A Furniture Retailer Reveals His Biggest Problem

I talk to a lot of furniture store owners and managers…

And I mean a lot. When talking about their business one of the first questions I ask is “How are sales?” And 9 times out of 10, the answer is “Flat”, meaning no increase from one year to another.

The second question I ask is how’s traffic?  And the usual answer is “OK, but could be better.”

Probably a lot of retailers reading this article would answer those two questions the same way. Probing a little deeper on why their sales were flat and their traffic not being what they would like, I get several reasons:
-Too much competition
-The economy is bad
-Advertising is expensive

Well this past week, John, the owner of Discount Furniture & Bedding, was completely open and honest about the challenges he faces trying to grow his store.

Here’s what John had to say… “Mike, over the last 3 or 4 years my business really hasn’t grown any.  I use to blame it on the economy and then I would convince myself that my competitors simply had deeper pockets than I did and could afford to spend more on advertising.  But you want to know the honest truth?  The fact is I simply do not have the time to spend marketing my business the way that I should.  It’s no more complicated than that.  I’m at the store 50+ hours a week but between waiting on customers and ordering merchandise and dealing with employee issues and then you have regulatory details to take care of like sales tax.  I simply do not have time to market my business the way I should.”

John wasn’t going to be able to carve more time out of his schedule to work on the marketing aspect of his business.  So he did the next best thing– He had me work on it for him.

My company and I, serve as his “marketing department”. We do the things he doesn’t have the time or expertise to do or manage.

How about you?

You want to amp up your sales? Give me a call… 716-373-0983 and let’s talk.