Martin: Furniture stores need to be online
By Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, February 18, 2007
Las Vegas — It's essential that every retailer, even the smallest, have a Web site. And it's not that hard to get one.
That's the message of Roy Martin, a former retailer and current project manager for Escalate Retail, formerly GERS, one of the largest technology companies serving the furniture industry.
At a seminar during the winter furniture market here, Martin said, "Jupiter Research estimates that by the end of 2008, three-quarters of all furniture purchases will be made online. I think that's a little high, but I think it will approach 50% by that time."
Company Web sites are becoming more and more important, and furniture, once believed to be a sit-and-touch store purchase, has moved online in a big way, he said.
"Furniture is replacing CDs on eBay as one of the strongest categories," Martin said.
Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel have both brick-and-mortar stores and cyber vending, "and they're doing a pretty good job of getting the word out that, yes, it's possible that you can buy furniture online," he said.
"Most affluent folks actually prefer to buy online," he added. "A lot of time they don't want to deal with people. They want all of the information they need at their fingertips."
Martin cautioned there are real challenges for Web selling. You have to make it compelling enough that a prospective shopper will go online, look at your site and make a purchase.
"Most people, when they go online, about nine out of 10 times either they can't get what they're looking for or they can't figure out how to navigate the site or the shopping cart blows up — whatever the case may be," he said.
He said about one-third will shop a competitor, and the average consumer takes only 30 seconds to determine if a Web site is worthy of investigation.
Speaking generally and not promoting any vendor or method, Martin said a Web presence could be created for less than $10,000 and run up to $60,000, depending on the bells and whistles.
One way to get started, he said, is to find someone locally to design a site and hook up a shopping cart. Some friends recently went to a college and found students taking Web site courses, which required they build and publish a site. "They did it for two grand," Martin said.
Problems not so easy to solve, at least cheaply, include integrating the online order data with whatever operating system the store uses. For one thing, customer data may not translate easily, he said. "The customer wants you to know about them and recognize them when they come back online," Martin said. "Amazon is the best in the world at this kind of thing."
Also, salespeople might not like it that consumers are buying online and "taking bread out of my mouth."
Such problems are surmountable and may not be as expensive to solve as one might think, Martin said. "You don't have to be one of the big guys — use the big guys," he said. "They'll take a percentage (of sales) but it's worth it."
Salespeople could be made responsible for Internet customers, which would take away the feeling of being left out of the loop.
Other possibilities for utilizing the Internet:
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Create blogs about furniture, perhaps explaining its value. "Every search engine in the world finds and shows blogs," he said. "It's one of the best free advertisements I can think of."
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Create partnerships with other vendors. If you sell entertainment furniture, team with an electronics vendor and offer room planning programs showing how a TV fits into an entertainment cabinet and how it will go into a room.
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Use vendors that ship direct. Martin said many won't ship individual items, but retailers might consider a trucking consolidator. Also, the minute you get an Internet order, turn it into a purchase order and get it to the vendor to prevent any delays.
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