Office specialist builds base on Web
By Gerri Hunt -- Furniture Today, December 16, 2007
Glenview, Ill. — In 1995, Marc Levin branched out from his chain of shoe stores and opened the first chair massage salon in the United States. Set up like a beauty salon with booths containing massage chairs instead of barber chairs, customers would pay $1 per minute to have their muscles rubbed.
"A lot of customers would come in with bad neck, shoulder and back aches and say they'd been on the Internet all night," said Levin, pointing out that it was the dawn of widespread online surfing. "They were sitting in folding chairs, and nobody had home offices."
Not one to pass up an opportunity, Levin decided to start selling ergonomic chairs at his shop, The Ultimate Backrub. And in doing so, he broke the barrier between office furniture manufacturers and consumers and brought high-end furnishings to the "home office" generation.
After contacting Herman Miller, the salon became one of the first retailers to offer the popular Aeron chair, which retailed at the time for $1,000.
Levin started selling the chairs online in 1997, through GoTo.com, which later became Yahoo.
"This was pre-Google, and we paid for search terms," said Levin. "We also sold chairs on eBay."
As Levin continued working at The Ultimate Backrub, a top executive with Amoco Oil Co. came into the store one day and purchased one of the chairs. He wanted it delivered to his house in the high-end Lake Forest area of Chicago.
"It was a huge house and had a home office built into the first floor," said Levin. The room consisted of a Gateway computer sitting on a makeshift desk made from a door and two file cabinets.
"What's up with the furniture?" Levin couldn't help but ask.
The man said that his wife refused to let him bring office furniture into the house.
After an identical experience with another local executive, Levin's entrepreneurial drive kicked in again.
In 1998, he created a 2,000-square-foot retail store, Home Office Solutions, in Glenview, Ill. Targeting higher-end consumers and small businesses, it was the first Herman Miller Showroom in the United States. He specialized in office chairs, desks and other home office furniture. A year later, he paid the store's neighbor to move so he could expand into another 1,000 square feet.
Meanwhile, his Internet business picked up.
"We had Aeron on the Internet for two years and had a handful of orders," said Levin. In January 1999, the online store became part of Yahoo shopping, and he began to do banner advertising on other search engines, like the now-defunct Alta Vista. As Christmas 1999 approached, orders started coming in.
However, Levin knew Herman Miller was unable to quickly ship the chairs to a customer's residence. It took 30 to 60 days to ship the bulky boxes, which transportation companies like UPS wouldn't take.
"We went out on the sidewalk behind the store and figured out how to break down an Aeron, and took the base off the chair," he said. "We cut the box down and UPS accepted it, but it was crushed during shipping."
So Levin made better inserts and used a thicker box. He hired a package consultant, and by spring of 2000, he obtained a patent for the packaging.
Unlike other wary retailers, Levin saw an opportunity in the popularity of the Aeron chair. He ordered a truckload.
"We changed the copy on our Web site to say it ships in one day, and we sold out before our first truck arrived," he said. "We sold 100 chairs in the first few days."
As the Internet business exploded in the first 10 months, Levin had to move operations out of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse and into a new facility four times its size. Two years later, the company moved again, tripling its space.
Levin opened a second Home Office Solutions store in August 2000, about 20 miles northwest of the original store, in Vernon Hills, Ill.
But despite the company's rapid growth, Levin put a halt to plans for more brick-and-mortar stores. When the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened, he closed the Vernon Hills store and concentrated mostly on e-tailing.
"People were afraid to go to the mall, so the Internet was the place to be," he said. "9/11 was a huge boon to the Internet, and made it something that was cemented to our future."
He signed up for every e-newsletter he could find online, both in and outside the furniture industry. He studied them, and realized they were mostly just sales pitches. He decided his e-newsletter would contain three articles each month that would improve his customers' lives, and would just touch on his products. Tracking the e-newsletter, he found that 50% of the recipients opened them, and repeat sales increased 15% to 20%.
He began selling other high-end brands, such as Steelcase, Knoll, Bodybilt, Interactive Health and Panasonic.
"It was like having Mercedes and BMW in the same showroom," said Levin. "We broke through barriers, started carrying all of the high-end ergonomic products those companies offered."
Home Office Solutions was carrying desks, recliners, massagers, tables, lighting, rugs, storage pieces and credenzas. The company expanded to sell a wide range of price points.
"Basically, if it's comfy and really cool, we sell it," said Levin.
By 2003, Home Office Solutions landed on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing private businesses.
Levin now has three distinct Web stores, which account for 90% of his business:
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www.homeofficesolutions.-com, which is business to consumer
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www.officedesigns.com, which is business to business
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www.ultimatebackstore.com, which markets high-end massage chairs
In late 2005, he also opened Back in Comfort in Highland Park, Tempur-Pedic's largest showroom in the state.
Levin credits three factors for his business' success — $30 million in sales in 2007 with double-digit growth each year:
First, his company made a commitment to getting large pieces of furniture into homes and offices in a matter of days.
"We inventory a lot of different colors so we can ship same day," said Levin. "We want our product to arrive to the customer as fast as Amazon can ship a CD — within two or three days."
Second, the company is never undersold on price, a policy it began 10 years ago on the Internet.
And third, when the Home Office Solutions business model was developed, customer service was a priority. "(The goal for) our customer service was to exceed Nordstrom, which is the top level of customer service in retail," said Levin.
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