InsideFurniture

DELICIOUS TURNAROUND?: Tasty economic indications for an appetizing High Point Market likely to satisfy hungry industry

Stylish caterer Chef Brad Semon says double digit increases in catering orders and higher food quality for the Spring High Point Market entertaining constitute a delicious indicator of an economic turnaround for a business-starved industry.

From the perspective of two decades of catering a spectrum of showrooms, “I can tell the furniture industry is more confident now a turnaround is here. My business is up this market and so are unique menus for parties and events, all of which conveys thoughtful planning,” he explains from a bustling kitchen at Painted Plate Catering, Greensboro.

Given the lean times the industry has been experiencing, Semon’s rosy business prediction is hearty, nourishing news. “While it is subtle, this indicator is sturdy, and still a good reason to begin feeling more optimistic,” the affable chef declares in between cooking and sampling some of the attractive menus. 

Urbane yet practical, Semon says food quality and its presentation always makes the difference, especially in business entertaining. “The High Point Market is all about quality and style. The wrong food, just as the wrong product, can affect business,” he observes. “People remember the food, and if that’s what keeps in the showroom, the investment returns business.” 

For market time or any business entertaining, “The food tells its own story, informing your customers how you feel about them and yourself,” Semon says. “When business calls for making a difference, just another sauce on the meatballs is not a strong branding and marketing statement when your customers expect more.”

THREE R’s FOR SUCCESS: Readin’, Right-Sizin’, and ‘Rithmetic will straighten the learnin’ curve for the transformational economy

Passing the rigorous test of succeeding in a transformational economy requires furniture retailers and manufacturers to bone up on three R’s: Readin’, Right-Sizin’ and ‘Rithmetic.

Readin’ — The Readin’ part is easy. All the news stories about how consumers are adopting a “needs” approach in all they do and buy defines the sustaining contours of business today.

If you’re marketing to wants instead of needs, you’ll be coming up wanting.

Get your head in today’s mercantile game: It’s needs over wants in the marketplace. The McMansions are not in McFavor. So all that behemoth furniture, those statement and stately Paul Bunyan case goods are passé in the right-sizing economy.

Wretched excess is for phony fantasy television programs, not to mention a probable badge of dishonor.

The new real world is appealing to the needs of people whose living and lifestyles embody the parsimonious virtues of the Great Depression: Be smart, be frugal, beware of squandering hard earned money.

Right-Sizin’ — People wanting to enjoy comfortable living are right-sizing their homes to conform to how they live in this new economic normalcy.   

They’re not downsizing nor upsizing, they are consciously sizing up what they need to conform to how they live in their domiciles (homes, condominiums and apartments). 

My friend Gale Steves (former editor of Home magazine) has written a breezy guide book, Right-Sizing Your Home. She will be previewing the book (published next month) in a High Point Market designer workshop/book signing luncheon on Tuesday, April 20, noon-1:30, at 101 South Main Street, Restaurant-Plaza level. Reservations for limited seating required: marketing@highpointmarket.org

‘Rithmetic —  Do the math about the transformational economy. Consumers are interested in right-sizing, a fact confirmed when the News & Record (Greensboro, North Carolina) published a feature (see story below) about Gale. More than 450 people wanted to attend this trade only event. Amazing.

Project those numbers across the nation, and you can see that presenting fresh alternatives to help people live better in place will be mutually rewarding. 

The more retailers and manufacturers learn how the principles of right-sizing, the more precise they can be in what is produced and presented. 

Catch the right-sizing drift from Gale: I believe in right-sizing. It was in the late 1980’s that I first began noticing out-sized homes in all different parts of the country, with rooms either too big or too tall, or too small to be useful. At the same time, I realized that many older homes, mostly not so big, had rooms with labels in no way relevant to the way we live. What’s wrong with this picture?

 

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Opinion written 9 years ago still timely and provocative

Every so often, I haul out a Guest Column written for the Business Journal of the Triad.  Now nine years old, the then edgy column appearing below still provokes vigilant hope, while stirring frustration, consternation, amusement and melancholy.

I invite you to read it with an objective frame of mind, a perspective incorporating past, present and future.

My desire is to provoke a positive colloquy, using the insights and thoughts as mortar to continue the worthy objective of saving and sustaining High Point as a nucleus (in more than name) the undisputed home furnishings capital of the world.

Achieving what has become an illusive objective still stirs within my being. For High Point to continue to be the high point, considerable work still needs to be done with a collegial attitude and action.

Your comments are welcome.

February 23, 2001

VIEWPOINT: Viva Las Vegas? High Point Needs the Catalyst

By Ivan Saul Cutler

For High Point and the region, a portentous good news-bad news scenario swirls around dramatic plans of savvy Western developers to create a potentially competitive mammoth furniture market complex in Las Vegas.

The good news: A nonexistent, yet plausible, "threat" becomes a positive stimulus to the newly constituted High Point International Home Furnishings Market Authority.

It seizes a real opportunity to intensify and transform a semi-annual event into a world-class mercantile juggernaut, a progressive and evolving home furnishings industry resource to establish an attractive home-centric commercial nucleus.

In contrast, the bad news scenario: The market authority reflexively dismisses Las Vegas ambition as only a fleeting nuisance, a distraction, provoking unnecessary talk and ridiculous speculation about the unthinkable -- High Point's furniture market could disintegrate, lose prominence and cause serious economic dislocation.

Instead of seriously acknowledging why a Las Vegas market has captured the imagination of the industry, the authorities assume an insular worldview and narrowly view the market and its future.

The market authority becomes an institutional Mr. Goodwrench, existing primarily to repair and modify the market's perpetual infrastructure annoyances of limited parking, inadequate transportation, lodging shortages and related user issues arising from an unwieldy phenomenon.

Time will tell whether any element of the good news-bad news scenario becomes reality. What will become evident is the need for vision, involved responsibility and "out-of-the-box" thinking, factors essential to determining whether High Point remains the undisputed world commerce and exposition center for the home furnishings industry.

In rolling the furniture market dice right now, High Point can win and win big. The reason is obvious and real.

A High Point market actually exists and could change faster to meet the needs of the world than the time necessary for Las Vegas to grow from an ambitious idea to a glittering, neon furniture market oasis in the sands of the Nevada desert.

In gambling parlance, the house always prevails over time, while perpetuating the tantalizing illusion that sustainable winning remains an option. In the furniture market business, High Point is the house, the powerhouse.

The "winning" against High Point is in the regional and supplementary markets in San Francisco, Tupelo, Miss., and, to a lesser extent, Dallas and Atlanta.

If a Las Vegas furniture market blooms, the bold venture likely will emerge as a potential mercantile earthquake ready to severely shake away San Francisco as the premier regional market.

In the unlikely scenario that a mammoth Las Vegas center actually grows, the expanse will have been nurtured and fertilized by limited planning in High Point.

To remain the powerhouse, High Point has to seize the energy of the Las Vegas project and use it to tone and build existing flaccid market muscles.

The first step toward market flexibility and greater fitness incorporates an objective self- assessment, commitment and realistic potential. Then comes the hard exercise to build new business muscle and attractive social contours to sustain attention.

Good coaches -- the industry itself -- will motivate the market authority to do what it may not want to do, but be glad it did after the results are happily noticed.

For starters, the market can reflect the evolving needs of a world industry in becoming an empowering commerce-teaching-learning resource rather than a semi-annual event.

Instead of levying taxes to fund objectives, authorities can operate the market as an innovative, revenue-generating marketing enterprise that provides important information services, insight and opportunity all to a responsive industry.

The impact will be an infusion of capital to stimulate continuous growth in High Point, the enviable home-centric business center of influence.

As an evolving world exposition, the market can remain a powerful economic muscle in meeting the expectations that people bring with them to High Point.

Such action will sustain market longevity in attracting people who will change their attitude and want to come to High Point instead of expressing a reluctant need to participate.

The international home furnishings industry will respond positively to High Point potential, as an old friend extending a well-planned gracious welcome instead of gambling to survive.

TRUST MARKETING: Decades of honored retailing return big double-digit increases in business for Steve Phillips in Saint Louis

Real simple: Smart merchant Steve Phillips is laughing all the way to the bank. At his Ashley units serving Greater Saint Louis, he will end the year “hugely ahead.”

At a time when other merchants mumble sorry and sordid tales of mercantile woe, Phillips smiles broadly, declaring that investing in building trusted relationships burnishes a glowing reputation that attracts and sustains friends doing business with  and as friends.

Oh, yeh, it's investment marketing because Phillips' simple method of satisfying customers who eagerly become ambassadors, spreading the positive news of honor and ethics. So simple, yet so difficult for other retailers who just don't get it.

For decades, Phillips conveys trust, honor and respect, allowing him to declare with conviction and humility: “We’ve been treating our customers right a long time and it’s paying off . . . with our business ending the year hugely ahead in big double digits.”

Expect more in 2010 from the Phillips honed brand of trust marketing, a natural virtue his family practiced for nearly three quarters of a century. Phillips operates four Ashley HomeStores in Missouri and has reinstated the Phillips Furniture brand in Gateway City and across the Mississippi River northeast in Edwardsville, Illinois.

Converting the couple of Ashley stores to Phillips Furniture, reinforces a trusted name, permitting Steve to compete with his Ashley units comfortably with the complementary new stores featuring more contemporary styles set in a lifestyle merchandising context. He also competes with his brother’s Weekends Only Furniture units, Crate & Barrel, Ethan Allen, Rothman, Value City and others, all of whom maintain the pressure.

Incidentally, what a great story of friendly brothers competing with one another in the same city.

Trust marketing is from-the-heart customer service, a branding distinction, a Phillips tradition he can take to the bank especially in a down economy.

FURNITURE IS HOMELESS: An industry stressing sales over living comfortably perpetuates stress and misery

Ending homelessness in furniture means getting off the street begging for sales and into homes on the sustaining value of living comfortably.

So what business is it, anyway? Selling or satisfying people who want live comfortably?

Both you say with a tight smile. I say you’re wrong.

Furniture is demonstrably about satisfying people wanting comfort, design and style within a context of living comfortably.

Sales is all about selling and satisfaction is all about providing comfort.

Sales is a function and providing comfort is a desired condition, virtue and responsibility.

Sales driven companies do damned near anything and everything to drive sales.

Comfort driven companies reinforce, well, duh, comfort with design and style to live better and, guess what, more comfortably.

As long as furniture marketing stresses sales, with all the diversionary freebies, gimmicks and ploys, the industry will be homeless, out on the street begging and clamoring for attention with sales talk.

Getting inside homes demands the sophistication of total honesty, flowing from a compelling desire to help people live better and more comfortably.

The marketing message is always comfort: What it is, how to get it and why it brings pleasure, harmony and tranquility.

The faster the furniture industry conveys living comfortably provides more satisfaction than a fancy automobile the faster more furniture will have a home in which to furnishing lives with, you guessed it, comfort.

WHAT’S KNOWN BETTER THAN WHAT’S NEW: Having a conversation about comfort with consumers is the marketing comfort zone

The cornucopia of new merchandise can’t overcome and cure the industry induced affliction of ignorant consumers.

Parading newness is an ineffective ingredient in the the rusty cans of moribund marketing polish. All that does is dull possibilities and put a sheen on sales prevention methods deemed to be brightest course of action.

Far too many furniture executives prefer the "proven" reliability, sanctity and safety of rear view mirror marketing techniques, as they speed into the future, driving aimlessly forward into the sales trough of past.

Such hellbent determination proves that the past doesn't work. So what, the guys keep driving a bus without real marketing wheels along a rough road, trying to pick up and transport consumers who are no longer hitchhiking.

This season’s market (trade show) mantra of new goods is so old it’s new again by the antiquity of a few months, make that, just minutes. Hope-based nostalgia is not a strategy no matter how good it feels.

No matter the venue, it’s the same old whine in old-new marketing bottles, whose spin is always the same:

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got, and you'll always feel what you always felt.

All the virile furniture men keep dreaming about sacking the $hapely women consumers, whose figures on paper assure perpetual arousal without much satisfying results. Go figure.

Sure enough, those boys keep working hard on achieving their mercantile conquests. Too bad all those artificial deals and steals are not resonating with the savvy ladies, especially now when their real needs are top of mind and impractical wants are rightly suppressed. The women smell a rat in the advertising.

As long as manufacturers only want to sell to retailers, not much will occur. And, as long as retailers only want to sell, sell, sell, without properly informing, guiding and educating people, they will get what they’ve been getting, not much.

Look at most furniture marketing. It sucks . . . sucks the vita breathe out of body of reason that walks and talks with the life force of always living comfortably and better with furniture.

Good furniture lex is engaging consumers in a continuous, serious conversation about helping them achieve their needs delivered as practical dreams, wishes and aspirations . . . to live comfortably and better with furniture.

Shouting the same old marketing non sequiturs and hollow bromides of sale-sale-sale are the insulting equivalent of demeaning catcalls or rude whistles.

Making a continuous date with consumers. Talk to them passionately. Open their minds and expand their horizons with respectful home centric words and concepts that satisfy their insatiable need for comfortable living.

The most effective furnture marketing makes love not roar!

NaW MARKETING: Maneuvering out of the recession demands sustained focus on recognizing how people live

Slow business, reflexive marketing myopia and an economy in transition are gnawing at furniture retailers in need of adopting an empathic focus better known as NaW marketing.

What is NaW marketing? It is a revolutionary, sensible and easily attainable principle: Recognizing the difference between needs and wants (NaW), and solving people's needs with authority, distinction, honor and candor.

The campaign for smart retailers is: Just Say NaW to gimmicks, deals and spiels about discount this and special that.

Present compelling reasons for meeting and exceeding people’s needs for comfort and living better with home furnishings.

NaW is obvious, yet befuddingly too simple, so much so the industry keeps missing the opportunity in its blinding, furious pursuit of business.

Most retailers aided by complicit vendors act more like frenzied mercantile dogs in heat chasing bitches than adroit business professionals responding to and satisfying needs.

NaW marketing could have mitigated the crippling impact of the current recession. People act on needs, and that virtue will continue, and that means a rejection of furniture marketing as usual.

People will be “right sizing,”as my friend and writer Gale Steves brilliantly observes: “Right-Sizing teaches and guides homeowners to live with the mandate that ‘less is more’ when it comes to their homes. This is the right time to look into new ways to reinvent their space.

“During these economic times, the word, downsizing, seems to be a pejorative term. No one wants to admit they are really cutting back, but whether they are driven by immediate needs or future ones, this is the time to shift gears. This Age of New Reality frees them from having to keep up with the Joneses," she rightly declares.

You will be hearing and learning more about NaW marketing as it applies to Right Sizing. In the meantime, learn about what to do: Ask people what they need and observe how they live.

The changing economy and prudent consumers are right sizing obdurate (persistently stubborn and hardheaded) retailers and manufacturers facing a new reality gnawing away the inefficient and unresponsive.

FURNITURE FATIGUE: Expect fewer blogservations packing more marketing punch

Sorry if I disappointed you, but probably not. During the past several months, only a few people lamented that I hadn’t blogged in a while. No worries, I am returning to this space with the same insights and intensity, but a little more infrequently.

My feeble excuse for no blogs is simple: I became afflicted by the furniture disease: My verbal chest fell into my empty mental drawers.

During my self-imposed sabbatical, I noticed the most furniture marketing remained rather static, even banal. Wonder why?

Business stinks. A frightened industry declines to modify its timeless and priceless marketing approach: A frontier sale barbeque of variations on the yeehaw theme of “Y’all (consumers) come and git it, ya he-ah.”

Aw shucks, with that kind of persuasive marketing, no wonder many manufacturers and retailers are receiving high marks in their crash course on sales prevention.

Yes, I am working my way through Mike Dugan’s intriguing tome, The Furniture Wars, and trying to devour, The Age of The Unthinkable, both are my evening reading as strange bedfellows for the mind.

In the daze and days ahead, I will succinctly blog on, write on, sharing some thoughts t ignite more thoughts and action.  

Oh, I had some fun on a recent California vacation, clicking some quick pix of Pottery World north of Sacramentoin Rocklin for Susan Dickenson of Home Accents Today. She posted them on her blog, Retail Update. Thanks Susan.

UNGROWTH CONSERVATISM: Rising infrequency of furniture purchases grow from sustainable values about quality, function and lifestyle

Get ready for ungrowth, a powerful reality forged by rising scarcity and sustainability of resources.

Ungrowth recognizes we cannot have everything, limitlessly, all the time forever. As a virtue, the ungrowth influence will only intensify, especially in consumer goods.

Discernable product quality in the right size and providing the right function are critical elements of progressive and sustainable marketing successes.

Ramifications and implications of ungrowth will affect all we do as individuals and in business.

In home furnishings, the public's emerging ungrowth state of mind will sharpen their focus. That means they are less susceptible and vulnerable to the typical onslaught of variations of false and misleading marketing.

The need for greater leadership and professionalism across all industry segments cannot be emphasized enough.

Ungrowth underscores a buy once, buy right mentality of personal conservatism. Across the socio-economic spectrum , people will be investing wisely in what they purchase for a new and sustaiable standard of living.

In home furnishings, it means greater infrequency of purchases, especially in casegoods, with multifunction as the bonus. For upholstery, the ability to reupholster will be an important factor.

Interior designing will give way to individualized home dressing, and that will elevate decorative accessories. They will be in sharper focus and a more frequent purchase as economical cosmetics for home sparkle.

The growth of ungrowth as an economic force has always existed. Its reality heightened with our painful, acute awareness of the implications of our current economic travail, which may be, thankfully, a needed life-saving attitude adjustment.

Smart merchandisers will benefit from the precious wisdom of sensibly appealing to hearty 1930s Depression Era virtues of intelligent frugality and the need to identify real value from bona fide quality, value and function.

Ungrowth's smart parsimony emphasizes: Buy the best you can and keep it as long as you can.

The marketing message will be critical. That is the reason telling and retelling the story of quality will resonate and drown the hollow buoyancy of cheaply made furniture that only looks good and will need replacing.

The Greening of the Consumer means a total rejection of built-in obsolesence.

The marketplace response to flashy price-driven marketing will be consistent with the current societal transformation recognizing real value: Been there, done that. Been screwed before. No more. Go away. You are not interested in my values.

PIECE ON DEARTH: Less is more from distinction and differentiation critical in marketing to smart consumers as rugged individualists

Wither the big brown furniture boys futilely flogging their flagging collections in the winds of change blowing them away.

The winners at the Spring High Point Market are conscious purveyors of distinction, primarily from aggregating and presenting a delicious assortment of individualized looks, styles and designs.

It is crafted produce from the fields and orchards of ingenuity, an ordered chaos of  attractive harmony. The appeal is timeless differentiationn, an individualism that people feel, want and need, especially women whom the furniture boys pejoratively call the end-user.

In procreating comfortable interiors, the distinctive design impulse arises from gender survival and preservation. Honed for millennia, women seek attraction and flourishes to validate themselves, family and friends.

Yes, the impulse incorporates home furnishings. Home dressing is so much a part of a woman’s soul. It influences most decisions from shopping to home life.

That’s why big brown banal furniture collections repel women precisely because the suited output is illsuited and lacks individualized distinction we all cherish.

In much the same way women cringe in the midst of another woman wearing the same garments at a special event, a similar drive for home distinction directs her attention in the world of home furnishings.

All these years later it’s back to the future with a fresh sense and appreciation for real eclecticism, a key element in effective marketing.

The future is in bold and subtle statements of distinction that command attention and validate personal discretion while preserving the need and integrity of sustained comfortable living.

Bid farewell to the banal big brown furniture boys and their tailored suites of sameness sinking in a sea of change.