Pick-Me-Up Ideas for Your Futon Store

We ran into some passionate people at the World Market Center who shared some
off-the-cuff and excellent ideas for futon store owners. From our furiously scribbled notes to the finished pages of the magazine…here are some quick pick-me-ups for your retail store from the experts.

Martin Roberts
Grid2

Grid2 is a graphics and environment consulting, design and market research firm.

Martin Roberts, one of the principals of the company, gave us a guided tour of the King Koil/Comfort Solutions showroom that Grid2 designed. He walked us through some retail planning strategies as well. We asked him what quick tips he would offer to futon retailers, and here are his suggestions.

• Have a bedding expert who can sell the benefits to the consumer. The “leaky bucket” of retail turnover means managers must keep educating their sales force. Sales increase 20 percent with well-trained people.

• Lighting is a major factor. It costs $2/square foot to change the lighting, but it's the most important thing you can do to improve your showroom.

• The King Koil/Comfort Solutions showroom dramatically illustrated how futon mattress shopping can be a luxury experience… high-end decorative pillows and throws dress up the bare mattresses without covering them, soft carpeting on a circular floor plan leads you past all the products, sheer curtains create “quiet zones,” and clearly divided product groupings make decisions easier.

Jerry Epperson
Mann, Armistead & Epperson, Ltd.

Mann, Armistead & Epperson is an investment banking and advisory firm, specializing in the futon industry. Jerry Epperson has been an industry researcher for over 30 years.

At WMC, he spoke about trends in retailing and offered some memorable comments about staying competitive.

• Give up on price–we can't compete on price. There is no bottom to prices in furniture. The average furniture store adds on 41 percent markup, while Costco only adds on 19 percent. (And over 30 percent of furniture is sold in places other than furniture stores.) If you want to compete on price, remember this: Costco and Wal-Mart have no carpet, no service, no delivery, and therefore cheap prices. Futon retailers should mimic this bare bones approach if they want to compete on price–make the customer feel like she's getting a real steal.

• If you don't want to compete on price in the same way big box stores do, then kill your customers with service. Be an ultimate service futon store–even go into customers’ homes and consult with them about their furniture purchases. Over 60 percent of Ethan Allen’s sales come from going in to consumers’ homes, making recommendations and closing the sale in the customer's most comfortable environment.

• Try an eBay-style auction in your store. Put a furniture item on display with no price, in between two similar but higher priced tagged options, and put the center piece up for silent bids. At the end of a set time
period, call the highest bidder and let them know they won the piece
at the price they bid.

Connie Post
The Connie Post Companies

Connie Post is a furniture industry consultant, entrepreneur and book author. She has designed more than 14 million square feet of retail space around the globe.
We had a chat with her in the Restonic showroom, which she also designed.

• New always wins. If you've got little dollars, you have to focus on the first and last impression, which is that first 1,500 feet of the store. It takes a customer less than eight seconds to determine if they're going to buy from the store they're entering. It's what they feel when they first walk in. That first impression is also the last impression as they leave your store. That opening area needs to stay fresh. There should always be fashion-conscious product in the front, with the latest colors. Not the beiges, not the stuff you're going to sell by truckloads. Instead, show fashion and color, and make customers want something new. Most retailers have a tendency to put the wrong product at the front door. The opening area is the magnet that attracts.

FL