Upholstery sources leverage Internet
By Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, January 6, 2008
High Point — When Tom Erdman wanted to show how easy it is to assemble one of his company's sofas, he did it on the Internet.
The site belongs to Handy Furniture, a ready-to-assemble upholstery company, where Erdman is responsible for sales and product development.
A video shows him moving methodically through his work, attaching arms and rails and cushions as he puts together a sofa-sleeper. As he works, a timer ticks at the bottom of the screen, showing the process is completed in less than six minutes.
Such demonstrations are "critical" to selling RTA, said Erdman. "The thing that makes the product come back (to the factory) is the consumer not being able to assemble it."
Handy sells its products mostly through the Net and catalogs rather than conventional retail floors. "We're almost non-existent in brick-and-mortar," Erdman said.
He added that there's a misconception "out there that knocked-down furniture is cheaper to make. But it's not — it's more expensive. Our objective is to make it the best we can so that our Internet customer will get a great product and come back.
"We're very cognizant of reviews. That's very important to us; it's our lifeblood. So we make sure everything goes together easy and that we deliver on our promise."
The Internet may be the most important tool in selling RTA upholstery. The nature of the medium means that sources can provide a wealth of information about their products, including assembly.
Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Home Reserve's site includes both written and audio testimonials from customers, along with pictures of two girls, ages 4 and 6, assembling a sectional piece while their father is away in Afghanistan. There also is a place for comments — both positive and negative — where consumers announce they're "somewhat annoyed" that they didn't get the feet they ordered or that the fabric they selected didn't have enough "life" in it.
An impressive Web site is especially important to Home Reserve, which sells directly to consumers via the Internet. Recently, it also has begun looking into the possibility of selling through small retailers and RTA specialists.
The appeal of RTA furniture is that it is generally cheaper, in the $299 price points and up, mostly UPS-shippable in one to three boxes (a few more for sectionals), and appealing to under-40 consumers, who tend to like casual contemporary and transitional looks.
The target demographic for RTA furniture clearly spends a lot of time in cyberspace. And, according to Paul Reitzen, a 25-year veteran of the RTA furniture segment and president of upholstery source Avenue Six, putting the product together is not a big deal for this type of customer.
"People understand that you have to put it together but that you get a better price," said Reitzen. "Ikea has done a pretty good job at showing them that. In Europe, everything comes RTA."
Although they're still too young to be spending much on furniture, an even more wired group — Generation Y — is waiting in the wings. This group is expected to account for the biggest bulge in consumer power since the Baby Boomers, and the Internet is expected to play a major role in their decision making.
A recent study by the Fortino Group, a marketing and communications consultant, predicts that today's 10-to-17-year-olds will "spend one-third of their lives (23 years) on the Internet."
While many RTA specialists rely on computer commerce, some sources go both ways — selling products both in traditional showrooms and on the Web where they hope to reach the non-traditional customer.
University Loft, which has a wide base of traditional accounts, uses the wildly popular You Tube site to demonstrate how easy it is to take apart one of its RTA chairs, apply a new Velcro-attached cover, and reassemble it.
Klaussner also is doing well on retail floors with Matrix, its sofa-sleeper collection, which has detachable arms in three different sizes. The company launched the collection in April 2006, offering three fully upholstered styles selling for $599 to $699 retail. It added a tropical look with a wood arm at the October High Point Market.
Megan Farlow, a merchandising specialist who oversees Matrix, said that most retailers show the product much like Klaussner does in its North Carolina showroom: stacked vertically to show different styles and sizes. Once they see the display and watch a video she made for retailers showing how easy the product is to assemble, many customers opt to take a flat pack of furniture home and assemble it themselves.
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