Another reason not to feel guilty about not purchasing from your local H&M dealer

So, I have been feeling a little guilty about going to my local dealer to view leathers, fabrics, and fnishes and asking Duane for the quote. I'm in the process of purchasing a sofa and three chairs... Lots of choices that need more than just looking at photos online to make decisions. But once the decisions are made, the economics come into play. Most people think that means the price... But that's only a small part of the economics of making an informed that is drama free.

We all know it's a question of both cost and quality of service when making any purchase - let alone one that you know is going to be over 10 grand.

We can all scroll through the thousands of posts here and see what type of interaction Duane has with his customers here. You can also see him recommended at other furniture sites when people have questions or concerns about their H & M purchases through other dealers. His advice and suggestions are petty transparent. But when you go to your local showroom, those people are nice too.. Right?

Yesterday I went to my "local" dealer that is 85 miles away - one way... It was my second trip in a week. What I overheard the sales associates and designers talking about absolutely freed me from any guilt I felt and confirmed my decision to purchase from Duane.

This a well-known and large furniture store. To your face, the staff is friendly, helpful (it's the South so the staff HAS to at least have the appearance of being helpful and well mannered....bless their hearts). But after their client left, I was still in the fabric, leather area and witnessed them dissecting her bit by bit. Her clothes, her hair, her jewelry, her husband, her everything was discussed in th eopen within six feet of me.

The South is a beautiful place with warm and rich traditions and culture. Part of that includes us dressing up to go furniture and grocery shopping. It's sad, but we overcare about what people think about us. That's because as "nice" as we are... We all know that gossip is our favorite past time after basketball. I know this happens, but I never expected it in the open in a professional setting.

Thank God Duane can't see me when I'm sending him an online request for a quote... I'm usually in yoga pants, my hair is all over the place, and I am not wearing makeup. Once I'm sure I was covered in paint as I had a brainstorm while painting my bathroom and stopped to send him a request.

The horror!

More than the cost savings (which are huge) Duane provides, I appreciate the no-nonsense business approach.


Just my two cents about the furniture shopping experience....

<laughing>.... well, at least half my posts made here on the forum I'm in my well-worn sweatpants and sweatshirt, after 10 p.m from my home office. Even in the store you will never see me dressed up beyond a Polo shirt and Khakis. Ever been to Furniture Market in High Point? It's a fashion show...the men all wear nice suits and the women looked like they stepped out of Vogue Magazine and this is all over town. Really some sharp looking people. Then I roll in on my BMW motorcycle (and in one instance dripping wet from a massive storm 10 minutes out from the showroom) and get all the stares as I clomp into the H&M showroom with boots, helmet and looking like the Michelin Man. I'm definitely not a fashion-ista., but they know I've been there!

I was trained as a professional salesman by one of the best in the business - Gallo Winery. Largely though I have abandoned the ABC's mantra of sales (Always Be Closing) in lieu of a different approach, which assumes that 1) Most people will be able to make a sound decision if you give them the knowledge they need to do so 2) Most people are not afraid to spend more if they feel they are getting value for their money 3) No one likes high pressure. Traditional sales is adversarial and nearly gladiatorial in nature and is the consumer vs the dealer in a money pit stadium. Car dealers are the worst at practicing this and most furniture stores are not much better - and the fact that I don't operate like that seems to be appreciated by many. I don't bug customers with phone calls and email bombs, and all that silliness.

I am more than happy to order samples for my long distance customer and get them to you ASAP and never will suggest you use a local dealer as your showroom to order from me. And I never talk about my customers after they leave - mostly because I'm here in the store by myself and were I to do that, they'd come and lock me up :p

Although I have only bought furniture from Duane once, the thing I find different about him is that he is more of a traditional furniture salesman with extensive knowledge of his product. That's increasingly rare. Most furniture stores today, and particularly the ones carrying better lines of furniture, are staffed by "designers" usually possessing ASID certification. That's not a bad thing. They often offer free interior design advice and are quite adept at matching fabrics and leathers for instance which is something I'm not too good at. However if you inquire about how or where the furniture is made or posit any technical question, they are lost. They look in a book and read the published specs but that is usually pretty rudimentary information at best. Duane knows the technical details of his products inside and out. When I bought a chair and ottoman from him, I not only knew exactly where it would be made but I knew the names of the people involved and I knew the country where the leather was produced. I also knew the kind of wood that would be used and how the seat would be constructed. That information is nearly impossible to get from the designers at my local furniture store. They simply don't know.

It would be like going to buy a car and one place was really good at helping customers match the upholstery with the paint while the other was not only pretty good at that but could tell you in exact detail about the engine, transmission, suspension system and all the technical things that are important to understand before making a purchase.

Ditto on your comment that the stores have salespeople/designers rather than knowledgable furniture people. Also they attach themselves like Velcro to the customer. The problem there is there may over 100 pieces in the store, and I want to look at every one before committing. Awkward to have them stay with you. I read many of Duane's comments on H&M before going to my local store. At that time, I didn't realize he was also a long distance seller. I thought he was just a blogger. Darn. After my purchases, I kept reading this forum for pure entertainment value. Kudos to Duane for pointing out the potential hazards of long distance buying, mostly in the area of shipping damage. If I were still in the pre buying process, I'm pretty sure I would buy from the Keeping Room. The sales tax savings offsets much of the shipping cost, at least under current laws. I would also have looked at the manufacturers online catalogs. I didn't realize what a minuscule selection of products stores actually carry. Though we feel we made good selections of Stickley products, I shake my head when I look at the vast selection of H&M, BY, Stickley products actually available. The salespeople never mentioned the wide selections available in the catalog. When you haven't purchased furniture in 25 years, you are totally out of the loop.



QUOTE=Ci2Eye;25196]Although I have only bought furniture from Duane once, the thing I find different about him is that he is more of a traditional furniture salesman with extensive knowledge of his product. That's increasingly rare. Most furniture stores today, and particularly the ones carrying better lines of furniture, are staffed by "designers" usually possessing ASID certification. That's not a bad thing. They often offer free interior design advice and are quite adept at matching fabrics and leathers for instance which is something I'm not too good at. However if you inquire about how or where the furniture is made or posit any technical question, they are lost. They look in a book and read the published specs but that is usually pretty rudimentary information at best. Duane knows the technical details of his products inside and out. When I bought a chair and ottoman from him, I not only knew exactly where it would be made but I knew the names of the people involved and I knew the country where the leather was produced. I also knew the kind of wood that would be used and how the seat would be constructed. That information is nearly impossible to get from the designers at my local furniture store. They simply don't know.

It would be like going to buy a car and one place was really good at helping customers match the upholstery with the paint while the other was not only pretty good at that but could tell you in exact detail about the engine, transmission, suspension system and all the technical things that are important to understand before making a purchase.[/QUOTE]

To re-visit a little history....

I got into this business in 1986, 29 years ago. I was a key account sales manager for Gallo Winery in Florida and before that a Main Office Buyer for Grand Union Supermarkets, so I had a very good foundation for retail, sales margins, etc. The Keeping Room has always been about speciality furniture, not run-of-the-mill production product. I only sell product that I would be proud to have in my own home, that's always been my mantra. No Junk, nothing poorly made. In the 80's and 90's virtually all of our product was handcrafted case goods made by small craftsmen shops in New England and Ohio. Because those guys were so small, they didn't own freight trucks or buy boxes to ship product. If you wanted it, you drove up to get it yourself or hired a blanket wrap service (which was far too costly for the amount of product we were moving). So, we bought a truck and made the trips - specifically I made the trips. About every 3 weeks I was in our big Freightliner headed to the various workshops in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts with stops in Pennsylvania and Ohio. I'd do most trips in 24 to 30 hours, they had to be quick because I ran the store and couldn't take the time to lolligag. This was back in the days before GPS and to this day I know all the roads in New England without the need of a map. All those trips meant I spent a lot of time at every workshop. Loading the Freightliner would sometimes take several hours at each stop. So I'd get to see the inside workings and ask questions.....lots of questions. it didn't take too many years before I had a pretty good knowledge base on fine furniture construction and finishing. I can tell you how to set a hooked blade edge on a Stanley Model 30 Bullnose Scraper or how to mix Orange Shellac 50/50 as a coating agent to use over Lockwood aniline dye stains. I can tell you why you can use Oak for a steam bending and not Maple. Every trip was a working tour of every workshop, and I dealt with the best in the business and stored it all in my memory.

The 2000's brought a shift into the business, specifically after 09/11. The volume we were doing in wood case goods fell off sharply. I used to sell 2,200 hand-crafted windsor chairs a year, and kept about 250 in stock . Today I sell 1 % of that number. The business changed and people began asking for more and more upholstery, specifically leather furniture. I knew nothing about leather upholstery. But I did know frame construction and wood finishing, that doesn't vary. So I set out to learn about leather upholstery. Now, freight from the Carolinas to Virginia was cheap and all these makers boxed their upholstery, so I didn't need to go pick it up any more, in fact it was not cost effective to do so. So I would ask my factory sales reps all sorts of questions on how things were made, how they did this - or that. Turns out, most of them didn't know very much about that, they just knew the sales deals. I'd call Customer Service Departments - they were more knowledgeable than the sales reps on details, but at a certain point they couldn't answer my questions, either. I decided to make trips to upholstery factories and go see how they are made. Now, when one of you makes a trip for a tour you may be there 2 to 3 hours, and focused on trying a frame or looking at covers. When I go there I'm there the whole work day firing questions off left and right and meeting with the section foremen. I know the leather buyers, the production chiefs, the head finish guy, the person in charge of touch-ups and final inspection, the person who orders parts and components. I even spent half an hour at the tufted button-making station fascinated by the little machine that makes those and 45 minutes with the guy that stuffs the cushions into every casing - there's an art to even that. Now I know WHOM to call when I don't have an answer. This past Friday for example I spoke with the Webmaster for H&M and Jessica Charles as I discovered they had the wrong photo and model number on a product. She knows me and I know her as we have met several times in person and discuss how to improve things to make the buying experience better. Your average furniture salesperson doesn't develop those relationships, they've never been to the first production facility on any brand they carry.

Last week I was speaking with one of the Principals at Hancock and Moore over the phone. It was late in the day and he was the only one left in the office, but I wanted to get an answer on how the new "Your Way" Program worked and how I can get pricing information. He said "The pricing is in the back of the new Supplement we mailed out last month". I said "Seriously? I must have missed that." He laughed a hearty laugh and said "This is a banner day. I finally know something Duane Collie doesn't know - sometimes I think you know more about Hancock and Moore than I do". And that's as good a compliment as it gets from the owner of a company.

For twenty years I was also on the delivery truck. I did every home delivery personally with an assistant. That meant I learned about what when into doorways and what didn't. I also got into thousands of my customers homes and saw spatial proportions, color combos, what worked and what didn't in a given space. Some customers had stunning and beautiful layouts, others were a disaster. I have also seen some of the nightmares that professional decorators created in a home. I have some REALLY good stories....lol. I got off the delivery truck after my cancer operation 9 years ago, though. That compromised my abdominal muscles and I can't do the heavy lifting any more. I do still unpack every single piece of furniture that comes through my store however, and that's something few store salesman do. Its pretty hard to do that when you wear a suit to work. When I unpack it, it allows me to explore each piece - see how its made - look for faults (I have a keen eye) and try them all out before they are loaded on the truck for delivery. That's why you get as many photos in the library as you do.

Where my store falls down though is decorating help and personal attention. I don't offer that and I know it disappoints some that come to the store. I have what I think is a pretty good eye for putting things together though I was never formally trained in ASID, but the larger problem is I simply cannot spend the time with any one customer to lay all that out. It can take hours of going through materials to create a look. My business is just me - with two part-time guys for delivery on Saturdays. That's it! That means I'm the Buyer, the Salesman, the Bookkeeper, the Truck Maintenance guy, the Inventory Manager, the Warehouse person, the Office Manager, the Webmaster, the Customer Service person, the Touchup and Repair man, the Bathroom and Store Cleaner, and the I.T. Person and the Phone Receptionist. And for every person physically in the store I have a dozen emails awaiting a reply. That's why the only time I ramble on the forum is like now - Sunday Mornings. That's why answers are often short and to the point. That's why some may say 'you seem irritable', when what they don't realize is I have a hundred things to do and I have to be efficient in my answers and move on. Spending 20 minutes on the phone with someone as they browse a website asking about things - is not something I can do, nor can I spend 6 hours in the showroom with one customer helping them select one chair. I don't have that luxury of time. Now, I know what you are thinking....I need to hire some help. And you would be correct. But I can't afford an employee. My business has always run on cash, in 29 years I have never taken out a commercial loan and am not about to do so now. Margins are razor-thin because customers demand the lowest price above all else, and I understand that. If I were to raise my selling prices by 5 to 8% then I could afford to hire someone, but I am very hesitant to do so. The nightmare every retailer has is to spend hours with a customer and then they find a lower price somewhere and you lose the sale that have cultivated at the register due to price. I have to price aggressively due to competition, and as such there is no extra cash to comfortably budget for an employee. I do realize that at age 60, I can't do it by myself forever. When I got cancer 9 years ago it almost collapsed the business, I just barely made it through all that. I worked many days very ill because I had to, both before and after surgery (I recall one day I went to work a few weeks after surgery and couldn't muster the energy to get into the car to drive home, and had to call my wife to come get me). One of the real hardships with a serious cancer is the financial impact on your family and small business, and you don't read much about that.

So that's kind of the story of how it all got to be. I apologize to all those with whom I can't spend the hours with that they would like me to to decorate their house, and also to those that like to have long, rambling phone calls. Can't do it, wish I could. I don't have the perfect furniture store business model and I realize that. However my store has survived all these decades when so many others have not, so I must be doing a few things right. I thrive on curiosity and finding out how things work - so my quest for knowledge of my business is always there and I will always try to get the right answers to your questions whenever I can do so. I do appreciate your support and opportunity to earn your business.

I for one thank you very much for the effort you put into this forum. Except for a house, the furniture inside it is probably the most expensive (combined) purchase a person will ever make. It is great to be able to pick the forum brain of someone who knows what he is talking about; I have been on numerous furniture makers' websites in the past weeks, from lesser quality to higher, and their information on pieces doesn't scratch the veneer of what I need to know. I don't know if that is because they think the consumer is not interested in furniture construction methods or cushion innards or if it's because their methods are shoddy and they wish to keep that secret, or if they just don't want to hire someone to create that kind of info webpage. Maybe they think your local salesperson will answer all your questions, but with the financial crash of a few years ago and the decline of B&M stores you're lucky to find a store, never mind a salesperson, at least around my area. (With the exception of "made out of plywood and tissue paper" furniture stores.) So thank you Fearless Leader, and wishing you many more years of better/great health and happiness in the furniture industry!

And regarding your delivery experience and witnessing some customers' interiors: When I first got married I could never afford professional help or even good furniture. So every purchase was a use of precious funds and I would agonize over every detail: styles, shapes, sizes, colors, does-it-match, will-it fit, etc. My sister gave me some very good advice back then: "Buy what you like, what you need, and what you can afford. Even if things don't look like House Beautiful, they will be yours, what you liked and what you chose and nobody else has to live with it." That advice has served me well in that I am very comfy in my nest and it's mine (and Hubby's - but he really doesn't care about decorating, he just wants to come home at night, take off his pants, and watch the toob. But that's another story).

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Originally Posted by RedShoes

I have been on numerous furniture makers' websites in the past weeks, from lesser quality to higher, and their information on pieces doesn't scratch the veneer of what I need to know. I don't know if that is because they think the consumer is not interested in furniture construction methods or cushion innards or if it's because their methods are shoddy and they wish to keep that secret, or if they just don't want to hire someone to create that kind of info webpage.

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It's about TIME. I spend an average of two hours per day, most every day on the forum or related to it (includes emails and phone calls that come off it). That requires commitment.

So, here's an update on my recent pathway toward furniture bliss:

As I mentioned, there's a HUGE furniture store about 85 miles (one way) from my home that carries a lot of Hancock and Moore. I visited with them a couple of weeks ago. It was the second trip in less than a week and the third trip in less than 10 days. To me, that would indicate that someone was either A) interested in making a furniture purchase, or B) crazy. Before the third visit I called before I drove out. I asked about a H&M upholstered bench (one of the benches covered in a Turkish carpet that I had seen the week before); indicated that I would be there the next day; and asked them to hold it for me for 24 hours.

I went the next day and I purchased the bench. At the time, I also asked about a couple of other furniture pieces - a leaning mirror and an occasional chair for a bedroom. My sales person, a very nice young woman, explained there were no leaning mirrors in inventory, but the store would be going to the Market in a couple of days and she would look for some things for me there. She asked if she could send me texts with pics of pieces from Market... I said that would be great. She asked if I was interested in a H&M sofa as we had previously discussed and I told her I was still interested, but I wanted to check out the leather samples in the natural light of my home.

We discussed a budget for the mirror and occasional chair.

She confirmed my cell phone number and email address (we had corresponded a couple of times about fabric samples previously). She promised to get back with me as soon as she walked the floor at the show. She promised to send me pics of anything she saw at Market that she thought might fit into my decorating scheme. I thanked her... we chit chatted for a bit about local neighborhood kinda things, it was all very polite and friendly. I paid for the H&M bench, they loaded it in my vehicle, and I drove home with my H & M leather samples in tow.

Did I hear from her during Market?
No.

Have I heard from her since?
No.

Did I place an order with Duane?
Yes.

Yosemite sofa in Equestrian Desert
Yosemite chair in Equestrian Desert
2 Jameswood chairs in Equestrian Wheat, Belgian Chocolate wood

Thanks, Duane!

PS: I went from the office to the store and was dressed in upscale business clothes for my second visit. They complimented my outfit and one sales lady asked where I bought my necklace... ;-) I love The South!

I am sometimes guilty of the same thing at Market. I will promise to look for something for a customer and text them/contact while in the showrooms, it seems like its gets waylaid most every time. Market is madness - its CRAZY when you go there and stays high pitch the whole day. When I do manage to get a text or call off to a customer, they are often in a meeting or tied up at their work (understandable) and can't reply for an hour or so. Then they ask for a measurement, different pricing, etc. and by that time I'm three blocks away at the next showroom and not about to double-back. I pretty much don't offer to shop for anyone at Market any more, its too hard to make the logistics work because you have to keep moving from one showroom to the next, its constant motion.

And thank you for your order! Most appreciated, and you will especially like those Jameswood chairs, they're unique and lots of fun.

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Originally Posted by drcollie

I am sometimes guilty of the same thing at Market. I will promise to look for something for a customer and text them/contact while in the showrooms, it seems like its gets waylaid most every time. Market is madness - its CRAZY when you go there and stays high pitch the whole day. When I do manage to get a text or call off to a customer, they are often in a meeting or tied up at their work (understandable) and can't reply for an hour or so. Then they ask for a measurement, different pricing, etc. and by that time I'm three blocks away at the next showroom and not about to double-back. I pretty much don't offer to shop for anyone at Market any more, its too hard to make the logistics work because you have to keep moving from one showroom to the next, its constant motion.

And thank you for your order! Most appreciated, and you will especially like those Jameswood chairs, they're unique and lots of fun.

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Furniture on its way and A&O is delivering tomorrow night! I'm in the middle of closing the sale on a home, so I'll post photos after I get settled in my "new" 95 year old house!