Robb & Stucky using new Panasonic design tool
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, August 28, 2006
Fort Myers, Fla. — High-end furniture retailer Robb & Stucky is using new technology from Panasonic to show consumers how its furniture will fit in with everything else in their home.
The Florida-based retailer has begun using Panasonic Digital Document Co.'s C3 networked printer/copier/fax/scanner to create prints that Panasonic says accurately and vividly compare the colors of clients' fabrics, floors and walls to Robb & Stucky furniture.
Sales consultants use digital cameras to take pictures of products in the retailer's showrooms and merge them with elements of the clients' existing décor.
Roxy Barber, Robb & Stucky's Studio Team Leader, said the sales consultants, "many of whom call themselves low-tech," are using the C3s for everything from generating custom color-scheme comparison sheets to building project blocks and creating presentations depicting work in progress.
"Consultants can instantly take a picture of a piece of furniture ... and do a printout of the pieces next to a swatch of the client's window treatment," Barber said. "They can then scan a sample of wood, tile, or metal to create a montage.
"The result is that the customer's ability to make a decision has been dramatically fast-tracked and our sales cycle cut in half," Barber said.
Other daily tasks for the C3s include producing booklets displaying everything a client has selected — such as furniture, fabrics, wallpaper and even custom-painted murals — in one accurately rendered, coherently organized package, and scanning catalog pages, fabric samples and other media to prepare take-home packages for consumers.
