Discovery, CHF reach out to shoppers with fresh ideas
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, June 24, 2007
High Point — Looking to attract more attention to your furniture store? Try taking a page from HGTV or the Food Network.
Jeff Winter, the manager and owner of Discovery Furniture in Topeka, Kan., found that he could drive new traffic to his store by offering room makeovers.
Discovery Furniture came up with an idea called Rooms Renew (www.roomsrenew.com). Customers come into the store and meet with sales associates, who help them determine the look they want for a particular room. Accessories and accent chairs and tables — perhaps even a sofa or recliner — are picked out from store stock.
After that, for an additional fee of $198, two stylists and a crew go to the customer's home and in three hours time, strip out all the furniture and replace it, mixing old items with the new. Based on the success, the store is looking into partnering with painting contractors to look at changing the wall colors along with the furniture.
So far, the room makeovers have resulted in sales ranging from $200 to $25,000. The program works so well that Rooms Renew sometimes has a waiting list — and the room makeovers are quick because the customer isn't there to critique every move.
The best part? Customers who have done one room with Rooms Renew often call back to do the next room and the next. One customer even asked Discovery Furniture to do a walk-in closet.
"The driving force is to provide a legendary experience for the customer," said Winter. "They scream, they cry, they jump up and down — you would think they were on TV."
At CHF Home Furnishings in Boise, Idaho, the store itself often appears on television, according to Lyndon Johns, vice president. After growing from a $6 million to a $20 million store in eight years, sales slowed, so the store began carrying high-end appliances, including brands such as Sub-Zero and Wolf.
Instead of setting out a stove, refrigerator and a wall oven simply as displays, CHF hooked everything up to operate and built a small TV studio around them. Then, it started inviting well-known local chefs to come in and videotape a culinary tip of the day in the studio. The segments, which air as paid advertising during local airings of the Dr. Phil show, have proven to be so popular that customers will e-mail the store to see if they missed anything.
"People come in to see the studio and to see the appliances and they see the furniture as well," said Johns.
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