Let's tell consumers: Now's the time to buy!
By Gary Evans, Business editor -- Furniture Today, October 7, 2001
You can bet your bottom dollar the October market will provide some very strong "values" for dealers. Sharply priced product will be welcomed by stores everywhere, who've noted that consumers are shopping harder and longer and spending less and less on furniture.
You don't have to be the sharpest tool in the toolbox to know why: the sluggish economy, layoffs by the tens of thousands, and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which put everything in a tailspin of uncertainty.
"There is no doubt that people are trending down," said Tommy Miskelly, partner and merchandise manager of retailer Miskelly Furniture in Jackson, Miss. That remark was made in August for a Furniture/Today special issue prepared for the Tupelo market, but it — and other similar comments in that issue — bears repeating.
All the retailers interviewed were noticing changes in the spending patterns of their furniture customers. Miskelly, for example, said he was seeing a certain timidity. "Maybe instead of buying the $4,000 bedroom suite, they're buying the $1,999 bedroom suite and replacing it more often. People are more worried about being laid off, so their tendency is to say, 'Well, maybe we'd better just get this for now'."
A number of dealers said they were remerchandising their floors, picking up lower-priced products to accommodate tight-fisted consumers. Much of the action was in medium-priced goods, where merchants have been lowering prices a notch or two at the bottom rungs.
When cash-strapped customers did buy, they bought less, according to several retailers. Instead of a whole group, they bought a piece at a time.
Retailers also said they had noticed a big difference in the way older and younger people make purchases — not much of a surprise. Older people tended to buy better, more expensive furniture that would last longer and thus be a better buy. (Or maybe they just had more money.) People in their 20s and 30s tended to spend less, and didn't care much about quality as long as it looked good. Their attitude seemed to be: Why put a ton of money in something you're eventually going to get rid of anyway?
All of this surely still holds true. But here's the key thing that many consumers, no matter what their age, don't seem to understand: Now is a great time to buy furniture. The whole supply chain, from suppliers to manufacturers to retailers, has been squeezed to the point that there's not a lot of profit for anybody. Which, of course, is a win for the consumer.
And there's been no overall lowering of quality to achieve price. In fact, the opposite may be true, thanks to imports. Love 'em or not, imports are bringing a lot of quality into the marketplace at sometimes astonishingly low prices.
Those who make and sell furniture know it's a good time to buy furniture. But does the consumer know that ... and shouldn't somebody be telling them?
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