Now is the Time To Pay The Piper

In the children’s version of the classic fairy tale, “The Pied Piper of Hamlin,” a town, besieged by rats, hires an exterminator who claims he can help. The leaders of the town agree to pay the man if he gets rid of their vermin problem. The deal is struck and the piper plays his mysterious tune. The rats come out from every corner of the town, mesmerized by the sound, and follow the piper, who leads them to the river where they all drown. Everyone is relieved, including the children, who have grown to love the piper and his beautiful music. But then, the leaders of the town decide that since they now have no rats, why should they keep their promise to pay the piper? The piper, who it seems has encountered this issue before, walks away very sadly, probably because he knows what happens next. Finally, the piper begins playing and all the children begin to follow, and in the TV version I saw (I think it was one of those Shirley Temple Theater shows) the piper leads them into a large crack in a mountainside which closes behind them, leaving the parents alone. Tragic, to say the least.

The futon industry is plagued just like the town of Hamlin, and because of the pragmatic approach many futon manufacturers, distributors, and retailers took during the past few years, the cheap $39 black metal futon frame (sometimes even $29) and other such trash, have left our category foraging in the “promotional only” identity crisis we find ourselves in today.

Now what? How do we reposition ourselves in a trade marketplace that views our category as a bottom feeder? How do we get our children back? It’s time to pay the piper.

The leaders in our industry (the ones who agree that cheap futon promo price only marketing is a wasteland) must find a way to put down the sword and take up the plow, and begin working together to present our category to the trade (the reps, the dealers, even new players in futon manufacturing) as a product category with a much higher perceived value than it currently has.

Bottom Line: the best marketers are those who sell higher end goods, at higher than average margins, and who work just as hard at positioning themselves in the market as they do executing the more “nuts and bolts” aspects of their business. It has been the dream of many marketers in our category to sell into the traditional furniture stores, but if we don’t clean up our act, i.e. change the perception of our cheap futon category from low price, low margin furniture, to furniture that delivers benefits with value, it will never happen.

Chicken Or Egg Survey

The results of the survey clearly demonstrated that the futon mattress is perceived to be the most important part of the equation regarding long term customer satisfaction and general importance. Responses to both question one (Which part do you think is most important?), and question two (Which part do you think is most important to long term customer satisfaction?), gave the futon mattress 82% of the vote.

Responses to question three ( Which part do you think is most important when selling the “futon sofa-bed concept”?), were fairly evenly distributed among the three components.

Overall, respondents seemed to think that the comfort and durability of the futon mattress afforded both dealer and consumer fewer problems and greater value.

My favorite comment went something like this: “If a futon mattress is thin, then so is the customer’s patience.”

Product Shortage

Last year New West was dumping product to the dismay of many of the futon industry’s top distributors. This year it seems that the Asian crisis has left some of the same distributors short of product. Maybe things will level out in near future.

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