It’s kind of like the hermit who sits sentry, protecting his front door, shotgun on his lap, guarding against an intrusion by robbers intent on stealing his belongings, while the interlopers come in the back door and take all of his possessions. 

Forgive the allegory, but sometimes it’s how it feels. The reality is, as blasphemous as it sounds, that no one absolutely needs furniture. Furniture is clearly not a necessity of life. People need air, food, water, clothing, a place to sleep but not furniture. As furniture marketers at both the supplier and retail levels should recognize, furniture buying is way down on the list. A sofa is most definitely not requisite for life itself on this earth and let us not delude ourselves that it is.

Especially in today’s unsure economic environment, consumers must make their mortgage payments, pay the heating and electric bills, buy food and clothing, pay taxes and insurance…spend their money on what they absolutely must have. 

Then, often the kid’s education, an automobile or two, gas and car insurance take their bites out of the pie. Finally, and hopefully, there is some, there is the discretionary, disposable income that may be spent on anything the consumer wishes. Expensive cars, vacations, dinners out, fancy lawn mowers, elegant china, silver, and glassware, art, barbecue grills and anything else that the consumer wants but doesn’t necessarily need. And, oh yeah…furniture.

The mantra of the day for me is that a potential customer can spend his or her money on whatever he or she wishes, whenever he or she wishes to spend it, or not spend the money at all.

What’s the point of all this? Every ad, TV commercial, magazine article, or e-advertisement that promotes some sleek new automobile, grand vacation, or the latest wide screen television represents your company’s competitions’ efforts to beat you and claim your potential customer’s discretionary income. 

The reality is that ANY business that seeks to capture disposable income from the market IS the competition. You are all feeding from the same trough. While a furniture retailer or manufacturer cannot let his or her guard down with respect to other furniture competitors, they must also be keenly aware of their competitors in other industries because they are clearly taking revenue out of their cash registers. I talk a good deal about the dilemma in the volume of my book set titled Furniture Retailing 101: The Strategic Concepts. Some ideas on how to compete with the non-furniture competitors might be:

1. To compete against a department stores’ china, silver, and glass business a retailer might initiate a furniture bridal registry, whereby soon-to-be-married couples have the opportunity to select their home furnishings choices in hopes of receiving gift amounts from their family and friends that would furnish all or part of their homes.

2. To compete against tour and cruise companies, a retailer might run a ‘Vacation at Home’ campaign as part of it’s regular promotional plan stressing the fact that ‘a vacation lasts 2 weeks while a beautiful new living room lasts many years…and you still have the same time off!’ It might strike a chord with a consumer thinking of putting off a summer vacation in favor of the year round enjoyment of their new furniture. The promotion might even include a contest for a free airline ticket or hotel stay.

3. To compete against car dealers a retailer might use the approach that “The difference between a $30,000 car and a $20,000 car can be a beautiful home.” It might spark the idea in the mind of a new car customer that spending a little less on a new car might also mean a new, beautifully decorated home and not cost a penny more.

4. To compete against the housing industry the approach might be that with home prices going out of sight, buying new home furnishings can give the customer a ‘beautiful new home at the same old address’. Maybe a few new homebuyers might become new furniture buyers instead.

5. High-end retailers don’t have a lock on decorating seminars. What better way to tout the appeal of a retailer’s product offerings than to hold clinics for their potential customers on how to ‘design with a budget in mind’. If the product your company merchandises does not lend itself to the tastes of the local market enough to offer this service, it may be time to rethink the product.

These are just a few ideas of approaches that might be taken to combat the competition from other industries; these ideas are certainly not earth shattering or particularly unique. Most could even tie into the current advertising plan and become an element of upcoming sales events. In each case, the cost over and above the normal plan can be as minimal as the retailer wishes especially if one of these or other approaches are incorporated into normal, planned sales promotional efforts. Also, in each case the aim is to plant some ‘seed of need’ into the customers’ minds that new furniture might not be a bad idea instead of, well something else.

So, like the hermit who guards the front door, it might make a whole lot of sense to at least nail the back door shut.