Time to step up high-margin accessory sales
Carole Sloan, Senior Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, August 4, 2008
Looking at the Furniture/Today sleep accessories survey that was published late last month points up opportunities that have been missed for decades by the country's furniture store retailers — the merchandising of go-with products that extend beyond basic furniture.
The major challenge to furniture store retailers in selling beyond furniture is getting salespeople to participate. This has been a challenge that we've heard about year-in and year-out since the launch of Furniture/Today in 1976.
Today, only a handful of the thousands of furniture stores in this country effectively sell sleep accessories, much less decorative bedding, decorative pillows and rugs.
While the survey pointed out some major gains at furniture stores, especially in sleep pillows and mattress pads, the other categories included in the study rank far below what could, and should be, the norm.
When a customer is buying a whole new bedroom, or even just a bed or mattress, there is a logical as well as an emotional linkage to the appeal of new bed accessories.
But suppliers have long been frustrated by the inability of store salespeople to understand this product relationship. Many companies have developed programs that require nothing more than a salesperson pointing out the product and adding the item to the order form.
But there still is massive resistance on the selling floor.
Other suppliers offer sales training and spiffs to encourage accessory sales — again with limited acceptance by sales staffs.
It would seem that with all the challenges facing retailers in today's business environment, the time has come to step up efforts to increase sales of these high-margin related products.
