Forget about the good ol’ days

Simplifying the furniture industry or the entire retail environment today by remembering the good old days, only 60% of our buying population wasn’t even born in the good old days; this so much reflects the attitude of our industry. Recognizing the global implication of our industry and the reality of these changes is what business must confront. All the questioning of the best markets High Point, Vegas or Tupelo with the thousands of new import distributors and U.S. manufacturer now just merely more importers is creating our overburdened supply side. With fewer avenues of retailers to sell product to and larger chains sourcing direct this will continue to change the makeup of our industry.

I like yourself hate to say this but we live in the past, the direction of this industry will evolve into a handful of logo’s just like all other consumer goods, it will force down margins and cut any additional marketing costs that will not reflect directly to the consumer. The need for the overburden costs of markets, sales organization, marketing materials and even trade publication will become a thing of the past and many of the large organization will have “direct retail distribution” to the American consumer to survive.

When you speak of new introductions and the creations of exciting new furniture concepts it is happening, look at the largest of the furniture retailer creating a branded design concept with a celebrity spokesperson, the boutique retailer designing an entire shopping experience, the large discount chain creating affordable home collections and tying it with a designer. When our industry converted from manufacturing to importing it created there own demise there is no need to purchase branded names when many of these brands have no recognizable identity. The expertise once provided by the suppliers are no longer required, most large organization create and design there own concepts and messages. The industry is about the lowest price, now the retailer can go directly off shore and negotiate in some instances with the same manufacturer as there suppliers a better price and remove the markup required to provide the services that the industry no longer requires.

Each day I observe the changes in the furniture industry, business is good for the organization that realize our industry is no longer furniture stores but shopping experiences, the industry is no longer waiting for a sales rep to bring there case into a store rather retailers designing the trends. The day of the market special is over and has been for five years as we continue to evolve into what the industry will be ten years from now we can all blame each other, but the facts are just like the buggy whip the industry and layers of distribution is no longer needed.