Financing shouldn't be main selling point
Carole Sloan, Senior Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, March 13, 2006
Amid all the talk about the challenges facing the furniture business from global sourcing, a few things are not being discussed, including things that can be controlled and developed by domestic suppliers and retailers.
One critical need is to create a reason to buy in the minds of consumers. Why buy a piece of furniture versus a plasma TV or a new gizmo to communicate with anyone, anytime, anywhere? As we've said time and again, our industry often does little to sell the glamour, comfort and self-satisfaction a good piece of furniture can bring to one's home.
Take a commercial that was aired over and over on radio stations in the Northeast for Presidents Day weekend. Yes, its a blockbuster promotional time for furniture, but consider the spot's beginning: "Are you looking for the best financing on furniture...."
Such a message contributes little or nothing to the sex appeal and psychological allure of the stuff it's trying to sell, and typically doesn't even mention benefits. Overall, the message is about a financial transaction, not an aesthetic one. This particular spot, by the way, was from Raymour & Flanigan, a more than half-billion-dollar retailer.
On another front, consider a brief conversation I had with Ethan Allen CEO Farooq Kathwari at last month's National Retail Federation conference. I asked what he saw as likely significant issues in the furniture marketplace for the year and beyond. He responded that "service is the new luxury" for consumers, which means more than just getting stuff delivered on time and undamaged.
In other words, they (we) want to be taken care of, understood and catered to on all levels. It's totally unlike being addressed as though you needed to get out of your debt-ridden life.
We need to move away from financing as the key to selling furniture.
