Nobody wants self-imposed defeat
By Carole Sloan -- Furniture Today, October 7, 2001
As things settle down after last month's terrorist attacks, retailers, especially those in furnitureland, continue to hold to their plans to attend the marathon home furnishings markets that are a hallmark of October.
For many, the major challenge may well be simply getting to whichever of the markets are on their agendas for the month.
For many senior executives in the home furnishings retailing world, travel is enough of a challenge in normal times. But airline travel today is anything but normal, as this writer discovered just last week.
My conversations with a handful of the players, both major retailers and smaller specialty stores, indicate that retailers are resolved to make the efforts required to attend the markets they need to cover.
The overwhelming feeling is that to skip a market effectively wipes out the next business season in that product category — a self-imposed competitive defeat.
Yes, they all agree, markets will have a different tone. And the approach to business will be somewhat different. But beneath it all will be the need to find the good new stuff and the outstanding values. In furnitureland for sure, value is expected to be front and center.
As an old hand in furniture and other home lines remarked, "We have to think back to the Gulf War. Keep inventories in line and look for value, value, value."
But as another old hand said, the new business environment probably will result in the demise of a good many companies on both the retail and manufacturing sides. These are the companies which managed to stay afloat during the good times, but which began to weaken as the economy staggered this year.
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