We welcome back Retail Ideas, so send us yours
By Vicky Jarrett, Special projects, editor -- Furniture Today, February 24, 2002
It's an idea whose time has come — again.
Furniture/Today published Retail Ideas as a monthly supplement from 1996 through 1998 as a "guide to profitable retailing." With pages and pages about the great ideas furniture retailers all over the country were incorporating into their businesses, and with covers like the one at left, reading the publication made it easy to get enthusiastic about furniture retailing.
And the enthusiasm hasn't diminished. In fact, if ever there was a time for unbridled enthusiasm and renewed vigor in furniture retailing, this is it!
Thankfully, retailers with that kind of enthusiasm for the furniture business keep coming up with ways to connect with their customers, to promote themselves aggressively and well, and to make doing business less of a job and more of a way of life.
In the retailer profiles and special retail reports that have regularly graced the pages of Furniture/Today, I've come to appreciate the creativity and attention to detail that are characteristic of really good retail operations.
While the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun is true for furniture retailers too, it's also true that time and again successful retailers find a way to take existing ideas and build on them, adding their own special touch and making the ideas something fresh and new.
I can't help thinking of Gates Furniture in Grants Pass, Ore., where owner Giff Gates took an idea to advertise returns, closeouts and odd pieces and turned it into an opportunity for storytelling in a style that would make Garrison Keillor proud. (Read about it in Furniture/Today, Dec. 10, 2001, page 16.)
Or what about Rod Kush Furniture in Omaha, Neb.? A fan of Jim McIngvale and Gallery Furniture in Houston, Kush took the idea of making furniture shopping (and buying!) fun and made it his own, carving a niche in a marketplace dominated by Nebraska Furniture Mart. (Furniture/Today, Aug. 6, 2001, pages 16-17.)
I have to admit that the enthusiasm created by reading and working with these stories and many others over the years has given me a secret desire to get into furniture retailing myself! How could you help but be gung-ho about a business that brings people together primarily for the purpose of bringing beauty and comfort into the home?
So, it is with great pleasure that this issue of Furniture/Today has been put together. It marks a new day and a new look for Retail Ideas — the first of several Retail Ideas sections planned during the course of 2002.
And it is with equal pleasure that I ask you, once again, to send us your great retail ideas.
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