - 3:30pm

4:00 - 5:00pm

Leo Bartsch, Mail America

Donnie Surdoval and Lindsey Scapicchio, STORIS

Strength in Numbers—Effectively Maximizing Your Finance Sources Marty Grosse, Furniche, LLC

Real Promotions by Real Furniture Retailers Kyle Doran, R&A Marketing

The “New” Local Market

Sev Ritchie, Tailbase

Omni-Channel Marketing

Jeremy Gustafson, Kreber

Seminar series sponsored by:

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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High Point Market RRC

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18

1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

8:30 - 9:30 a.m.

The He Said She Said of Selling

Greetings That Close More Sales Philip Gutsell, GutSELL & Associates

Joe Milevsky & Lorna Hunter, JRM Sales & Management

Greeting your customer effectively is probably the next most important skill to learn besides closing the sale. Find out how to convert “I’m just looking” customers into buyers. Learn how to effectively engage and develop immediate rapport even with shy or defensive shoppers. Home furnishing retailers should attend this seminar if seeing potential customers walk out the door rather than make a purchase frustrates them. Return to your store equipped with the most up to date skills for engaging lookers and persuading them to buy today.

Words can mean different things to men and women; so can body language. Sometimes what you think you sense or see is not really what’s being conveyed. Lorna Hunter and Joe Milevsky of JRM Sales & Management will present this clever, informative and entertaining seminar. Get ready for them to act out their roles as they demonstrate man versus woman, woman versus man, how they read each other and make the emotional connections needed to succeed in a sales interaction.

10:00 - 11:00 a.m.

Making Money with Mattresses

Turn Showrooming into Sales

Martin Roberts, Martin Roberts Design

Bonnie Melcher, Netsertive

Learn how to effortlessly turn showrooming into a tool that works for you. Bonnie will show you how several retailers are leveraging an assertive online marketing campaign to help them turn the tables on showroomers and keep Internet-savvy shoppers in their stores. Plus, she’ll share the latest Google search trend data, explain how to spend your marketing budget more efficiently, and highlight the power of retargeting, getting more people to buy.

11:30 - 12:30 p.m. Create Your Own Money Making Referral & Testimonial Machine Jeff Giagnocavo, Automated Mattress Profits/ Mega Mattress Margins

Testimonials and referrals can be so much more than, “Like us on Facebook, and tell your friends about us!” Every business should have its very own referral and testimonial machine. Whether you are a design-focused store, furniture only, or mattress store this presentation will cover how to set up a SYSTEM, plus steps and tech tips on how to AUTOMATE your system so every new customer is asked for referrals and testimonials. Sadly many good customers are too busy to refer and share their positive experiences with your store. But if you have a system and solicit referrals and testimonials automatically you will see an immediate increase in reviews, referrals and testimonials.

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2:30 - 3:30 p.m.

Furniture/Today says more than 20% of retail sales in home furnishing stores comes from mattresses. Home furnishing retailers are rethinking their mattress presentations and the number of specialty stores is growing. Mattress manufacturers are putting more effort into point-of-sale. For storeowners and marketers, this seminar will focus on the most highly profitable retail sales categories with one of the store’s largest unit prices. It’s a hot category for consumers and a priority purchase. Mr. Roberts will share secrets of improving sales and marketing efforts addressing issues like, “How big should departments be?” “Where should they be located?” “How to increase add-on sales?” and “How to create a retail experience?”

4:00 - 5:00 p.m. Ten Top Trends for 2016 Michelle Lamb, The Trend Curve

There is so much newness out there, but which trends really matter? What colors and styles will drive business best in the coming two years? Michelle Lamb, internationally recognized trend-forecasting expert and editorial director of The Trend Curve newsletter, answers these questions and more in Ten Top Trends for 2016. Expect to see hundreds of Michelle’ slides from markets and trade fairs in Europe, Asia and the U.S. that will give you a birds-eye view of the future of color and style.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

High Point Market RRC

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19

7:30 - 9:30 a.m. NAHFA Board and Membership Meetings

10:00 - 11:00 a.m. State of the Industry Jerry Epperson

want to find you and HOW they want to find you. Omni-channel is a focused “inbound” marketing strategy to replace the traditional “outbound” marketing strategy embracing the 4 C’s of selling in retail today; Connections, Choice, Convenience, Conversations. In this session, for retailers, brands, marketers and buyers, we will discuss the 5 steps to create a successful omni-channel solution for today’s “wired” customer. Leave with a thumb drive copy of this presentation and many tools to help you get started.T

4:00 - 5:00 p.m. 4 Digital and Direct Mail Power Plays that Drive Traffic!

Furniture industry guru Jerry Epperson will once again enlighten Doug Knorr, Knorr Marketing us with his furniture research expertise on the current state of future of the furniture industry, and how it affects your business. Learn how to get a bigger return on your advertising by combining the latest digital strategies with direct mail! During this power packed 60 minutes Doug Knorr, President and Dan Kolle, Director of IT 11:30 - 12:30 p.m. at Knorr Marketing will present four advertising power plays that combine digital and direct mail strategies to increase store traffic and Promotional & Digital Strategies to Help You Finish frequency shopping while reducing incremental advertising costs. 2014 Strong This seminar includes case studies and handouts to empower you Brad Lebow, Horich Hector Lebow Advertising to start getting a greater return on your advertising and marketing We’ll walk you through the advertising calendar for the remainder budget immediately! Leave with an understanding of the dynamic of the year and show you what America’s leading furniture changes in connecting with today’s consumers to experience stronger retailers are doing to drive retail sales over the final two months R.O.I. with advertising investment of 2014. We’ll look at the promotions and creative executions across a variety of media that retailers will be using to help MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 reach their year-end sales goals. Then our digital media experts will review the changing media landscape and show you how 8:30 - 9:30 a.m. retailers are starting to move advertising dollars once earmarked for traditional media into digital initiatives. We’ll look at online The Revolution of Next Generation Web Design advertising best practices and demonstrate cost effective ways Jesse Akre and Ron Gordon, MicroD, Inc. to reach furniture shoppers online. 85% of consumers who enter your store have spent at least 5 to 10 minutes on your website before they even come in. That’s great 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. news for you because the revolution of website design is coming! By now you’ve heard some of the buzzwords like responsive website Amazon Marketplace 101: Selling on Amazon design, parallax scrolling and e-commerce! These web technologies John Reisen, Sr. CMM – Amazon, Lawn & Garden will enable you to present a truly engaging and informative web Retail has evolved and ecommerce has grown in popularity presence that will enable you to stand out against the competition among consumers in the recent past, with high growth expected and succeed in bringing customers into your store and closing to continue. Many shopping experiences begin online with sales. These technologies have already altered larger industries significant influences in offline sales. The opportunity for small including automotive, fashion apparel, and hospitality. MicroD retailers to reach more customers through ecommerce avenues explains how you can be on the cutting edge of our industry by continues to grow. Learn how Amazon reaches a broad audience implementing a web-first mentality that will enable you to create of unique visitors and your potential customers. Find out the amazing opportunities on an affordable budget. how Amazon can support your bottom line.

2:30 - 3:30 p.m. It’s Time To Embrace Omni-Channel! We’ll Show You Why & How

10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Difficult Customers

Margi Kyle, The Designing Doctor, LLC

What do you do when that dream customer turns out to be a nightmare? Margi Kyle, The Designing Doctor, knows how to Creating and implementing an omni-channel strategy doesn’t avoid such problems before they start and how to handle the require an expensive investment in new IT platforms. It requires problems if they start. Learn how to run your business, create a you to embrace what you already know about your business, brand for your business, and deal with the many personalities of acknowledge and fix what you don’t know and share your business your customers. Figure out which customers will make you money, everywhere your consumer WANTS to find you, WHEN they and which customers will take your money.

Bill Napier & Patrick Bain, Napier Marketing

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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High Point Market RRC

11:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21

Amazon Marketplace 101: Selling on Amazon

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

John Reisen, Sr. CMM – Lawn & Garden

Retail has evolved and ecommerce has grown in popularity among consumers in the recent past, with high growth expected to continue. Many shopping experiences begin online with significant influences in offline sales. The opportunity for small retailers to reach more customers through ecommerce avenues continues to grow. Learn how Amazon reaches a broad audience of unique visitors and your potential customers. Find out the how Amazon can support your bottom line.

1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Engage & Gain Clients Through Social Media Eric & Brittany Highland of Knektion—Sponsored by LHI Designer

As an independent interior designer, you naturally wear a colorful variety of hats. You’ve seen your competitors jump on the social media bandwagon and you have a feeling you should be there too, but getting started seems overwhelming! This session is intended to end your social media overwhelm and put wind in your sails. Whether you already have a Facebook page and Pinterest account and want to take your efforts to the next level, or you need direction on how to start at the very beginning, you will leave with actionable tips you can put into practice right away.

2:30 – 3:30 p.m. The Psychology of Sales! Brad Huisken, IAS Training

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Profit is EA$Y! John Egger, Profitability Consulting Group

If you’re overworked and not as profitable as you want, come on in and take a seat. This will be your most profitable hour at the market. John will give you real life, real time processes to increase your bottom line; everything from how to get more out of your suppliers to getting more at the register. Owners, managers and sales staff will take home valuable information to help make their lives ea$ier.

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Learn tried and true methods for ringing the register, and share your own successful direct mail promotions with the group. With more than a billion marketing pieces delivered, the team at Mail America has observed retailer best practices for driving both sales and store traffic using direct marketing. You’ll leave this presentation with several fresh marketing ideas to implement. This interactive session will be a rewarding hour that will deliver ROI on your market trip.

10:00 – 11:00 a.m. Customer Experience: Your New Competitive Advantage

Donnie Surdoval and Lindsey Scapicchio, STORIS

Retailers competing with big box stores and growing ecommerce channels need to recognize their customer shopping experience as the competitive advantage that it is. Both the quality and quantity of touch points with customers has become more important in curating a unique customer experience. New technologies and revised organizational structures are helping retailers craft personalized shopping experiences that turn customers into advocates. As relationship marketing replaces traditional marketing, retailers who have curated and invested in unique customer experiences will be well positioned to thrive.

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

When a customer comes into a furniture store today, they are looking for a place and a person to buy from; they’re looking for a relationship. Learn what customers are thinking when they enter a furniture store for the first time. Brad will detail the real goal of a sales presentation, the three types of customers that come into a furniture store and how to maximize each potential customer type. Brad will end with details on how to get that customer back over and over again.

Successful Direct Marketing Strategies Leo Bartsch, Mail America

Strength in Numbers—Effectively Maximizing Your Finance Sources

Marty Grosse, Furniche, LLC

Create seamless selling opportunities by developing and integrating multiple finance sources. Discover ways to build financing into the sales process to drive up average sales and build customer brand loyalty. Learn how to measure and monitor the metrics of each finance source and build ongoing relationships with multiple lenders. Learn the most important measurements in your business, how to figure your metrics, what the best operators are achieving these days, and see real-world examples of actions you can take to out-perform your competition. You will leave this session with a road map for developing vertically-integrated multiple-finance options along with tips and tools for effectively measuring performance results.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

High Point Market RRC

Come see us in the RRC Booth 19 & 28

1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Real Promotions by Real Furniture Retailers

Kyle Doran, R&A Marketing

When you think of advertising your mind automatically goes to the offer game right? You’re probably thinking to yourself that Ms. Jones is so used to coupons and deals why wouldn’t she want to play the offer game. What you really need to think about is that all she really wants you to do is reinforce the purchase decision she made weeks ago. During this presentation we’ll show real promotions that embody this type of advertising, done by furniture retailers across the country.

2:30 – 3:30 p.m. The “New” Local Market Sev Ritchie, Tailbase

Research shows a huge market for BOLPIS… seriously. Buy Online Pick-up In Store. It is time for retailers to realize the paradigm shift continues (and is accelerating) where a consumer combines digital with brick-and-mortar. This does not mean the end of brick-and-mortar; it means it is time to do business differently. Local consumers want to purchase online and either pick-up at the store, or have their merchandise delivered. Integrating ecommerce is a necessary move to capture this growing segment and maintain a healthy and thriving physical store, and who knows what else they will pick up when they show up?

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Omni-Channel Marketing

Jeremy Gustafson, Kreber

Kreber is an omni-channel marketing firm that presents ideas and strategies for retail promotion, consumer-facing promotions and sales enablement. Both retailers and manufacturers will benefit from seeing case studies that demonstrate options for consumer engagement and savings in time/money within the workflow.

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High Point Market RRC

RRC Booth 1 & 2

RRC Booth 3

Your customers. Our financing. Introducing Synchrony Financial, fomerly GE Capital Retail Finance. With more than 80 years of retail heritage, we bring new meaning to the word partnership. Find out what Synchrony Financial can do to at SynchronyBusiness.com or 1-855-433-3552. Built from GE heritage.

The integrated technology company for the home furnishings world. solutions@microdinc.com www.microdinc.com

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Warehousing & Distribution • Last Mile Home Delivery Internet Delivery • Retail Dedicated Services Professional Logistics Management • White Glove Services For more information visit: www.corycompanies.com Email: sales@corycompanies.com Phone: 201-795-1000

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www.retailerNOWmag.com

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High Point Market RRC

RRC Booth 8

RRC Booth 9

Converting a warranty program into a

reinsurance (captive) program cuts costs, improves service, and provides access to lucrative financial tools.

In Highpoint

Retailer Resource Center | 1st Floor Plaza Suites - 8 On the Web www.raptns.com

By Phone 561-450-7200

Program Partner Morgan Stanley RRC Booth 11

RRC Booth 15

Is Your Advertising & Marketing Putting More Money on Your

BOTTOM LINE?

Talk with us about your store, see how we have helped others and held their advertising accountable! 4 Digital & Direct Mail Power Plays That Drive Traffic! FREE Seminar - NAHFA Retailer Resource Center -

Sunday, October 19 Seminar 4 - 5 p.m. Presenters: Doug Knorr & Dan Kolle Learn how to get a bigger return on your advertising by combining the latest digital strategies with direct mail. Includes case studies and handouts.

160 E. State Street, Traverse City, MI 49684

Market Phone:

(231) 218-1747

www.retailerNOWmag.com

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High Point Market RRC

RRC Booth 17

Join the weekly

NEW HOMEOWNER PROGRAM

that is delivering results!

Our program features: - A variable plastic card with a personal landing page - Trigger email offers based on their product selections - An in-store scan to win with hand scanner - Web-enabled reporting that puts the details at your FINgertips - Real-time lead notiFIcation

Plus, check out our HUGE CUSTOMER FACING KIOSK

Visit us in the Retailer Resource Center MAIL AMERICA - 800-421-2150 - WWW.MAILAMERICA.COM RRC Booth 24 & 25

RRC Booth 22 & 23

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1.888.4.STORIS www.STORIS.com

www.retailerNOWmag.com

NAHFA RRC Booths #24 & 25 Optimize your business today!

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High Point Market RRC

RRC Booth 30

RRC Booth 32

RRC Booth 36

RRC Booth 37

For more info about

Dedicated Home Delivery Services Contact us today.

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www.retailerNOWmag.com

High Point Market RRC RRC Booth 18

for those who

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RRC Booth 38

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RRC Booth 39

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NAHFA FEATURED PRODUCT Let Us Help You With “Touchy” Situations

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www.retailerNOWmag.com

High Point Market RRC

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The St. James by American Elegance, a division of Omnia Leather, showcases the ability to integrate both fabric and leather for a gracious transitional look. By using both materials, you are able to integrate into almost any room setting. With numerous fabrics and leathers to select from, the options are unlimited. Down and Feather is standard in all American Elegance products and all is handcrafted in the USA. The St. James by American Elegance, a beautiful fashion forward look.

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Corliss Landing is a relaxed, casual lifestyle design perfect for everyday use. Crafted in solid wire-brushed Acacia and finished in a weathered grey stain. All items are in stock today. Cresent Fine Furniture Phone: (615) 975-4862 Fax (615) 452-0098 Website: cresent.com info@cresent.com @cresentfurn

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Technology

Making Social Media Work for You

acebook. Pinterest. Instagram. Blogs. Websites. Don’t forget Tumblr and Snapchat, the current social site of Millennials. And in Twitter’s case, remember to say it in 140 characters or less. Social media marketing can be daunting for small home furnishings retailers trying to understand the opportunities. And experts warn that those who brush social media aside, saying their primary buyers are older and still read newspapers or listen to the radio, do so at their own risk.

Tim McLain is an Internet marketing expert who works with home furnishings brands and local retailers. Contact Tim at tmclain@netsertive.com.

“The 50-plus demographic is now the fast-growing user of social media, especially Facebook,” said Shana Bresnahan, social media and online marketing strategist for Riley & You, a Nashvillebased agency that develops targeted and integrated marketing strategies. If that’s surprises you, it shouldn’t. “Grandparents want to see pictures of their grandkids,” Bresnahan said. In fact, Bresnahan added, many young people are leaving Facebook and are gravitating toward sites like Pinterest and Instagram where photo sharing is the focus. “That plays right into a retailer of home furnishing’s strong suit,” said Bresnahan. In August, some of the nation’s top marketing and social media experts gathered in Nashville to discuss, among other things, best practices of social media. Experts urged retailers to implement a social media plan but also cautioned that social media by itself is not the answer for all of a store owner’s marketing.

Shana Bresnahan manages online brand integrity and engagement through social media and online advertising at Riley & You. Contact Shana at shana.b@rileyandyou.com

“You need multiple marketing channels today that span the old tactics and the new,” said Tim McLain, senior marketing manager at Netsertive, a channel marketing technology company that brings brands like Ashley Furniture, Serta, La-Z-Boy and others together with their local retailer partners online which leads to customers walking through a retailer’s doors. McLain said those channels “need to deliver a consistent message to reach everyone in your local market where they spend most of their time today: in front of computers, tablets and smartphones that are connected to the Internet.” The best way to reach all ages of customers is with email, according to Ali Mirza, founder and president of iSocialYou, a social media marketing and consulting agency.

www.retailerNOWmag.com

Ali Mirza is a digital marketing strategist with iSocialYou who can help with Facebook advertising and social media marketing strategy. He can be reached at ali@isocialyou.com

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“Everyone has an email address,” said Mirza, your audience is today,” said Bresnahan. who has worked with dozens of retailers “If you’re a unique furniture store, you may to help them expand their social audience find that Pinterest is the primary site to use to generate leads and revenue from social first. It’s very visual, lots of photos, and it’s media. “Ask them for it when they check used by more women than men who are out, start a monthly newsletter, deliver talking about unique pieces, arts and crafts, special offers—your single most valuable things like this.” marketing asset is an email list. “ Bresnahan said studies show that Pinterest Mirza said retailers and customers view is the second-biggest driver of clicks back social media in different ways. to furniture retailer websites as a social channel. Facebook remains the biggest. “As retailers we think of social media as a lead generation tool to get more sales,” he Bresnahan said retailers can tag their phosaid. “Our customers want to use social tos with prices and drive a buyer to their media for engagement, or talk with us, store for a specific item or category they ask questions, and get genuinely helpful have on display on a social media site. “I content to help them use the things they recommend picking one site and doing it buy from us. And yes, they also want to really well at a deep level before thinking see baby pictures and connect with old of adding others,” she said. friends. But small retailers have a place to engage with their customer base to stay Mirza suggests Facebook as a small retailer’s top of mind at all phases of the purchas- best bet provided the store has one or two ing funnel.” internal staffers handling social media. “(Facebook) is the easiest to manage and Not every retailer needs to jump into social share posting rights with multiple people media for social media’s sake, said McLain. across lots of devices,” he said. “It takes a large investment of time to properly do social for even a single location,” he McLain agreed: “Facebook today is the said. “If your goal is to ramp up new cus- Google of social media. It has the largest tomers swinging your doors to buy, put your local audience and has the very best adlimited marketing investment into targeting vertising targeting features of all the social advertising that puts the right message in sites. It’s easy to set very strict targeting front of local customers the instant they’re parameters to be sure your message appears researching a purchase from you.” to local customers who’ve liked your competition, big box or local retail competitors, This is where search engine marketing, dis- and set a specific budget to keep the ad play banners, and mobile placements really alive for several days before, during, and shine. If you’re putting ads in the paper after the event to drive added awareness.” or on TV or radio, the 1 percent of those reading or listening today who are ready to But McLain cautions retailers that a buy will do research online, according to Facebook ad will only drive results if it’s McLain. aligned with other media buys and messaging appearing both online and in the real Closing the loop between traditional and world during the same time period. digital ads is your most lucrative opportunity, McLain said. Otherwise you’ll lose Mirza said another way to target locally via customers to your competitors who are Facebook and Twitter is with your email investing in online advertising. list. “You can upload your list, create a promoted Tweet or Facebook ad, and have Smaller retailers looking for a social it appear to those people who have given media presence shouldn’t simply default you their email address in the past, as well to Facebook. “It very much depends on as people who are ‘like’ your customers what kind of retailer you are and where who live in the area,” he said.

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Technology

Bresnahan, McLain and Mirza all agree it’s easier than many home furnishings retailers might think to get started. You’ve even got someone close by who can help, they added. “Likely you’re already doing some kind of marketing,” said Bresnahan. “Either you’re outsourcing it or have someone doing it internally. This is your go-to resource to help you get started with social media.”

Just be sure that you, as the store owner, are added as a manger of your social channels, along with one or two other staffers “That way when employees leave, several of you have access to your channels to keep things moving,” McLain said. “If only one person has full administration rights, you could be in big trouble.” Mirza believes a store that has many employees who take part in a company’s social media team, gives the company a more active presence online and engages with customers more consistently.

Bresnahan recommends outsourcing the work because social media is changing all the time. “Even if you have one person working on your marketing, it’s hard for “Your team knows how to answer the questions your customers ask most often, them to keep up with the changes,” she said. “If you can afford to outsource it, and can be excellent brand advocates for you’ll ensure that your social channels stay your store online,” Mirza said. “Be sure to up-to-date and you’re consistent with post- turn on notifications (email and mobile) so your team is alerted when new posts ing new content.” appear on your channels, reviews are posted, etc.” Another option is to look within to your current staff. “It’s very likely that one or two of them are familiar with Facebook or Responding in a timely manner is just as important, said McLain. “Your goal should Pinterest and have a natural interest in being be to respond to any kind of question or your social media person,” said McLain.

SimpleFinance-RetailerNow-HalfPage_OUTLINES.indd 1

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complaint within 15 to 30 minutes. If someone does post a complaint, respond fast and tell them that you understand their concerns, and always put the name of a person the customer can call, that person’s phone number and email address right in the response. You want to channel their potential anger to your phone or email, and be very publicly responsive to stop any additional negative posts from appearing. Mirza said social media should be integrated into a retailer’s overall marketing plan. “Most stores are doing a little radio, some TV, and print. All of the promotions they’re running and messaging their putting out through these channels should also appear on social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest,” he said. Coordinate upcoming sales, new product arrivals, and the rest with your team to have everything in sync, he added. And be sure to put Facebook or other links inside your ads so local customers know to Like or Follow you on social media.

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Technology

OLD SCHOOL MARKETING TOOL How and Why You Should Send Better Email By Sydnee Seites

Email marketing is nothing new, and most marketing emails are annoying. But I’m here to tell you email marketing is not dead. Not yet. Just like fax, direct mail, newspaper ads and times to determine which ones resonate Pro-tip: Think about what types of marall of your other favorite traditional market- with customers. keting emails you get, and pay attention to ing methods (yes, I’m talking to you, home the ones you consider valuable and those furnishings retailer), the relatively old tactic Lead with a call-to-action (CTA). you trash without even reading. of email marketing still has a great deal of Your CTA must be front and center. Your value and a strong track record. customers are probably reading your email Avoid spam-trigger words. while on-the-go, and you only have a few Do not use words or formatting (ALL Consider this: according to KissMetrics, a seconds to get your message across. Your CAPS, exclamation points) that will cause customer intelligence and web analytics CTA should be large and clickable, and your email to be picked up by spam filters. company, email has nearly three times link to the place where the user can take I don’t care how much you want to emphaas many user accounts as Facebook and the action. size something is FREE! Just don’t do it. Twitter combined. In fact, email reaches 2.9 billion people. Email might not be as Pro-tip: Buttons work great as CTAs, and  Pro-tip: Words and phrases like “connew and exciting as social media or mobile many email-marketing platforms allow you gratulations” and “name brand” and apps, but there are more good reasons to to easily add customizable buttons to your “guarantee” seem innocent enough, but use it than to ditch it. templates. are sure-fire ways for a computer to flag your email as spam. Here’s a list of 100 When it comes to customer retention Make sure your email is mobile-friendly. spam-trigger words to avoid: http://bit.ly/ and customer acquisition, email can be According to Constant Contact, 75 per- spamtriggers. instrumental. Here are nine great tips you cent of consumers say they are ‘highly should consider and implement right away likely’ to delete an email if they can’t read Include social media share buttons. to avoid the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’. it on their smartphone. Tips for creating Just because you’re using email doesn’t a mobile-friendly email include using a mean your email content can’t go social. single column template and having one A good email marketing platform lets you Identify your goals. Understand the goal of each email you call-to-action. A good email marketing customize how a link to your email will send. Make it specific, and make it mea- platform will have mobile-friendly or re- look on popular social media platforms, surable. Once you decide your goal, make sponsive templates. and allows you to easily add social share sure your call-to-action pursues that goal. buttons to your templates. Pro-tip: When you send a test email to yourself, read it on your phone or tablet. Understand the rules. Target, target, target. Not every person on your list will want to Have an employee or coworker with a Did you know you must include a postal read every email you send. Segment your different type of phone view the same test address in your email marketing campaign? customer/subscriber database into various email on their device as well. And that you have to give recipients clear groups or categories and design custom directions on how they can opt out of the campaigns for each. This helps personal- Provide value. program. There are the rules that are part ize the email experience. Experiment with Every email should reward people for giv- of the CAN-SPAM law that was created to dates and times. Optimal send times vary ing you their time and attention. Answer prevent consumers from being sent unsobased on your customers’ lifestyles. the “What’s in it for me?” question. Your licited email messages from marketers. You customer is trusting you with their email can read more about the law at http://bit.  Pro-tip: Use different subject lines, address, and you have a one-time opportu- ly/emailcanspam or in the policies of any versions of email content and send nity to provide value. email marketing platform provider. 70

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Technology

Email reaches 2.9 billion people.

Email has nearly 3 times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined. Track and analyze.

Constant Contact (constantcontact.com)

Pay attention to metrics like open rate and click-through rate to get a sense of how successful your email was. With the right email marketing platform, you can view campaign reports that provide you with key data. If your email was sent to a group of customers who have given you their email address but have not yet purchased from you, view who opened and clicked on your links (or who has done so multiple times). This can indicate customers who are particularly interested in your message and may be people you’ll want to further engage with. Also consider using Google URL builder to insert t links that can be tracked within your email so you can view clicks and conversions all the way through a purchase on your website with Google Analytics.

Offers various email campaign types, including press releases, event announcements, Facebook promotions, and trackable coupons. Cost: $20 per month for the basic service; $45 per month for the “Essential” service.

Getting Started

Now that you have a few dos’s and don’ts to guide you, here are a few email marketing platforms to help get you going.

GetResponse (getresponse.com) An email marketing solution that helps small business owners deliver information and convert subscribers to paying customers. Top features include: email creator customization, tracking to measure site conversions and segment subscribers, list import features from 16 different email clients and message preview. You can also create landing pages for your various promotions. Cost: $15 per month for 1,000 subscribers.

iContact (icontact.com)

An email and social media marketing tool that is built around small business needs. Says they specialize in high-volume sending. They also mention split testing, where you send out two versions of an email to see which one is better received by customers, and their team of delivery specialists who make sure your messages get delivered. Cost: Plans start at $14/month.

MailChimp (mailchimp.com)

An email marketing tool that was created to grow with your AWeber (aweber.com) business. It is now one of the more recognizable email newsletter An email marketing program that gives you brands, and is known for constantly developing new, innovative email auto-responders to deliver a sequence features and integrations. They offer individual profiles on each of emails, which is useful if you are trying subscriber, which shows their activity from email all the way to sell a set of something. You also get 600 to your website with Google Analytics integrations. Free plan: HTML email templates, automatic conver- 12,000 emails to 2,000 people a month. Other plans start at sion of a blog RSS feed into the newsletter, $10/month and scale based on # of subscribers. You can send and integration of Paal and other shopping unlimited emails. (Full Disclosure: We use MailChimp, and it’s carts. Payment starts at $1 for the first awesome.) month. Plans start at $19/month.

Campaigner (campaigner.com)

VerticalResponse (verticalresponse.com)

Hosts your email newsletters on the Web forever, so you can share A simple email creation tool that allows them via a unique URL. Upload your contact list by dragging the you to send up to 10 million+ subscribers, CSV file onto the screen. They also offer Salesforce integration, and offers 24/7 support. Send triggered direct mail postcards, and online surveys. The free plan is for up to auto-responders depending on what link gets 1,000 subscribers. The paid program begins at $26.40 per month clicked. Cost: $10 per month. for up to 2,500 subscribers. Cost: Plans start at $10/month.

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Thank You

Our Association gratefully recognizes all of our sponsors whose dedication and commitment have strengthened our industry. Signature Sponsor

Serta Mattress Company

Premier Sponsor

Furniture Today International Market Centers Surya Rugs

Titanium Sponsors

aspenhome Furniture Coaster Company of America Cory 1st Choice Home Delivery Emerald Home Furnishings Furniture Wizard Jaipur Rugs Inc. Leggett & Platt MicroD, Inc. Myriad Software Nourison STORIS

Platinum Sponsors

ACA Advertising Concepts of America • American Leather Ashley Furniture Industries • Best Buy for Business Furniture of America • FurnitureDealer.net • High Point Market Authority Netsertive • Northwest Furniture Express • PROFITsystems, Inc. • R & A Marketing Simmons USA • Steve Silver Co.

Gold/Silver/Bronze Sponsors

Aramark • Banner Marketing • BrandSource AVB • Color Ad • Corsicana Bedding, Inc. Crown West Realty • DSI Companies • Elk, Inc. • Feizy Rugs • Hooker • JRM Sales & Management La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries, Spokane WA • Restonic Mattress • ShockWatch • Speedy Delivery Spokane Business Park & Industrial Park • The Spokesman Review • The Uttermost Company TruckSkin, LLC. • Watkins Shepard Trucking, Inc.

To become an industry sponsor contact: North American Home Furnishings Association 800.422.3778 or email: cwilliams@nahfa.org

*List as of August 15, 2014

1.3 Billion Dollars in Sales 10 Top 100 Stores 27 FMG Stores & Furniture 1st Stores

1 Agency

Horich Hector Lebow is America’s Retail Furniture Agency Horich Hector Lebow has helped some of America’s most prominent furniture retailers achieve success and, more importantly, maintain that success through challenging economic times. It’s true, our clients exceed 1.3 billion dollars yearly in home furnishings retail sales. Since 1982, HHL has made a meaningful, measurable difference in the success of our clients. We have done so by focusing exclusively on furniture and mattresses, providing a responsive, one-stop solution for planning, creative, media placement, radio and television production and digital marketing.

Don’t miss our Advertising Seminar: Sunday, October 19th, 11:30 am -12:30 pm NAHFA Resource Center

You could WIN an iPad Mini!

Join us at the High Point Market, October 16th - 22nd In the Klaussner Furniture Showroom /101 North Hamilton Street Call Brad Lebow 443-956-3538 to make an appointment to see us.

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WA MT

OR ID

KS OK

IA IL MO

Democrats: 47

TN GA

SC special

Toss-up No Election Toss-ups: 5

n November 4 the U.S. Midterm Election will be held for all 435 members of Congress and 33 of the 100 members of the Senate. While it is the North American Home Furnishings Association’s goal to educate you about the issues our Government Relations Action Team has outlined as being critical to home furnishings retailers, being educated about you candidates and what they stand for is important regardless of what business you’re in.

Control of the Senate Hangs in the Balance

Next month voters from a few select states will have a dramatic impact on the makeup and control of the Senate for the two years leading up to the 2016 presidential election. This midterm election marks the traditional ‘six-year itch’ for a second-term president and is generally viewed as a referendum on the incumbent president and his party. With presidential approval ratings holding steady in the low 40s over the last few weeks, Democrats seemingly have an uphill battle as they defend 21 Senate seats this cycle. Control of the 435-member House was determined after the latest round of gerrymandering (the process of setting electoral OC TOBER | 2014

MA RI CT NJ DE MD

OK special

Safe D Likely D Leans D R to D

HI special

U.S. House of Representatives

MS AL AK

VT ME

D to R Leans R Likely R Safe R Republicans: 48

districts) done by state legislators. There are fewer competitive House races as the majority of House districts have been drawn in a way that easily benefits the incumbent. There is a general expectation that given the divisive nature of big-ticket issues like healthcare, immigration and the federal budget, Republicans will increase their majority with somewhere between 6 and 10 seats. There are currently 234 Republicans and 199 Democrats in the House.

U.S. Senate

All eyes will be on election returns in a handful of states as control of the Senate hinges on critical races across the country. The current makeup of the Senate is 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans, and 2 Independents (who caucus with Democrats). In order to regain control, Republicans will need to win a total of six seats. Given the historical problems for the party in the White House during midterm elections, Democrats already had a difficult task ahead. Throw in a number of high-profile retirements in battleground red states and the situation becomes dire. Democrats have lost Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV, retirement), Carl Levin (D-MI, retirement), Max Baucus (D-MT, appointment), Tim Johnson (D-SD, retirement) and Tom Harkin (D-IA, retirement) this cycle. In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney beat President Obama decidedly in many of these states and the President’s approval is still extremely low. The other races to watch that are statistical toss ups and will determine the majority in the Senate are Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mary Pryor (D-AR), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Begich (D-AK) and Mark Udall (D-CO). With Republicans already

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Government Relations

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt expected to pick up West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota, wins in three of these close races will win control. The main Republican with a tight race this cycle is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), but given the overall climate it is difficult to imagine Kentucky electing a Democrat to the Senate. McConnell’s opponent is Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes and she has raised a significant amount of money in the high profile race. It may be a close vote in the end but McConnell is expected to return to DC. To put the toss ups in perspective, Mitt Romney had large margins of victories in many of the states mentioned. He was +24% in Arkansas, +17% in Louisiana, +14% in Alaska, and +2% in North Carolina. Those numbers are stacked against Democrats in 2014 as they do not have the momentum of a presidential candidate at the top of the ticket. Regardless of the outcome, the party in power will have a very slim majority but will be able to use that position to drive the policy debate in Washington for two years. The flip side to the script is that Republicans must defend 24 seats in 2016, with many of those seats in states won by President Obama in 2012. Elections matter and this fall could be one of the more dramatic in recent memory. Remember, in case of a 50-50 Senate, the Vice President casts the tiebreaking vote. Vote. It matters. Chris Andresen is a senior associate at Grayling, the lobbying firm for the North American Home Furnishings Association.

NAHFA in Action NAHFA members benefit from having resources dedicated to advocating on their behalf on state and federal laws and regulations. Members receive monthly updates on federal and state issues; member-only eBlasts on critical issues or calls to action; and coming soon—member-only area on NAHFA.org. Here are just a few of the issues NAHFA reports on. Marketplace Fairness Act—NAHFA supports a level playing field and the collection of online sales taxes. The Senate has already passed this bill. Hours of Service—NAHFA is against the current regulations (cut by 12 the number of hours that commercial truck drivers can stay on the road every week and require drivers to take regular 34-hour rest periods that include pre-dawn hours (12am – 6am) of two straight days) and we join other groups in calling for a review of the data that brought about these regulations. EPA’s proposed formaldehyde regulations—NAHFA stands with the American Home Furnishings Alliance in requesting (among other points) reduced testing and self-certification programs for laminated products. CPSC’s national flammability standard—NAHFA is in favor of the CPSC following the guidelines laid down in California’s TB117-2013 regulation.

The Scoop

vvNAHFA, Pilgrim City Furniture tee it up to raise money, awareness for local camp The North American Home Furnishings Association partnered with member Pilgrim Furniture City to promote its 10th annual golf tournament this summer in North Stonington, Ct. Pilgrim Furniture City owners Mike and Debbie Albert have been hosting the golf tournament since 2004 with proceeds always benefiting local agencies and food banks. This year’s proceeds went to Channel 3 Kids Camp, a camp for children with special needs. The tournament, which was held at the Lake of Isles Golf Course, a Troon Experience, at the Foxwoods Casino, was sponsored, in part, by NAHFA for the first time. In years past, NAHFA sponsored a tournament for New England members. “This year seemed like the right time to join forces for one tournament,” said Mary Frye, NAHFA’s Executive Vice President. “Even die-hard golfers in the industry have to eventually tend to their vvSurya launches 3rd “Miles for Meals” campaign businesses! The Association is committed to working with our members to promote regional events and golf events are popular. to help feed 3,300 school children in India Bringing members together to network and have fun is always a good thing—and it’s made even better by being able to make a Surya is gearing up once again for the company’s annual fund- difference in the lives of children. It really is a win/win situation raising campaign in support of Akshaya Patra, one of the world’s for everyone involved.” largest privately-run meal programs. Earlier this month more than 45 Surya employees and partners partners competed in a half marathon in Cumming, Ga., to help provide meals for thousands of school children in villages in Northern India where Surya’s weaver community resides. Surya’s Miles for Meals program has helped raise more than $70,000 to feed children in India.

Since its inception in 2012, Surya’s Miles for Meals program has raised more than $70,000 for the non-profit organization, which serves a freshly prepared, nutritious lunch each day to more than 1.4 million children throughout rural India. The program not only helps to address hunger and malnutrition, but also provides an incentive for children to stay in school so that they have the opportunity to thrive as adults. In response to the strong support for Miles for Meals last year, Surya has raised the bar even higher this year, setting a fundraising goal of $50,000. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made through Oct. 30, 2014 via the following site: http://www.razoo. com/story/Surya-2014. It costs just $15 to feed one child for the entire school year.

Pilgrim Furniture City Employees present a check to Channel 3 Kids Camp for $23,400, proceeds from the store’s annual golf tournament. From left to right, Pilgrim Furniture City employees Cassie Addessa, Ashley Walker, Channel 3 Kids Camp Executive Director Denise Hornbecker, Pilgrims Furniture City owner Debbie Albert and summer intern Meredith Ferris.

Share your stories with RetailerNOW. Did you or your business receive an award? Host an event? Open a new location? Hire someone amazing? Send your news or press releases to us at scoop@retailernow.com 76

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THE OWNERS OF R&A COULD TELL YOU WHY WE ARE THE BEST AGENCY TO HELP YOU

SELL MORE FURNITURE. KEVIN

KYLE

“

BUT, WE FIGURED WE WOULD LET OUR CLIENTS DO THAT FOR US: I believe all sizes of retailers in the furniture industry can benefit from the assistance of an ad agency. The key things I like about partnering with R&A Marketing are fourfold:

2 3 4

They have great knowledge of the furniture industry. This allows them to focus on and identify marketing that works in our field. They combine an extremely talented young staff who understands the complexities of today’s medias and combines that with decades of furniture marketing experience. They have a great system in place to organize your advertising six months or further into the year…and they never miss a deadline. They are extremely mindful of ad expenditures keeping our ad budgets percentages historically low.

“

Giff Gates – Owner Gates Furniture Grants Pass, Oregon

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

CALL US TODAY.

www.ramarketing.com | 888-225-0776 @ramarketing

Kevin Doran Owner kevin@ramarketing.com 740-972-1520

Kyle Doran Owner kyle@ramarketing.com 740-975-3602

Scott Graham Business Devleopment scott@ramarketing.com 614-595-8600

Calendar

MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR THESE INDUSTRY EVENTS High Point Market

Dallas Total Home and Gift Market

High Point Market

October 18-23

January 14-20, 2015

April 18-23, 2015

High Point, North Carolina highpointmarket.org

Dallas, Texas dallasmarketcenter.com

High Point, North Carolina highpointmarket.org

KEM Furniture & Accessory Mart

Las Vegas Market

Nov. 19-20

January 18-22, 2015

International Contemporary Furniture Fair

Long Beach, California kemexpo.com

Las Vegas, Nevada lasvegasmarket.com

Showtime

KEM Furniture and Accessory Mart

December 7-10

February 1-3, 2015

High Point, North Carolina showtime-market.com

Edison, New Jersey kemexpo.com

Atlanta Winter Gift, Home Furnishings Market

Tupelo Furniture Market

January 6-13, 2015

May 16-19, 2015 New York, New York icff.com Home Furnishings Networking Conference May 17-19, 2015 Orlando, Florida nahfa.org

February 5-8, 2015 Tupelo, Mississippi tupelofurnituremarket.com

Atlanta, Georgia americasmart.com

ANNUAL

MEMBERSHIP MEETING PLEASE JOIN US CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST PROVIDED

HIGH POINT MARKET 1ST FLOOR PLAZA SUITES, 1-527

OC TOBER | 2014 Annual Membership meeting.indd 1

www.retailerNOWmag.com 7/10/14 8:45 AM

AD Index

Contact Our Advertisers

For information on advertising in RetailerNOW contact Michelle Nygaard (916) 757-1160. 220 Elm

(336) 884-8220 220elm.com 220elm @220elm Page 36

Cargo

(828) 459-3160 cargoconsolidation.com Page 47

Connie Post

(304) 736-7283 conniepost.com Page 68

Cresent

(615) 975-4862 cresent.com Cresent.furniture @cresentfurniture Page 65

Furniture Wizard

(619) 869-7200 furniturewizard.com furniturewizard @furniturewiz Page 43

High Point Market

(336) 869-1000 highpointmarket.org http://tinyurl.com/HighPtMarket @hpmarketnews Page 7

Horich Hector Lebow

(800) 878-8989 hhladv.com Page 73

Jaipur Rugs

(404) 351-2360 jaipurrugs.com jaipurlifestyle @jaipurlifestyle Inside Back Cover

Lynch Sales

(616) 458-6662 lynchsales.com facebook.com/lynchsales @lynchsales Page 21

When contacting our advertisers, please be sure to mention that you saw their ads in RetailerNOW.

MicroD

(800) 964-3876 microdinc.com microdinc @microdinc Back Cover

Myriad

(800) 676-4243 myriadsoftware.com Myriad Page 41

NAHFA Sponsors

(800) 422-3778 retailerNOWmag.com retailernow @retailerNow Page 72

Northwest Furniture Xpress

(828) 475-6377 nwfxpress.com Page 45

Nourison

(201) 368-6900 nourison.com Nourison @nourison Page 19

R & A Marketing

(888) 225-0776 ramarketing.com RAmarketing @RAmarketing Page 77

Serta

(888) 557-3782 serta.com SertaMattress @SertaMattresses Page 34

Simple Finance

(800) 742-1789 gosimplefin.com Gosimplefinance Image from Kincade Furniture @gosimplefinance Page 69

STORIS

(888) 4-STORIS storis.com STORIS.solutions @STORIS Page 31

Surya

Okinus

(877) 275-7847 surya.com SuryaSocial Inside Cover

Omnia

(800) 422-3778 nahfa.org Pages 3 and 5

(855) 330-3958 okinus.com Page 75 (909) 393-4400 omnialeather.com Omnia Leather @omnialeather Page 65

ProfitSystems

(800) 888-5565 profitsystems.com PROFITsystems @PROFITsystems Page 9

RetailerNOW

(800) 422-3778 retailerNOWmag.com retailernow @retailerNow Page 10

www.retailerNOWmag.com

Synchrony

Tidewater

(800) 535-4087 x6553 tidewaterfinance.com Tidewater Finance Company @TidewaterMotor Page 17

Truckskin

(877) 866-7546 truckskin.com TruckSkin @TruckSkin Page 23

Twinstar

(615) 975-4862 twinstarhome.com Twin-Star Home @TwinStarHome Page 28

OC TOBER | 2014

The Now List A quick dose of fun facts, random trivia, and useful (or useless) bits of info

The Now List

Voter Apathy

Interest in voting in the November elections among voters ages 18 to 29 is lower now than it was a few months ago; only 24% of those polled said they would definitely vote, a 10% drop since last November.

Ethics Matter

38% of Millennials will switch brands if a company is found to have bad business practices. Outside of financial factors, a business found to have bad business practices is the number one reason Millennials switch brands.

Floating Furniture

What’s the Skin—ny?

For about $2,500 (or £1500) you could own this skin furniture from U.K. designer Gigi Barker. It’s made to look, feel and smell like human skin.

Designer Jessica Banks’ studio, Rock Paper Robot, has developed the Float Table—a matrix of “magnetized” wooden cubes that levitate with respect to one another. The repelling cubes are held in equilibrium by a system of tensile steel cables.

Canadian Wealth

Toronto has the 15th highest concentration of millionaires in the world, according to recent numbercrunching by a British wealth management company.

Meetings Made Fun

U.K. design studio Duffy London has created a handmade, swing table. This version seats 12 and sells for about $15,700 or (£9485).

Build Your Own Furniture Our Daily Bread

The average person spent 16 minutes watching video on mobile in the third quarter of 2013 (up from 11 minutes in 2012) and 46 minutes watching online video in the third quarter of 2013 (up from 40 minutes in 2012).

Designers Gosia and Tomek Rygalik created this bread table (from stale baguettes headed for the trash) at the Vienna Design Week Laboratory; the project’s goal was to start a discussion about food waste and also to illustrate that building materials (for all sorts of products) are all around us.

The Uninsured

Low Marks for Congress

Mobile Videos

Adults ages 18 to 34 made up 40% of the uninsured population in the preObamacare world.

Fleeing the Nest

The 20% of 18-34 year olds who have been living at home with their parents (vs. 10% a decade ago) are beginning to move out and set up homes of their own.

OC TOBER | 2014

72% of voters say Congress has been unproductive this year.

Millennials Spending More

U.S. Millennials are the generational group most likely to say they are spending more money today than they were a year ago. Gen X members are least likely to say this. www.retailerNOWmag.com

Indiana-based industrial designer Christopher Stuart’s book DIY Furniture 2 features 30 designs by makers, designers, and artisans around the world, many cobbled together from unlikely, upcycled materials. The Sine Cabinet by Dutch designer Dik Scheepers, for example, is made from corrugated PVC and oak.

Speed it Up!

Every second of website page load time improvement increases e-commerce conversions by 2%.

Sources: Harvard Institute of Politics, Androit Digital study, Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, Kaiser Family Foundation, Furnishings Digest Newsletter, WealthInsight, NBC News/Wall Street Journal/ Marist poll, Gallup.com, Amazon.com, U.S. Census Bureau, Radware via Shop.org’s Merch 2014 Playbook

Join Us for catered lunches

gourmet coffee (award winning barista)

+ beautiful designs!

I HIGH POINT I SHOWPLACE 3300 I OCTOBER 10-23 Experience all that Jaipur has to offer, and share it social media with the hashtag #designwithmeaning To become a dealer call 888.676.7330 or visit our website at JaipurRugs.com

Join Us for catered lunches

gourmet coffee (award winning barista)

+ beautiful designs!

a website revolution Our Product Lab has created an online masterpiece thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to rock the Home Furnishings Industry. Get ready to rethink your current website.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re making a scene, October 2014.

market education:

the revolution of next generation web design Monday, October 20 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am Plaza Suites | Retailer Resource Center

solutions@microdinc.com | www.microdinc.com

Vol. 3 Issue 9

The Future of Furniture October Issue

OCTOBER 2014

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PEWAUKEE, WI PERMIT #1289

THE FUTURE of FURNITURE OCTOBER 2014

COME SEE US IN H IG H P O IN T

SHOWPL ACE

4100

OCTOBER OPEN DA ILY 8A 1 8 - 2 3 M - 8PM

LIGHTING MADE EASY RUGS

PILLOWS

THROWS

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

SHOWROOMS: ATLANTA DALLAS HIGH POINT LAS VEGAS NEW DELHI NEW YORK TORONTO TUPELO | INFO@SURYA.COM 877.275.7847 LIGHTING: LMP-1024, LMP-1032, LMP-1010, LMP-1025

LIGHTING

BEDDING

SURYASOCIAL SURYA.COM

COME SEE US IN H IG H P O IN T

SHOWPL ACE

4100

OCTOBER 18-23 OPENYOU ACCESSORIES DA ILY WANT, 8A M - 8PM

ALL THE ALL IN ONE PLACE

The BEST SELECTION of home accessories, creative merchandising solutions and unsurpassed sales support—TOGETHER IN ONE SHOWROOM —to give you more ways to profit and inspire your success.

ACCESSORIES MADE EASY RUGS

PILLOWS

THROWS

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

SHOWROOMS: ATLANTA DALLAS HIGH POINT LAS VEGAS NEW DELHI NEW YORK TORONTO TUPELO | INFO@SURYA.COM 877.275.7847

LIGHTING

BEDDING

SURYASOCIAL SURYA.COM

RUGS: BSL-7211, THO-3003 // PILLOWS: AR-005, LD-050, SCO-302, SKD-005 // THROW: THL-4000 // ACCENT FURNITURE: ATPF-3003 // WALL DECOR: LJ-4227, MRR-1003 // LIGHTING: LMP-1010

RUGS JUL-9000

PILLOWS SWD-001, SWD-002., SWD-003

THROWS TOR-007, TLS-7000, TOR-008, TOR-007, TOR-006, TLS-7004, TID-003

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

MRR-1010, MRR-1013, LJ-4202, RWM-2007, RWM-2004

OBPF-001, OBPF-002, OBPF-003, OBPF-004, OBPF-005, OBPF-006

LIGHTING LMP-1047, LMP-1040, LMP-1013

DECORATIVE ACCENTS NCV-852-L, NCV-850-L, NCV-851-M, NCV-850-S, NCV-851-S

BEDDING CV-021, JFB-2003, JFB-2003-ES, JFB-2003-S, LMP-1015

JAIPUR INSIDE BACK 8.1875â&#x20AC;? x 10.875

Experience

timeless motifs translated into

modern design

& the Museum of International Folk Art present to you

This collection features inspirational adaptations of museum textiles from Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Each rug intertwines history, culture and tradition into a multi-layered story that translates timeless motifs into modern designs HIGH POINT POINT II SHOWPLACE SHOWPLACE 3300 3300 II OCTOBER OCTOBER 10-23 10-23 HIGH

Experience all that Jaipur has to offer, and share it social media with the hashtag #designwithmeaning To become become aa dealer dealer call call 888.676.7330 888.676.7330 or or visit visit our our website website at at JaipurRugs.com JaipurRugs.com To

Join Us for catered lunches

gourmet coffee (award winning barista)

+ beautiful designs!

a website revolution Our Product Lab has created an online masterpiece thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to rock the Home Furnishings Industry. Get ready to rethink your current website.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re making a scene, October 2014.

market education:

the revolution of next generation web design Monday, October 20 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am Plaza Suites | Retailer Resource Center

solutions@microdinc.com | www.microdinc.com

Vol. 3 Issue 9

The Future of Furniture October Issue

OCTOBER 2014

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PEWAUKEE, WI PERMIT #1289

THE FUTURE of FURNITURE OCTOBER 2014

COME SEE US IN H IG H P O IN T

SHOWPL ACE

4100

OCTOBER OPEN DA ILY 8A 1 8 - 2 3 M - 8PM

LIGHTING MADE EASY RUGS

PILLOWS

THROWS

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

SHOWROOMS: ATLANTA DALLAS HIGH POINT LAS VEGAS NEW DELHI NEW YORK TORONTO TUPELO | INFO@SURYA.COM 877.275.7847 LIGHTING: LMP-1024, LMP-1032, LMP-1010, LMP-1025

LIGHTING

BEDDING

SURYASOCIAL SURYA.COM

COME SEE US IN H IG H P O IN T

SHOWPL ACE

4100

OCTOBER 18-23 OPENYOU ACCESSORIES DA ILY WANT, 8A M - 8PM

ALL THE ALL IN ONE PLACE

The BEST SELECTION of home accessories, creative merchandising solutions and unsurpassed sales support—TOGETHER IN ONE SHOWROOM —to give you more ways to profit and inspire your success.

ACCESSORIES MADE EASY RUGS

PILLOWS

THROWS

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

SHOWROOMS: ATLANTA DALLAS HIGH POINT LAS VEGAS NEW DELHI NEW YORK TORONTO TUPELO | INFO@SURYA.COM 877.275.7847

LIGHTING

BEDDING

SURYASOCIAL SURYA.COM

RUGS: BSL-7211, THO-3003 // PILLOWS: AR-005, LD-050, SCO-302, SKD-005 // THROW: THL-4000 // ACCENT FURNITURE: ATPF-3003 // WALL DECOR: LJ-4227, MRR-1003 // LIGHTING: LMP-1010

RUGS JUL-9000

PILLOWS SWD-001, SWD-002., SWD-003

THROWS TOR-007, TLS-7000, TOR-008, TOR-007, TOR-006, TLS-7004, TID-003

WALL DECOR

ACCENT FURNITURE

MRR-1010, MRR-1013, LJ-4202, RWM-2007, RWM-2004

OBPF-001, OBPF-002, OBPF-003, OBPF-004, OBPF-005, OBPF-006

LIGHTING LMP-1047, LMP-1040, LMP-1013

DECORATIVE ACCENTS NCV-852-L, NCV-850-L, NCV-851-M, NCV-850-S, NCV-851-S

BEDDING CV-021, JFB-2003, JFB-2003-ES, JFB-2003-S, LMP-1015

JAIPUR INSIDE BACK 8.1875â&#x20AC;? x 10.875

Experience

timeless motifs translated into

modern design

& the Museum of International Folk Art present to you