Home and Furniture Retail Industry, the Difference...
With over 20 years’ experience in providing solutions for furniture and carpet retailers, Retso has developed solutions to cover product configuration, catalogue management, pricing, full product traceability, showroom and web ordering/tracking, stock control, warehouse control, delivery planning, customer and supplier returns and customer services.
As you may know the retail sector was hit the hardest by the recession and some of these effects still linger to this day. With many marketing the ‘Buy now, pay later’ marketing scheme, it’s important that retail software can help manage the selling process from start to finish.
Unlike other retail sectors, customers are unlikely to walk out of the store with their new purchase under their arm. As a store it is also unlikely that there is enough stock available for every customer that day which means order processing is a highly important part of the business. The sale needs to be managed from the moment the customer finds an item they want, arranges payment terms and delivery, to the after sale service.
Large home and furniture purchases are mostly bought in store as people like to see exactly what they are getting for their money. Buying a large purchase online such as a sofa or bed would be a nuisance to return if it the customer was not happy with it so many choose not to take the risk.
But what they do instead is research brands, prices and what stores stock before making a purchase. In fact, two thirds of in-store furniture purchases were influence by online research. In this way it is highly important for a Home or Furniture store to have a website that provides customers with all the information they need prior to making a purchase with a particular focus on delivery policies as this is integral to their future purchase.
Sales and promotions are the biggest influence to customers who are looking to buy large purchases. It seems customers are becoming increasingly driven to only spend at times when there is a sale and are they less willing to purchase items at full price. So pricing policy is still an integral part of furniture marketing which is why our software has well designed ticketing and marketing capabilities built in.