Wolf team working hard to earn customer's business
David Perry, Bedding editor -- Furniture Today, August 17, 2009
BELLWOOD, Pa. — Hard work and increased promotion are paying off in the mattress departments at Wolf Furniture, a Top 100 furniture retailer based here.
At a time when mattress shipments are down by double-digits across the industry, Wolf is riding an 18% sales gain in the category this year.
“We are working hard,” said Doug Wolf, president of the family-owned business, which has 10 stores and a clearance center in Pennsylvania and Maryland. “We are promoting aggressively. We are trying to earn the customer's business. I wouldn't want to be competing against us right now.”
That means that Wolf is doing what almost everyone says is necessary in tough times, but relatively few actually do: Getting more ambitious in its advertising.
“We have taken an increasingly aggressive advertising posture, rather than becoming more conservative and trimming expenses,” Wolf said.
A number of companies, seeking short-term improvements, are cutting costs these days, but he refuses to go that route. “We don't look at this as a short-term business,” Wolf said.
That's not surprising for a company founded in 1902 that is currently run by the fourth-generation of the founding family.
Long-term relationships key Wolf's bedding business. Kingsdown has been a vendor for almost two decades, Sealy for even longer. A former Restonic operator was a vendor years ago, while Alliance Sleep Products, Restonic's Buffalo, N.Y.-based licensee, has been on the floor for the past three years.
Kingsdown's diagnostic system has been a success for Wolf. That vendor's best-selling price point is about $2,000 — no mean feat for the diverse customer base that shops at Wolf, Doug Wolf said.
“With Kingsdown,” he added, “we have developed outstanding penetration in the premium and ultra-premium categories.”
Restonic has been coming on strong. “We gave Restonic a few slots initially and they have earned an increasing share of our business through good products and good service,” said Ed Basore, the veteran Wolf employee who is now the bedding buyer.
Wolf said his company has no desire to add bedding vendors simply to reap higher co-op advertising allowances. “We are not looking to expand our bedding line,” he said. “We try to stay focused. More co-op dollars doesn't mean better service for our customers.”
He said that stable bedding lineup is important. “They don't play games with us,” he said of the company's bedding vendors, “and we don't play games with them.”
That commitment to vendor relationships brought all three bedding vendors to Wolf's recent vendor expo here. The bedding vendors sent top executives to nurture their relationships with Wolf. Tom Comer and Laurie Tokarz, president and vice president of sales, respectively, for Alliance Sleep Products, were on hand, as was Kingsdown sales exec Chris Henning and Sealy's Jim O'Toole, director of sales in the Mid Atlantic division, among other officials with the bedding vendors.
Asked what makes the retailer's bedding business successful, Doug Wolf responded: “I would say the relationships we have with and the continuity of our suppliers.”
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