Weaving wonderful lifestyle Webs
Carole Sloan, Senior Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, September 10, 2007
It's clear that furniture retailing in the 21st century has morphed radically from merely buying and selling a sofa, bedroom set or dining table to actually marketing a lifestyle or design approach.
A look at Furniture/Today's recent report on the Top 25 Retail Giants, plus our earlier listing of the Top 100 furniture stores, shows there's much going on at successful merchants.
Furniture retailing has been slow to embrace the Web as a means of selling furniture, or as a very important partner in the process. But a retailer like Target proves it's a key means of reaching today's customers as they shop for, and buy, furniture. For Target, the Web represents a means to upgrade and expand its in-store assortment, which is primarily ready to assemble.
And don't overlook the impact the world's No. 1 retailer, Wal-Mart, surely will have on the furniture business as it expands its already significant Internet activities, and thus grows its furniture presence with consumers.
While these discounters have a mass appeal, there also is Williams-Sonoma and its various offspring, Crate & Barrel and Restoration Hardware, which project lifestyle merchandising as well as furniture retailing in their Web efforts.
These merchants are major and direct competitors with many of the furniture retailers now beginning to embrace decorating approaches, versus selling a specific piece or group of furniture. And for these furniture retailers, there are many challenges. Key among them are whether to actually sell on the Internet, what the geographical reach of the sales effort should be, and how, or if, in-store marketing should differ from the Web efforts.
An important part of lifestyle retailing is incorporating a design or decorating element. That's something that may be more readily incorporated on the Internet, at least from a corporate viewpoint, compared with developing full-time in-store decorating staffs.
