What Will You Do When You Can’t Blame Tariffs? | Bill Mcloughlin, Furniture Today | And Of Course My Thoughts About This Article

Read the article HERE:

https://www.furnituretoday.com/opinion/furniture-everyday/what-will-you-do-when-you-cant-blame-tariffs-bill-mcloughlin/

It’s a great short article that highlights what's wrong with furniture manufacturing and retail strategies.

Basically, the article questions and addresses “The Excuses” of blaming tariffs for shoddy store/sales performance.

As a Saturday Night Live lover, back when it was actually funny, Roseanne Roseannadanna (link) would say, “It’s Always Something.”

Sure, tariffs are an element that is disrupting to some degree, but to me, from what I see, read, and hear, there is a better headline that I would use:

THE ARROGANCE OF IGNORANCE, This is why your numbers probably suck!

(I used to write for Furniture Today, years ago, and had a series of articles under that above title. You can read them HERE: https://www.social4retail.com/my-retail-rants-blog.html )

Let me explain further by discussing this headline, using some of Bill’s thoughts.

Here is one of Bill's quotes:

“However, what’s become lost in the tariff frenzy is that the furniture business has been undergoing a series of structural changes that date back nearly a decade, and those issues will not go away regardless of the tariff situation. For example, e-commerce continues to grow share relative to brick-and-mortar, despite short-term swings one way or the other.”

The furniture industry is typically the last segment to recognize significant shifts in consumer purchasing behavior. WHY? Because most people in the industry do not do any due diligence on this subject. Go ahead and ask some of these executives, and you’ll get a deer-in-the-headlights response.

From my experience, when I was actively selling marketing ideas and solutions to the “Marketing Executives, they had NO CLUE what I was even talking about. This was because the person was usually promoted through the ranks to their current position. ALL THEY KNEW was furniture, the design, functions, yada, yada. Yet they knew nothing about significant shifts in consumer purchasing behavior, AND where consumers were getting their information, such as from social media, blogs, and videos.

When I first joined Ashley as their CMO, I was told, “Marketing was all about The Furniture Markets,” preparing for those few days six times a year. GET PLACEMENTS and then let the retailers figure out how to sell the stuff.

That didn’t sit well with me, and we began passionately developing the most comprehensive retail marketing support in the industry, which significantly contributed to their dynamic growth during my tenure.

When manufacturers decide to let 20,000 independent retailers define their product and their brand, they end up with the ubiquitous: 50% OFF EVERYTHING and NO, NO, NO PAYMENTS….wait for it…Until You Are Dead, LOL.

AND that still rules the day. How sad, so very, very sad.

Bill further states:

The role of content in driving traffic and engagement on retail websites continues to be misunderstood. Content is not product features, although that’s necessary. It should be inspirational, aspirational, and, when possible, gamified. A good site entertains as well as informs. It must be more than an electronic product catalog or a way to locate stores.

I rarely see any furniture marketing that has even tried to implement “Today's” proven sales and marketing strategies.

I’ve written about this ad nauseam, and I rarely receive any response to “Learn More.” I believe it is because the marketing person, or whoever is in charge, is a furniture person, NOT a marketing person, who breathes and lives “The Consumer”.

Bill continues

"If the focus becomes only about driving a transaction, then the product becomes a commodity, a lifeless — if beautiful — thing that we force the consumer to look at because to add anything else around it is viewed as a distraction. In such an environment, the consumer will opt to go where the transaction is cheapest, fastest, and most convenient — a.k.a. Amazon."

STOP DO NOT READ FURTHER, you may learn something and do more business.

So, let me give you struggling retailers and manufacturers FREE strategies and tactics that have been proven over and over to work.

But before I do, let me remind everyone what will happen…or should I state, what WILL NOT HAPPEN, due to THE ARROGANCE OF IGNORANCE of people unwilling to research and learn because “This is how we’ve always done it, it worked then and should now.”

1.) First and most crucial demographic living changes

Home sales are in the tank, everyone is renting, and they only furnish SMALL SPACES, NOT multiple rooms.

416,000 apartment complexes are being built this year, on top of the 400,000 built last year

Ya think this is a trend?

If you Google search for people looking to furnish “Small Space Living,” you will see about 1,900,000,000 results (0.49 seconds)

Target, Wayfair, Amazon, and other big e-tailers promote this, but you won’t….WHY? Is it THE ARROGANCE OF IGNORANCE?

I bet you are not:

• Creating a section on your website for small space living
• I bet you don’t have an area in your store catering to Small Space Living

I wrote about this in April 2024 with all the trends and facts, HERE: https://lnkd.in/e7-PzUp5

2.) Short Product Videos

The statistics behind short-form videos are nothing short of captivating. Consumers find short-form content a staggering 2.5 times more engaging than long-form videos. This explosive growth is evident across platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, Facebook, and YouTube, where users are increasingly turning to quick, snackable content.

This 11-second video engagement was nothing short of extraordinary

• 482,000 Likes
• 1,507 Comments
• 42,800 Bookmarks
• 34,100 Shares

AND it was done on an iPhone

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU GOT THIS TYPE OF ENGAGEMENT

If you can spare 11 seconds, you may see and learn something about how to engage consumers with easily defined features, benefits, and WHY this is such a versatile product for someone’s home.

Of course, I wrote about it, HERE: https://lnkd.in/ge4acrPc

3.) PRINT IS DEAD, right? So, whatever you do, stay away from even thinking about it, despite the FACTS:

And be sure to tell these fools at companies like Amazon, City Furniture, Rooms to Go and many other Stallworths that PRINT IS DEAD.

Amazon’s 96-page Christmas Catalog

City Furniture sends me 124-page, beautifully designed catalogs a few times/year. I'm POSITIVE they do this because it doesn't work...right? And, yep I bought a casual dining set from one of their mailings...$1,500.00.

YEP, these retailers have not got the memo that PRINT IS DEAD

OH, guess what, I wrote about this, too, about why Print is NOT dead: https://lnkd.in/ewxMPFen

4.) Totally ignore social commerce, because that’s not how we do things because we don’t have the time to study consumer purchase behaviors

The fact is that your e-commerce website is quickly becoming obsolete in search and is now a transactional commodity. So, with this fact in mind, ignore it and run a 50% off sale on your website; that should work, right?

Your Customers

• 60% of business-to-consumer (B2C) brands get their customers through social media. 77% of businesses use social media to reach customers, and 41% of small businesses rely on it as a revenue driver.
• 76% of social media users have purchased something they saw on social media

A new study by Accenture (NYSE:ACN) found that the $492 billion global social commerce industry is expected to grow three times as fast as traditional ecommerce to $1.2 trillion by 2025.

OH, guess what, I wrote about this, too, that my industry virtually ignored: https://lnkd.in/eHs-2HBR

 I've tried to help our industry succeed with FREE information, research, trends, and more. I've written dozens and dozens of articles that you can find on my profile, HERE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wfnapier/recent-activity/articles/

I also built the largest FREE MARKETING INFORMATIONAL WEBSITE in North America with over 1,000 HOW-TO articles on Retail, Marketing, and Strategy.

Let's have a discussion, IT'S TOTALLY FREE - No Strings Attached, No Sales Pitch, just sharing ideas so you can do more business.

Email me, or message me at:

billnapier@napiermkt.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wfnapier/