Vermont wood sources plan joint marketing campaign
By Powell Slaughter -- Furniture Today, April 13, 2003
Bradford, Vt. — Vermont case goods manufacturers Copeland Furniture, Vermont Precision and Vermont Tubbs will participate in a branding initiative to promote Vermont wood products to consumers.
What inspired the marketing initiative was a survey of tourists by the Vermont Department of Economic Development, indicating positive perceptions toward Vermont, said Mary Jeanne Packer, executive director of the Vermont Wood Manufacturers Assn.
"The demographics of a Vermont tourist are similar to the demographics of (buyers of) high-quality Vermont wood products and furniture," Packer said. "We did a survey of 4,000 people who'd either bought a Vermont product or logged on to the Vermont tourism Web site."
The study found a national awareness of Vermont as a place for good things, such as natural beauty, maple syrup, and dairy products.
Copeland will test the branding initiative at retail this summer with generic hangtags promoting natural hardwoods from Vermont and other point-of-purchase materials now under development, said Tim Copeland, chief executive officer.
The program is a good fit for Copeland's promotional direction.
"We've worked increasingly over the last year toward creating a brand image that ties us to a place, that ties us to Vermont," Copeland said. "Just making an assertion to consumers isn't going to do a whole lot, but Vermont does have a certain cachet that folks associate with good things."
Wood furniture from Vermont shares some attributes, making a generic campaign feasible for all manufacturers there.
"There's an elegant understatement on the design, much closer to the materials, the wood, and less emphasis on multi-step finishes," Copeland said. "We're probably guilty of putting quality in places like the backs of pieces where it doesn't show. There's a definite tendency to make product the way it ought to be made."
Manufacturers there share a similar heritage, he added. Most were started in the past 25 or 30 years, often by younger people.
"They were impacted more by the place and the raw materials than a history in the furniture industry," Copeland said, noting that even the 160-year-old Vermont Tubbs originally made bentwood snowshoes and didn't get into furniture until about the same time as the other manufacturers.
He believes the marketing program will have an impact at retail.
"Consumers in the Northeast especially have an association in their minds for Vermont: beauty, quality, peacefulness and stewardship," Copeland said. "We want to associate those attributes with the furniture."
Anne Marie Linnehan, director of sales and marketing at Copeland, said that while the company is already using some of the graphics in its marketing pieces, the point-of-purchase materials are a work in progress.
"We want to push Vermont wood and furniture products into consumers' field of awareness, and we want to push that out to our retailers," she said.
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