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Retailers Attract Consumers With New Approaches

Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, December 16, 2010

On a panel covering new and different approaches to retailing are Kerry Lebensburger, left, of Ashley, Rod Johansen of HOM Furniture and its Dock 86 store, and Dawn Block of Hayneedle.NAPLES, Fla. - Three companies with varying approaches to selling home furnishings told attendees at the Furniture/ Today Leadership Conference what it's like to be a nontraditional retailer.
     Dawn Block, vice president of merchandising for fast-growing online retailer Hayneedle, spoke about the variety of product that can be offered by an online company.
     She said Kansas-based Hayneedle has more than 200 website "stores" selling goods ranging from home furnishings to dartboards.
     Block said TheFoundary. com, the company's recently launched "flash" website offering limited merchandise for sales limited to one to three days, acquired 50,000 online customers in 30 days.
     Consumers must sign on to become members, then receive e-mails announcing sales in progress on the site. "We want them to get something every day," Block said.
     She said users also get merchandise credits for bringing other customers to the site.
     Part of the company's strategy is to get customers talking about product, price and other values of the website on Facebook, Twitter, the Foundary blog and other social media. "It's a great way to create stories," she said.
     HOM Furniture's Dock 86, on the other hand, is an off-price warehouse store whose name is based on a Prohibition- era term meaning "get rid of it." The store advertises that its customers can "get rid of the middle man." The Minnesota store operates weekends only, and sells overstocks and factory closeouts at 30% to 70% off with the slogan "Pay a good deal less for a good deal more."
     Rod Johansen, president and CEO of Coon Rapids, Minn.-based HOM, uses crates, shipping containers and four times the amount of conventional signage of traditional stores and other visuals to signal high turnover and capacity, "which translates into savings for the customer."
     Johansen said the store also creates a "strike" zone just inside the entrance with displays of featured items for the week.
     Much of the work at the store is done on Tuesdays and Thursdays to ready merchandise for the weekend. Dock 86 strives to change displays frequently "even if we have to move something from one side of the store to another," he said.

"Instead of us telling the consumer what their rooms should look like, you let them decide."
Kerry Lebensburger, Ashley Furniture

     A number of weekend employees are homemakers supplementing incomes, he said. Employees are selected more for their personality and sense of humor than their knowledge of furniture, which can be taught, Johansen said.
     Kerry Lebensburger, president of sales for Ashley Furniture's case goods and upholstery, discussed some of the trends and changes that influenced the opening of the company's Furnish 123 brand of small, one-price stores and galleries.
     Lebensburger said that younger buyers are turning to social networking - Twitter, Facebook - to gain information since "they don't trust Google" because of the search engine's ability to manipulate website listings.
     The Internet continues to be a growing retail powerhouse, he said, with recent Cyber Monday sales up 15% to 20% over a year ago.
     Already a big proponent of social networks, Furnish 123 is getting ready to launch its first application for smart phones, Lebensburger said.
     Ashley opened 80 of its new concept stores this year with 70 more to launch in the first quarter of 2011.
     The small-scales stores of about 5,000 square feet are geared to people starting up (such as with new careers or first households) to those starting over (after a divorce, for instance). All products in the home furnishings categories that Furniture 123 carries are at a single price point, with all sofas at $399, for example.
     A range of merchandise - from rugs to beds to mattresses - is available so consumers can buy one thing or furnish a house.
     "Instead of us telling the consumer what their rooms should look like, you let them decide," Lebensburger said.

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