Cramer's expands sales through Web venture
By Jay McIntosh -- Furniture Today, June 23, 2008
ELLENSBURG, Wash. — Cramer's Home Furnishings sold $12,000 to $13,000 worth of products online in the first six weeks of its Internet business, estimates President Marty Cramer.
That's not enough to retire on, but he was satisfied with it.
“Every single piece that we sold is something that I would not have sold in my store,” said Cramer. He also figures that because of added interest and inquiries stemming from his new Web site, the retailer sold another $7,000 or $8,000 in its five stores in small towns in Eastern Washington and Idaho.
Cramer's is one of the first participants of the Discount Furniture Network, a program started by Englewood, Colo.-based American Furniture Warehouse to offer online furniture sales through partner retailers around the country.
American's tech staff built a Web site for Cramer's that links it to the Discount Furniture Network, which offers an array of furniture, bedding and home accents for sale. At nearly 30,000 SKUs and climbing, the product available vastly outnumbers what Cramer's can display on its floors, letting the store brag with confidence that it offers the largest online selection in the Northwest in a number of product categories.
“We were getting and still are getting a couple of hundred hits per day,” said Cramer. He promotes the site in his newspaper ads and also in the Northwest on search engines like Google and Yahoo, paying based on the number of hits from those sites. A typical recent monthly bill was $56.
Meanwhile, he gets checks from Discount Furniture Network for his share of the online sales, based on the markup his site charges over the network's base price. Cramer sets his own prices, depending on what he thinks the market will bear.
“A chest I might sell at $399 (in the store) might be $499 or $599 online. Pricing is not the big thing,” he said. For consumers buying online, he said, “It's a convenience, and you pay for convenience.”
Shipping costs are built into the online pricing and the site advertises free delivery.
Cramer's sales associates also can help consumers order from the site if they can't find the right piece of furniture in the store. Discount Furniture Network pays the commissions on those sales.
Cramer said he thinks his Web sales are taking business from somebody, but not his own bricks-and-mortar stores. And he considers the online venture as a sort of insurance in a changing retail climate.
“If this becomes the future of our business,” he said, “then I'll be along for the ride.”
