Troutman reaches out with online rocker video
Jay McIntosh, News editor -- Furniture Today, February 2, 2009
One of the best business ideas I've come across lately is a small one with a potentially big audience.
Troutman Chair, a manufacturer with a plant just north of Charlotte, N.C., is a specialist in wooden rocking chairs and other seating. Its president and owner, Champ Land, is proud of the company's time-honored, glue-free construction techniques and wanted to tell the world about it.
So he turned to where any 21st-century business professional would go, the Internet. Troutman Chair's new feature, added just a few weeks ago to troutmanchairs.com, is a flash video with photos and a voiceover. Champ shelled out about $3,500 to have it professionally produced — not a fortune, but still not chump change for a small company in these days of pinching pennies. He chose the flash format because it loads faster than a full video, helping anyone with less than a broadband Internet connection.
The result is a simple, clear pitch in a little over four minutes about the construction techniques, materials and craftsmanship that Troutman uses in building its signature product, the wood rocking chair. It's anything but a hard sell — more like a documentary you'd see on the Discovery Channel.
So the question is, will the Web presentation sell chairs? Answering that question would not be easy. Consumers, and the retailers who are Troutman's primary customers, have all sorts of reasons for choosing one product over another and may not be able to even describe them all. But if the flash video helps people form an impression of the product, it can't hurt.
And as Champ Land says, in this economic environment, it feels good just to be able to do something that might help move business forward.
The new video isn't the first interesting Web adventure for Troutman. A little over a year ago, it launched a separate site, which it promotes from its own site, called rockingchairtherapy.org. Land has compiled information from dozens of sources that offer evidence that using a rocking chair can help improve the health and well-being not only of people with sore backs, but those with conditions and symptoms ranging from attention deficit disorder to varicose veins.
Again, this might not sell too many chairs directly, but it should leave a favorable impression of the product.
On another Web note, you might have noticed that we are posting more videos on furnituretoday.com, covering everything from market events to movie premieres. True, the production quality isn't quite up to Geraldo Rivera standards, but we're getting better the more we use it. Please check it out if you have a few minutes.
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Troutman debuts Web video
Jan 4, 2009
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