FurnitureCore.com is a web application that helps furniture retailers and manufacturers grow their business, and Ron Sellers, who is senior vice president sales at the company, took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to me.
A word about FurnitureCore.com first. It is a web portal that was designed for the needs of the home furnishings industry, and provides furniture retailers and manufacturers with customized research to improve their market share and bottom line profitability. It allows each subscriber to get information that is relevant to them, which in turn makes it easy to apply it to their own business model. This specialized and relevant information is made possible by access to comprehensive market intelligence that integrates dozens of databases with extensive, proprietary FurnitureCore research.
Before coming to FurnitureCore, Sellers most recently served as vice president of sales for Escalate Retail Systems (formally GERS Retail Systems), a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for the home furnishings industry. He was also a founder of FurnishNet, which went on to become the home furnishings standard for electronic data interchange.
Could you tell us about FurnitureCore?
FurnitureCore is the next thing. You've got Bob George who's the owner of Impact Consulting, who started Impact in 1980, with thirty years of consulting experience in the furniture industry. Two years ago he started FurnitureCore.com. So it's the internet form, if you will, of a 30 year old consulting company.
What it does, it's basically an executive dashboard that shows key performance indicators outside of your business, in your market, compared to to your competitors. For instance, I can show a retailer by every market he's in, his market share in his area. I can break it down by category: by upholstery, by leather, by motion. I can show him what his market share is compared to his competitors. I can show a retailer in over 900 markets what his market share is. I can show him retailer effectiveness.
What is retailer effectiveness?
What that is, we go to market for retailer effectiveness. What we do is we can show a retailer people who have bought furniture in the last 18 months. We can show if did they think of a particular retailer in an area before they bought. Then I can show did they think of you and shop you, or not shop you. Did they come into your store, and did they buy. As a retailer, I can do a report that shows that people who came into my store did they buy or didn't buy. And if they didn't buy at my store where did they buy.
So in this day and time, I don't care if the industry is up or down, I can show a retailer out of all the furniture being sold, what percentage of market share he or she is getting, and if he or she is getting the share of there market. And that's huge.
How does this affect a single store,or a mama papa establishment?
The Commerce Department puts out numbers. The problem is they are three or four years behind. We've got the regression model with Bob's over 30 years of furniture experience where we put in variables like consumer confidence, unemployment, we even do things like disaster reports for things like earthquakes, hurricanes or fires, and the economic impact on that particular area. A FurnitureCore customer can see their own numbers, and see the FurnitureCore reports and adjust their merchandise or advertising. The retailer size doesn't matter as all size retail establishments can use our products. We sell by market and have over 20 modules. You can start anywhere and add on as needed.
What are some other features that you have?
We have a really cool feature called the Truck Tracker. We track delivery truck stops in real time. While it can be used by the retailer, a retailer can also allow a consumer to keep track of their furniture delivery. They punch in a number and see where the truck is. So instead of a four hour window, it makes it more specific.
But to me the most exciting thing is the executive dashboard for the CEO to compare their numbers to numbers from the industry. They didn't have that before.
We do a finance model as well. It's merchandise, advertising, and the retail experience, the three things that drive a business. And from the finance perspective we have a performance group...
What kind of performance group?
We have 10 to 18 retailers who are not competitors, they are like but not competing. They get together 3-4 times a year, just the owners. They analyze their financials and completely open up their books to each other. The performance group allows one retailer to compare their numbers to another who they trust, and who is like them.
We have a structured financial statement that they put their information in and it is anonymous. So as a retailer using the financial model you can compare your numbers to other retailers and see where you fit nationally. It is a very powerful tool.
You have to compare yourself to people outside your own four walls. You've got to understand your market share whether the business is up or down. That's what FurnitureCore is all about. It is as relevant to the manufacturer as it to the retailer, and indirectly it also affects the consumer as the retailer becomes more effective.
