Prestigious retailer flunks out with displays of dirty pillows
David Perry, Executive editor -- Furniture Today, April 6, 2009
This week we are talking about yucky pillows. You know, the kind that are stained with … yucky stuff and look completely uninviting as they sit there on high-end beds. I saw pillows like that the other day when I was visiting a flagship store operated by one of this industry's top bedding retailers. It was an experience that left me shaking my head in disbelief, for several reasons.
Let's start with the rather obvious fact that store traffic is not exactly booming these days. So sales associates, store managers and merchandising gurus have plenty of time to survey their sales floors and get the details right. I found one of the sales associates at this big name retailer calmly sitting at his desk just a few feet away from the stained pillows. They obviously didn't bother him. How many hours has he had to gaze upon those disgusting pillows?
Now let's consider the retail shopping experience. Mrs. Consumer comes to this high-end store looking for a new bed. Amidst the upscale displays that greet her throughout the store, she finds mattresses dressed with dirty pillows. She's turned off immediately. Bye-bye mattress sale.
There's another problem here, too. Pillows add comfort and bring valuable add-on sale dollars. In this climate, add-on sales are vital. The odds of this retailer actually selling pillows are low. I mean, why would any consumer be excited about buying pillows from a retailer who floors lousy-looking pillows?
Retail is detail, and this big-name retailer is doing a sorry job on the pillow details. How hard is it to put a pillowcase on every pillow on the floor? How hard is it to look at the sales floor through the consumer's eyes? How hard is it to make a commitment to flooring clean pillows?
If customers were flooding this retailer and sales associates were jumping from sale to sale, I might cut this store a little bit of slack. But that wasn't the case when I visited. The sales associates were killing time on a slow day. That is the perfect time to do some housecleaning.
To really stand out on the pillow front, retailers need to have broad displays of the product, another thing the big-name retailer didn't do. Pillows can be a fun purchase, even an impulse purchase. But retailers need to carry a variety of pillows and they need to display them attractively.
Savvy retailers give consumers choices of memory foam, latex foam, down and fiber pillows. They talk about how some types of pillows are better for side sleepers and other types are better for back sleepers. They start the mattress shopping experience with a discussion of pillows. They help consumers find the pillows that are right for them. And they encourage them to carry those pillows around the store with them. They give consumers pillows with their own pillowcase or their own protective cloth to shield them from someone else's germs and grime.
Sadly, this prestigious retailer flunked out on the pillow front.
Contact David Perry at dperry@reedbusiness.com
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