Waltham, Mass. — Breaking a year-long silence, Furniture.com has resurfaced to pitch its Internet-based enterprise to furniture retailers looking for a way to incorporate e-commerce and an Internet presence into their operations.
Furniture.com's majority owner, Resurgence Asset Management, also is the majority stakeholder in the parent company of Levitz and Seaman's. During the past year, Furniture.com's e-commerce platform has been implemented by the 100-plus Seaman's and Levitz stores.
Executives say they're now ready to roll it out for other, partnering retailers.
In April 2002, Furniture.com relaunched to take the lessons learned in the dot-com boom and bust and marry them with local service and quick delivery through the Levitz-Seaman's network.
Now, the company is pitching its ability to enable merchants to centrally manage product information, create sales events, and view and manage important store information, including reports, policies, job openings and store hours. The system also can distribute via the Internet sale tags that can be printed, ensuring a consistent presentation throughout all stores.
"We're in discussions with several retailers," said Furniture.com's president, Carl Prindle. "It's not an issue of beating the bushes. We need to find retailers for which we are the right fit and where they are the right fit for us."
Prindle said he is not at liberty to share whether or not Furniture.com is profitable, nor can he divulge sales volumes. He was anxious, however, to trumpet reductions in delivery times and contributions to the top line at Seaman's and Levitz.
The bankrupted Furniture.- com delivered in eight to ten weeks, and sometimes did not deliver at all. The relaunched Internet company now averages deliveries in six days, measured from the moment a customer clicks "Purchase" to the furniture's arrival at the front door.
"The credit goes to our retailers, who handle the deliveries," he said. "When the order is generated, it flows through our retailers' systems. That's a far cry (from the old business model), when the order was sometimes faxed to the manufacturer, who may or may not have had the item in stock."
Reaching new customers
Top-line sales contributions have been "significant," Prindle said, again limiting his answers. He did say that on average each week, customers put $5 million in merchandise into Furniture.com shopping carts. Some purchases occur online, some are finalized in a store, and others are delayed or abandoned.
After testing and development, the company says it can promise partnering retailers new customers through the coveted Furniture.com Web address, which can direct customers to specific store locations based on inventory.
Of all the people purchasing furniture at Furniture.com in the past year, Prindle said, 70% of those surveyed said they never visited a store.
"These are perhaps sales that would not have been made otherwise," he said. "And it suggests that (e-commerce) is not about bargain-hunting but more about convenience. Our gross margins are at or above what you'd find in showrooms."
Since the site is fully transactional, the systems Furniture.com is offering could be an e-commerce avenue for traditional brick-and-mortar merchants looking for a way to extend their brand and business online, Prindle said. The Furniture.com platform can provide order status, delivery dates and a bevy of account information.
Using e-mail applications, the company also can automatically update customers on changes to their orders, send personalized promotions to customers, and administer surveys.
As it has done for Seaman's and Levitz, Furniture.com also is selling its ability to act as a central repository for display advertising, store information and driving directions, credit applications and employment applications, and store policies.
"We're looking to cover the majority of the country by the end of the year," Prindle said. Seaman's and Levitz stores combined cover about 30% of the nation's population.
Use of the Furniture.com site has doubled since the beginning of the year, now averaging one half-million page views per day, he said.
"We're seeing that the Net provides a great intermediate step between hearing about a store or sale in traditional advertising and getting in the car and visiting the store," Prindle said.
Besides covering key markets, Furniture.com's goal in 2003 is to improve the site. Executives are looking at visualization technologies to augment the room planner already offered.
Furniture.com's assets and URL were acquired for $1 million by a holding company set up by Resurgence Asset in September 2001. The original Furniture.com filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2000, listing $9 million in liabilities and $2.2 million in assets. The original version plowed through nearly $100 million in venture capital funding.
