FurnitureDealer.net Launches New Technology

Furniture World News Desk on 8/10/2020

FurnitureDealer.Net—the leading provider of websites, product content and digital marketing services to independent home furnishing retailers—announced that it has partnered with Wells Fargo Retail Services to launch new technology that enables furniture shoppers to use its private-label credit cards to pay for purchases via retailers’ websites.

Implementation of the new technology began this spring on a number of retailer websites with promising results. According to Mitch Keller, marketing and merchandising director at Crest Furniture, parent company of Top 100 retailer Value City Furniture, for example, the addition of the new feature to the Value City website resulted in the financing of 28 percent of online orders with a 50 percent higher ticket than non-financed orders. “I would say it’s a home run,” Keller relates.  

“In partnership with FurnitureDealer.Net, Wells Fargo is proud to offer a new technology that allows retailers to help customers finance their purchases without ever leaving their website,” says Steve Jermier, senior vice president of relationship management at Wells Fargo Retail Services, an industry leader in private label and industry consumer credit card programs. “FurnitureDealer.Net is taking the lead in offering this valuable service to home furnishings retailers and we’re pleased to have partnered with such a highly responsive, tech-savvy team.”

“During the pandemic it’s critical that home furnishings retailers make it easy for their customers to make purchases online,” reports Alex Kirsch, vice president of client solutions at FurnitureDealer.Net. “Financing is important to furniture shoppers who want the convenience of buying online from the comfort of their homes. With this new tool, shoppers can complete their purchase on a retailer’s website and pay for it using their Wells Fargo private label credit card without ever going to the store or even speaking with a store representative,” the executive says. 

Furniture Marketing Group (FMG) facilitated the collaboration between Wells Fargo Retail Services and Furniture Dealer.Net, both long-time vendors of the buying group. “As more people shop from the safety of their homes, convenient and fast access to long term consumer financing is critical to the success of our retailer members,” notes Mike Herschel, executive director of FMG. “We’re pleased that long-time FMG partners Wells Fargo and FurnitureDealer.Net have teamed up to help our members increase online sales with this valuable consumer service.”

According to Kirsch, the upgraded functionality is available now to all retailer clients on FurnitureDealer.Net’s premium website platform. “This technology makes buying online more accessible to more customers,” says Kirsch, “and we’re committed to helping our clients navigate the unprecedented challenges caused by these turbulent times.”

For more information about the new technology, visit www.furnituredealer.net.   

About FurnitureDealer.Net: FurnitureDealer.Net helps independent home furnishings retailers develop and implement successful omnichannel growth strategies that convert online furniture shoppers into local customers.  FurnitureDealer.Net provides a world-class responsive ecommerce website platform, publishes, and maintains rich, up-to-date product catalogs for hundreds of brands of furniture, mattresses, appliances and consumer electronics, and updates merchandise availability status and prices by integrating retailer websites with POS data.  Clients include many of the 150 largest and most successful home furnishings retailers, including six of the past eight HFA Retailers of the Year. FurnitureDealer.Net also facilitates idea-sharing forums where a community of clients help each other solve problems and innovate. 

About Wells Fargo Retail Services: Wells Fargo Retail Services, a division of Wells Fargo Bank N.A., currently has more than 20,000 merchant relationships that have more than 33,000 locations nationwide. Retail Services facilitates the delivery of consumer private label and industry credit card programs to retailers, manufacturers, distributors, associations and buying groups in a variety of markets.

About The Furniture Marketing Group: The Furniture Marketing Group is a buying group made up of independent retail furniture dealers throughout North America.  FMG’s mission is to organize furniture dealers to share information and negotiate with manufacturers and importers for maximum dealer profit.  As the largest volume furniture buying cooperative in the nation, FMG currently represents over 860 storefronts with cumulative annual sales approaching $3 billion.  By providing a wide variety of money-saving vendor programs and services, FMG members increase revenues and decrease expenses.  All benefits and services flow back exclusively to the individual member companies.  FMG was created to foster relationships, thereby creating operating efficiencies and synergies in order to help the retail members of FMG grow stronger and more profitable in the years to come.  For more information, visit http://fmgbuyinggroup.com.