Dealer Ignition targeting home furnishings

Offers Web application to drive business to retailers

Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, July 24, 2009

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A South Carolina technology company is targeting the home furnishings industry with the first Web-based application that helps manufacturers use co-op money to drive sales to the local Web sites of their dealers.

According to Steven Wagner, CEO and founder, Dealer Ignition allows manufacturers to control a portion of the dealer's on-line advertising space, sponsor advertising on Google, highlight special promotions and provide branded e-mail for dealers to send to customer lists.

Carpet and rug vendor Karastan is an example of a home furnishings company using Dealer Ignition for positive returns.

Karastan retailers "have been able to generate significant retail sales from us off the program to the tune of 15:1 ROI," Wagner said. "It's been very significant to them."

For example, an Internet user interested in a Karastan product would be directed to a local store running a Karastan promotion. Since the space would be managed by Karastan, "the dealer doesn't have to do anything on his end," according to Wagner. Future promotions also would be updated automatically.

"They like it because they're not having customers leave their Web site to go to the manufacturer's site or possibly locate another dealer or find one that offers free shipping (when they don't)."

The program also assures that the manufacturers' co-op dollars are well spent. Previously, Karastan "found that when they had their big sale of the year, very often most of the dealers didn't even promote it on their Web site," Wagner said.

The program allows a manufacturer to see which dealers are participating in their programs, how they are promoting the company, and the kind of returns that they're generating. It allows both vendors and dealers to monitor how their promotion is doing against similar promotions around the country, and against the average.

Dealer Ignition is being used in other industries by about 1,600 dealers.