How to stick together and weather this crisis
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, March 23, 2003
This column may sound like Rodney King's famous "Can't we all get along?" speech, but I feel it's time to recognize that this economy and this war (a virtual certainty as we go to press) are causing enough pain for everyone. We do not need to add more in how we treat each other.
Last October, manufacturers introduced some of our industry's most attractive branded collections, featuring some of today's leading personalities as they relate to style and home. Most were exceptionally well executed and were well received. At premarket, we learned that some department stores and larger retailers were canceling or delaying their rollout of this merchandise. Noting how soft business is currently, they did not believe they could get consumers excited about new furniture lines.
Further, some did not want to spend the money necessary to promote and show the lines as they deserved. Unfortunately, this came at the same time the merchandise was about ready to be shipped. Nuts.
In showroomS and corridors at premarket, retailers and manufacturers were talking about order delays, cancellations and even requests to freight companies to slow delivery because of full warehouses and no place to put merchandise. We heard more about these issues than about the upcoming markets' new product.
Given all this, we have our usual mid-crisis advice:
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Consumers watch and study for months before they make most durables purchases. If you stop promoting, you fall off their radar.
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Trends today are moving faster than ever, and if you don't keep your floor and your inventories current, you deserve what you get.
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Manufacturers need to remember that whatever is on the retail floor when the current crisis passes and consumers return to stores will get credit for the upturn in business. You cannot run your plants if your merchandise isn't on the right retail floors when business recovers.
This is the time to be creative and flexible. Manufacturers, please give MSRP holidays so retailers can promote. Find or create innovative pieces that can be differentiated from today's too redundant merchandise mixes.
I recently happened across one of the most grotesque, distasteful pieces of furniture I have ever seen. When I showed it to a friend, expecting a laugh, she was awed by its beauty and wanted to find that item as soon as possible. Don't rely just on your own taste. In my white bread, old-Virginia, dark-wood and skirted-sofa upbringing, I have found many of our industry's best sellers on the fringe of good taste. Today, I find that any line that sells well is beautiful.
We are entering an age when baby boomer nostalgia and contemporary will achieve new recognition. Don't let your product be stereotyped. Keep changing.
USA Today recently ran an article on how Detroit is readying a wave of new vehicles for promotions when the war ends. What a great idea.
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