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Reaching younger consumers

By Marc Barnes -- Furniture Today, April 9, 2006

Flexibility a key driver
Functional extras
Informed and on top of trends

High Point — To reach the coveted 20- to 35-year-old age bracket, furniture manufacturers are practicing the tenets of Marketing 101: Examine the customer's lifestyle. Design and market goods that are a good fit for that lifestyle. Make it easy and painless to buy.

Jennifer Sievertsen, vice president of brand marketing for La-Z-Boy, said that the two sides of the equation — design and marketing — must fit together seamlessly for a furniture line to be successful.

"I think that if the product design is not right to begin with and even if you make it all day long, it's not going to work," she said. "And without great marketing, the same thing is going to happen. You need a well-designed product that is going to appeal to them and marketing that is going to reach them."

Sievertsen pointed to the Todd Oldham collection of furniture, tables and accessories as an example of a program that La-Z-Boy designed with the younger demographic in mind. Most furniture pieces in the line are smaller-scaled, to fit in condominiums or apartments. Some, like ottomans, function as storage pieces. In addition, everything in the collection mixes and matches with everything else. Designs are current and colorful.

"It has all the elements to really outfit a full room," said Sievertsen. "It makes for an easier shopping experience."

Flexibility a key driver

Selling particularly well right now within the Todd Oldham line are sectionals, Sievertsen added. "They offer consumers the flexibility to use the furniture in so many ways."

As a result, La-Z-Boy is introducing its third modular Todd Oldham sectional style at the April market. In addition, it is expanding its fabric offerings to include more textured base cloths for those "dealers or consumers who may want to steer clear of the bold geometrics and unique patterns" prevalent in the collection.

According to Sievertsen, the collection is doing best with those retailers who show at least four vignettes, "since the breadth of the (line) is so wide it needs the right amount of floor space to make the best impression."

At Four Hands, Jeff Hiller, vice president of marketing, said that the company emphasizes clean-lined contemporary design, a look that says casual elegance. Hiller said that research into what younger consumers want is constant — they want what's new and different — and as a result, approximately one-third of the Four Hands product line turns over each year.

"That's all with the intent of staying current," said Hiller.

Four Hands is also mindful that the youngest consumers are just starting out in life, perhaps with their first jobs and first apartments. While they're looking for stylish furnishings, they have to be affordable.

"In every product category that we compete in, we offer an entire tier of products that are aimed at the entry-level market," he said. "It isn't the bulk of what we do, but it is important to us to be able to do it."

Examples include leather dining chairs that retail for $139, coffee tables up to $199 and leather sofas at $999.

"We have not deviated from high quality but we have tried to find style that meets our standards for quality and convenience but can be offered at what is perceived to be a very competitive price point," he said. "And once they have gotten done shopping at Target and Ikea and they are more serious, we can make the transition easy with the entry-level things that we do."

Stefanie J. Lucas, senior vice president of Rowe Furniture, said that Rowe sets out to discover the way a customer lives and, in the process, develops products that appeal to the younger demographic.

"We focus more on lifestyle versus age, but when you relate it to age, in a lot of cases, we have a product that fits that generation," she said. "Where you have people living in smaller spaces, we have a collection of Mini Mod smaller-scale furniture — it could be a 79-inch sofa versus an 86-inch sofa, where you are a little space-starved."

To reach younger buyers, Lucas said Rowe studies their needs and lifestyles.

The target audience is "living in a world that is focused on fashion," Lucas said. "We look at what happens in apparel trends (so) we are aware of them from a color and textile perspective.

"For instance, as a trend, we look at menswear and figure out how that translates into furniture. We think about what happens in the life of a furniture buyer, about how they go through different stages."

Functional extras

Rowe also builds pieces that can serve multiple functions. For example, an ottoman has storage inside, and the top flips over to become a small tray table. A modular sofa can be rearranged and added to as the consumer grows into the space or moves to a larger place.

Similarly, Stanley Collections offers flexibility and function in a number of its pieces, including storage underneath beds, modular home entertainment pieces and bookcases that can stand alone or fill up an entire wall, said Kelly Cain, vice president and product manager.

Cain said that style is important to the younger buyer. Recognizing that these shoppers want something different than their parents, Stanley developed the Moondance collection in clean contemporary styling. Introduced at the October 2004 High Point market, Moondance includes bedroom, dining room, home entertainment, home office and occasional furniture.

More recently, Stanley introduced Louis Louis, an updated Louis Philippe collection, which combines classic elements with more modern touches.

Cain said the two collections and their cleaner design trends reflect a shift in the marketplace.

"Generally, these customers want simple designs," Cain said. "They don't like carved furniture, and they don't like heavy and ornate pieces. They want things in a smaller scale, with clean finishes that show the wood.

"These are typically people in their first home or in an apartment or condominium and they don't have room for the larger-scale furniture that is so typical today."

Amy Neal, marketing manager for Zocalo, said the import source's designers try to stay on top of the newest trends happening in other industries, in hopes of capturing the imaginations of younger consumers.

"Other areas of home furnishings are changing their looks more — appliances and accessories are usually on top of the trend curve," she said.

"Our last collection was Echo, a mid-century collection that we modeled after movements we saw in other industries, the technology with iPods, cars like the New Beetle with certain lines and different colors.

"We have tried to follow those industries that have had so much luck in appealing to that crowd."

Informed and on top of trends

Neal said that another challenge with the 20–35 demographic is that they often look not only at style but also at value — and that they often do their research on the Internet.

"We give them the best quality, design and price we can," she said. "But a lot of other industries have been successful in technology. They want to have something new all the time, something current and they are buying and rebuying. If we can tap into that, they will be buying and rebuying our stuff."

For Pulaski, the key to reaching those between 20 and 35 is to tightly focus offerings to specific consumer groups.

David Corbin, vice president of marketing, said that through the new Build A Bear line of youth furniture, Pulaski is aiming to appeal to moms in that age category, in hopes of crossing over into other furniture purchases.

In the Casa Cristina line, Pulaski has gone after the Hispanic market. The company has partnered with popular Hispanic television star Cristina Saralegui to market two furniture lines, La Habana, which has more classic styling, and Urbana, geared for younger, urban consumers. Pulaski's research has shown that Hispanics have almost $7 billion to spend on furniture through 2010.

So far, the strategy has worked.

"We launched that brand in 2004 and it has done very well for us," said Corbin. "We hit our year-three projection in our first year."

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