Memory key for White
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, September 29, 2003
Stamps, Ark. — To be good at a job like Sue White's, you need a good memory — a really good memory.
"I can remember from one mill to the next mill things that will go together," said White, vice president of merchandising for upholstery producer Alan White. "The color memory, the texture memory, the pattern memory, is very important for someone who does what I do," she said.
Other things count, too. "I always had a strong interest in fashion, and in the home," said White.
White graduated from N.C. State University with a degree in economics, and married into a furniture family.
"Just by osmosis, I became interested in the furniture business," she said.
A dozen years ago, the White family decided to involve her in the company "because who buys most of the furniture — women," she said. "And I was the cheapest woman around — and the most available."
White started in scheduling and customer service and then moved into merchandising.
"I started from scratch," she said, drawing on a strong interest in design and an even stronger intuition for products that would appeal to the company's broad base of dealers that range from Middle America to hip specialty stores.
"You win some and you lose some," said White of her experience in product development and merchandising. "Some of the things that we think are the very best that we've ever done just fall flat. And we're surprised by others.
"One of the hardest things I had to learn in this business is that pretty does not always sell, and that I had to put my own personal taste aside." But, she added, "You get the right cover on the right frame and it's just new enough that people haven't seen it and get excited about it. That's when you know you have a winner."
The cover is key as far as White is concerned.
"To me, the fabric is more important than the frame," she said. "When a woman walks into a furniture store to buy a piece of furniture, she's not drawn to the frame style. I think the first thing that catches her eye is the color and the texture."
The new processes "that we have for furniture have absolutely reinvented the ball game," she added. "But if the feel isn't right, you can forget it. The consumer is very knowledgeable about this sort of thing.
"The consumer is not like she was before: 'Oh, this is beautiful but we're not going to sit on this sofa.' Now it's, 'This is something we're going to sit on'."
There are at least two things that get White up and going in the morning. "I get very excited about fabrics. I love fabrics. I love to go to a good fabric show."
And, "I also love presenting the furniture to the customer who understands what you're doing ... and is on the same page as me."
