Famous names offer no guarantee
By Carole Sloan -- Furniture Today, March 3, 2002
From the sounds of things prior to April market, it's beginning to feel as though High Point will be one huge licensed product arena.
What appears to be happening is that licensors, or the guiding spirits who create the properties, see furnitureland's image problems with consumers as offering a ripe market for their names.
Bringing a name or a licensed concept to furnitureland is not an easy thing. The Timberlakes, Hemingways and Tommy Bahamas are few and far between in terms of how they are marketed and presented to consumers — and their resultant successes.
One needs only go back in time to the ill-fated Pierre Cardin collection of the 1980s to find a sterling example of a disaster. There's a huge gap between a design concept and the ability to produce and market a product realistically.
Even today, there are prestigious designer brands that have not locked in to a furniture brand program, despite highly successful programs in other home furnishings areas, because of philosophical and practical considerations.
For many in furnitureland, there is an extraordinary level of confusion between the concepts of brand and name. And many don't realize, especially at the retail level, that they already have brands — their own — that need to be treasured, polished and enhanced constantly.
As Leslie Fishbein of Kacey Fine Furniture in Denver pointed out at the recent American Furniture Manufacturers Assn. Marketing Division conference, there are some horror stories in licensing for furniture. What she understands, and what many others do not, is the difference between a brand and a label, and between brand awareness and brand preference.
At next month's market, all the "name programs" really need to be looked at from every angle. Otherwise, consumers will have yet another reason not to buy furniture.
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