Vanguard and FurnitureFind Announce New Retailer-Referral Marketing Program

Furniture World Magazine

FurnitureFind.com and Vanguard Furniture announced a multi-channel, cooperative marketing program. "We’re combining FurnitureFind's online marketing expertise with our retailers’ unique strengths in a new and very innovative way," said John Bray, CEO of Vanguard Furniture. "We developed this program with feedback from some of our leading retailers. They see the potential in this approach and are very supportive." "It’s really very simple," explains Steve Antisdel, CEO of FurnitureFind.com. "We present our partner’s products at a retail price in context, along with a consumer incentive offer, (like a "manufacturer’s rebate"), and the ability to send our visitors to the authorized retailer closest to them. "As a long-time "clicks and mortar" retailer, we know about ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is the kind of information and help people are looking for online. FurnitureFind’s March 2001 server logs showed over 1.3 million unique visitors, (not just ‘hits’). Our capacity to provide in-depth product information and send them to our partner’s authorized retailer makes FurnitureFind a very efficient, highly targeted ‘marketing engine’ for our manufacturers and their dealers, nationwide. The jointly developed program was created as a result of FurnitureFind's new relationship with lifestyle designer Kathy Ireland and her Home Collection, a licensed product manufactured for Kathy Ireland WorldWide by Vanguard Furniture. The collection of casual, comfortable, compatible pieces, which includes furniture, rugs, lighting, photo frames and other home accessories, was named among the Best of Market during its launch in Highpoint, North Carolina and is currently available at FurnitureFind. Antisdel continues: "Since the ‘dot-bomb’ shakeout last year, everyone knows that the Internet isn’t about to revolutionize, much less replace traditional retailers. The reality is that online retailing is pretty much like the catalog business. Like a catalog, we can serve a time or distance constrained customer very well, while providing our manufacturers with distribution in regions where they don’t have a strong retail presence. But, when it’s all said and done, retailing is still retailing. You have to run an online business like any other business. Industry relationships, customer service, margins and profits still matter. "But along the way, we discovered something that truly is revolutionary about this channel. It’s turned our thinking about advertising and marketing upside-down. Think about it… We (as an industry) buy a great deal of broadcast and print media in the hope of hitting that very small percentage of people who are actually "in-the-market", at that moment in time, for home furnishings. Everyone else pretty much ignores our advertising. It’s like killing flies with a shotgun... It may work, but it sure wastes a lot of firepower. "The Internet is fundamentally different. It’s a place where over 80% of online shoppers use the structure of the Internet to find what they’re looking for. These are the very people we’re "shooting at" with our traditional media. And as we all know, it’s getting more and more difficult to reach them. Newspaper readership is declining; TV channels proliferate and direct mail isn’t getting any cheaper. We found a better way. "Since 1996 we’ve been carefully building a proprietary online marketing process. Our Strategic Online Marketing Group is focused on the continuous build-out of this unique "infrastructure". The result in terms of site traffic is akin to "location, location, location" in the real world. The effectiveness of our process is evidenced by that fact that our site has over 40,000 "home furnishings centric" visitors, on average every day. "With this technology, we’ve created a very efficient way of reaching the right people, with the right information, at exactly the right time. Compared to the traditional "shotgun" approach to advertising, our process is like "fly-paper" marketing. It’s targeted, measurable and very cost effective. "Our partnership with Vanguard featuring the Kathy Ireland Home Collection is a demonstration of how to cooperatively combine the unique strengths of each distribution channel to better serve our customers and the home furnishings industry." About Vanguard Furniture Founded in 1969, Vanguard Furniture is an established leader in the today and established leader in today’s home furnishings industry. Based in Hickory, North Carolina, the company’s 500 employees produce three licensed product lines including, the PGA TOUR Home, Stetson Home Classics, and the Kathy Ireland Home Collection as well as private label lifestyle program contracts with Domain, Kravet, and Calico Corners. About FurnitureFind.com Launched in 1996 as the e-catalog division of Bookout Furniture, FurnitureFind.com is today a leading online retailer and consumer information resource for over 100 home furnishings brands. The company additionally provides marketing and call center services for traditional and online retailers of window and wall coverings, flooring, cooking, framed art and financial products. FurnitureFind.com serves a worldwide market of over a million targeted unique visitors per month and is ranked by PCData Online as a top 100 retailer, among the top 100 fastest growing destinations for women online and among the top 5 sites worldwide, for "reach" in the home décor category. Gomez Advisors ranks FurnitureFind #1 for Customer Confidence. The company offers exclusive home and decorating content and commentary by its acclaimed Lifestyle Editor, Kathy Ireland along with outdoor and gardening content from award winning Landscape Artist and Designer, Nicholas Walker.