The recent Las Vegas Market confirmed for me that attending furniture markets is a great way to network, spend some quality time with current clients and learn about what is happening in the industry in terms of designs, trends, and general developments. Markets let you put your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the industry, sample the moods and attitudes of various companies, and experience a realistic cross section of the where the industry is headed and why.  During the Las Vegas Market I gained some extraordinary insight, especially valuable to those affiliated with the furniture industry.

Me with designer Stanley Jay Friedman (L)

This time at market, there was one subject on everyone’s mind – the economy. With the US going through one of the most unpredictable periods of its economic history, most businesses remained cautious about their strategies, not venturing into unknown territories or investing in anything except the very essential. For furniture companies, this usually translated to focusing their resources on maximizing their ROI and hoping to weather through the rough patch. Even special guest speaker, President Bill Clinton, spoke of how we have to “get back to work on getting this economy started”.

Most companies at market this time were expanding their product offerings to distribute their risk. Manufacturers were offering a wide variety of products and styles to maximize their chance of business with retailers. Retailers on the other hand were also offering a wider range of products to consumers, so as to not miss a trend or fad in the market.

The obvious downside of this strategy is a severe case of brand dilution. If your brand is not focused, it makes it impossibly hard for you to communicate your unique values to your customers. Because of a scattered brand image, your customers will not be able to form a positive association with your company – essential for any lasting business partnership. The solution to this dilemma is a) understand your market and b) sticking to what your company does best. By offering a range of products that fall outside your brand values, companies risk trying to seem like doing too much and end up gaining little to no market share. Of course, this doesn’t mean that an outdated brand image must continue to be used. A brand must be relevant to its main customer base. If it is not relevant, there is little association with the brand and it must undergo and overhaul.

As bleak as all this may sound, this was not the case universally. Some companies sought to capitalize on the tumultuous market by solidifying their presence through innovative branding.

Oi Furniture - Environmentally Friendly, Modular Furniture

Oi Furniture, founded in 2006 focuses on making environmentally-low-impact cellular furniture. It’s pretty cool, but what’s cooler is the overall branding. From the the socially responsible business objective to the bright vibrant colors that adorn the product to even the name, a universal phase of catching someone’s attention. It should come as no surprise then, that Oi Furniture is a result of an internal project by a branding agency based in Canada.

In a time when no one is willing to spend, success lies in laying the seeds of brand recognition. By engaging your target market today using social platforms, you gain positive association. You also gain brand loyalists. These people may or may not have purchased your product, yet believe in what you have to offer and advocate it. And we all know how effective reference through WOM is.

One of many Quick Response (QR) codes used for engagement at Market

Eventually, the Las Vegas Market this August was in many ways at a crossroads. It remains to be seen whether companies will adopt social media, focus their product offering and branding – the sooner it comes around the better it will be for everyone.

Negociaré Con La Pena

One of the biggest names in Latin music, Pepe Aguilar has just released his latest album Negociaré con la Pena.

Mock up of album artwork

Although currently only available in Mexico, the album is already making quite the impression there.

"A masterpiece for the senses and feelings, CONGRATULATIONS! You hit the jackpot"

"The CD Case of #NegociareConLaPena by @PepeAguilar IS SUPER CHARMING!! UNIQUE!! Can't wait to have it!"

Some more reactions on Facebook

And here is Pepe in an interview discussing the new album and its unique packaging:

MVC would like to congratulate Pepe on the successful launch! It was a pleasure working with Pepe on the new album artwork and design. Be sure to check back with us in the coming weeks as we discuss more details of the project. Will you be buying the new album when it comes out in the US on September 6th? And if you’re lucky enough to already have it, what do you think of the album and the package design?

There are millions of web users researching or shopping for furniture on a daily basis. These consumers come from every walk of life and as a whole seek out just about every furniture style and price-point. One of the current issues is these customers are being funneled into websites of larger, and often more generalized, companies because most businesses simply do not create an online presence to compete for the online traffic that exists.

The main reason for this is most independent furniture retailers and vendors avoid the Internet because they don’t understand it or think it’s just too expensive to make a difference. For example, most stores still do not appeal to potential costumers with a quality online experience. Most vendors don’t think their website is relevant to consumers because they think that only their buyers will use it. Either way, these businesses are making a big and costly mistake in their judgement. With furniture buyers using the Internet as their main research vehicle, more retailers and vendors need to provide users with informative and appealing websites to become part of a costumers’ research mix.

Following is a small example. If a user types in “Italian leather sofa Northridge CA” in Google the top search results that appear (not counting pay-per-click ads), are classified ads of people selling used sofas. Only one local retailer appears on the first page in a large city within Los Angeles County that has nearly one million residents and many furniture stores. This happens simply because most Northridge retailers don’t even have a basic website.

Once any furniture business realizes the great number of potential customers that are online and further embrace the Internet then the path to success becomes clearer.

Building a Successful Strategy

Furniture businesses need to understand that when considering an online strategy they need to take a step back and understand that it needs to be developed in tune with their overall marketing strategy in mind. Furniture businesses need to appreciate that furniture is fashion, and fashion is all about lifestyle. This means that their approach must appeal to their consumers’ lifestyles. Similarly to other fashion markets, such as apparel, a furniture business must have a unique perspective in which to build their identity upon and that consumers can relate to. The great advantage that independent furniture retailers have is they typically focus on a specific furniture style and can provide costumers with great value due to their focus, expertise and understanding of their furniture. A similar concept applies to vendors. Independent of what furniture style or price-point they sell, all vendors are unique by nature and have their own appeal. The basis of a good strategy is digging deep to uncover what makes their business unique and leading from that perspective. From their image to their messages, and from their website to their e-mail signatures, businesses need to show off their unique values in every way.

Once this big picture strategy has been considered, businesses can then focus on how that strategy translates to their web presence. Thankfully a web strategy doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, although it does have to be well executed and maintained. Once the strategy is working then more can be invested into enhancing the results.

For both furniture retailers and vendors, a website needs to look good, be well organized and inviting. This can be done without a lot of bells and whistles. In fact, a basic HTML website with good content about the company, location and detailed product information can go a very long way in getting quality search engine results. Obviously a more sophisticated website is always better.

For example, a furniture company’s website should provide enough content on the site so that if a user searches Google for a product they learned about by typing in the product’s name, style or number their website has a better chance of coming up on the search. For retailers, content needs to include their geographic location and contact information on every page. By providing content that blends relevant company and product information with information that communicates their unique values a furniture company will begin to create a niche and build quality search engine results.

Another important point to understand about the web is that results are not built overnight, whether it be search engine placement, traffic or actual leads. This also then means that a website must do everything it can to entice the user to provide their information, most importantly their e-mail once they are on the website. Then they can start to build a list of users that they can stay in contact with on a regular basis. If a user doesn’t become a client on their first visit, it doesn’t mean they won’t become a regular client later on down the line.

The Basics of a Good Online Strategy:

Here are some basic areas to consider when building a good online strategy that helps drive traffic and engage users:

• Online Videos: People love being entertained. Even the simplest videos featuring a showroom or set of products can draw attention. People remember a great percentage of what they see and hear, and video is the perfect medium. Also users like to share videos through emails, blogs and social networking sites.

• A Blog: Blogs are a great platform to show a business’ perspective on furniture, design and fashion as long as the content supports that business’ perspective and product type in some form or another. Users enjoy subscribing to Blogs that are informative and can teach them something new about a topic they like.

• Good Content: It can’t be stressed enough that a web presence needs good content. Item information, descriptions, taglines and even SKUs are key pieces of information that get picked up by search engines. Content should also create a mood, set a tone and express how a product can appeal to the target customer’s lifestyle.

• E-mails: Furniture businesses should stay in contact with customers at least once or twice a month. These can feature a product, discuss some relevant news, give advice or a promotional offer. This is one of the best and most direct ways to build website traffic, stay top-of-mind and generate business.

• Sharing Links: A furniture website should provide basic share features so users can email a web page or post a product on Facebook, all which will lead back to the source website.

• Social Networking: Similar to blogs social Networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are good ways to share product information, news and announcements. This will help further extend propagate a website though the Internet while helping a company stay top of mind with its customers.

• Coding and Optimization: A website needs be built in a way that the pages of the site have enough relevant content, usually text and supporting images, to be picked up by search engines. Also, every page should be coded to where the descriptions and keyword meta tags relate to the content on the page and include some relevant company information where applicable.

• Links: It is important that independent furniture retailers have links on their websites pointing to the websites of brand they carry and, and vice-versa. This mutual support will help create greater traffic for both the retailer and vendor.

Although there are other areas of a good online strategy that will come into play, such as Search Engine Optimization and paid advertising, these are some of the basics that will help provide natural and lasting results.

Once developed, the good online strategy will start to attract costumers that are directly related to the products being offered because the approach is based on consumers’ wants and needs. As mentioned earlier, this is why the strategy should be based on the company’s unique values so as to provide users with a memorable and distinct experience while making better use of the natural way in which search engines work.

Everyone Wins

The reality is that the web offers a tremendous amount of opportunity for both furniture vendors and retailers. The main issue though for independent retailers and vendors is that the larger online retailers are capturing most online users that are searching for furniture. As more retailers and vendors build a good online strategy and web presence they will be able to filter in customers that are right for them by having a visible presence that is relevant to the actual needs of their customers. Collectively these companies can begin to build a much larger online network of companies and to level the online playing field.

Recently during one of MVC’s rebranding campaigns for one of our clients we had to take down their old website. While content was being developed for the new website we still needed to have something online that people could get an idea of what the brand was about and that allowed us to start creating a buzz about their new products. We decided on a simple 2 page website that featured a video showcasing the new brand and furniture collection. It paid off big time. Although the average web user typically will not spend more than 5 seconds looking at any given web page, we discovered that users were captivated by the video and would spend on average 2 minutes and 30 seconds watching the video. In fact, that was about the length of the whole video. This means that most people who went to the site after they saw the PR and emails about the new brand actually watched the entire video. Most importantly though is that the results for our client was inspiring. Buyers began to contact them about the new products they saw and were ready to discuss new orders. Here’s a link to that video:

Now, I am not saying that you should immediately take your site down and put up a page with a video. Not by any means. Web video has to be handled on a case by case basis and needs a good strategy and great content to pay off. What I am saying is that it works extremely well in generating results and should be a part of any company’s branding and marketing strategy. In fact, we use it for most of our clients.

Another B2B video created by MVC: