The times they are a changin’ – yet again

Auto maker Henry Ford - who named each of his models with a letter - took a few years before he made a lady out of Liz.

He spent the late 1890s tinkering with experimental models. In 1903 he released the first Model A and it was not until 1908 that he hit it big with the first mass produced auto, the T-Model.
Today, the internet is in its first great age of development and much like the Model T, much of it is cheap, easy to work on and pretty dependable.

In Mike Dugan's book, The Furniture Wars, he noted that one of the challenges to the industry's marketing efforts has been a lack of available dollars to spend on big branding efforts.

But the internet's low cost of entry, immediacy and wide bandwidth could change all that.

A powerful case for that scenario can be found in my recent story about Red House Furniture, whose video called "Where Black and White People Buy Furniture" video went viral last year.

The story details how comedy duo Rhett and Link created the 90-second low-fi piece has surpassed 2.5 million hits online. The video prompted a ton of calls to the store, which even began selling T-shirts to cash in on its popularity.

If you know of a retailer that's done something unique in this respect, drop me a line at heath.combs@reedbusiness.com