New Chair from Hancock and Moore worth seeing and trying out

Seen yesterday at the Design Edge Expo at the Gaylord Convention Center at National Harbor, this new Hancock and Moore model # 6710 "Heston" Chair in leather Nirvana Cloud with a hand-rubbed Walnut Finish. (I was able to photo it just before it was packed away).

https://www.hancockandmoore.com/Prod...tail/?SKU=6710

THIS...is a great chair. I sat in it and was impressed, then came back to it ten minutes later and sat in it again. It's one of the best chairs I have ever tried. Stylish too - it won "Best New Chair" award at the show from the Designer Edge people. Another home run from Hancock and Moore, this one you will be seeing a lot of and they are going to make a recliner variant of it as well.

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I had dinner with the President of Hancock and Moore, Phil Brown, after all was packed away and the booth broke down, we talked for a couple of hours about the industry and commitment to quality as the keystone for H&M above targeting price points like most manufactures do. Most of the work force at H&M is paid hourly, not on piece work, because while piece work makes workers push more out per shift, hourly wages result in slightly less production but higher quality build. I agree with that as well - you have to build it right every single time because its a more expensive product and the end user expects that.

I also looked around at the other booths while there, and saw very little to catch my eye. So many makers copy trends or come out with such outlandish designs they are pretty much unusable. This Heston chair is an original design and it drew a lot of attention because of that. Hancock and Moore pays professional furniture designers a lot of money for original designs and it shows. Great company, and a great product.

Wow, that is a very nice looking chair. I'm a bit surprised it sat well, looks like the seat is quite wide.

You've obviously been very busy, so understandable, I'm curious if you'll be doing an updated State of the Industry post in the High Point Furniture Market Report & Trade News forum?

That is a beautiful chair. Too big for my house, but still it's really nice.

I didn't go to Market, since Market is all about ordering new floor stock and with the store closing - I don't need any. There was no reason to make the 6 hour trip other than to just talk to people. And they would rather be selling to dealers buying inventory! For that reason, (and the Reps have stopped coming by) I don't have any info to share on the state of the industry.

Phil and I did chat up a few topics during dinner this week but nothing really notable. Some of which was:

* I suggested as much marketing money as possible go into the H&M Website to make it as good as it possibly can be. Clients rely heavily on it for making purchase decisions far more than glam ads, etc in print media. He agrees and they just rolled out a Visualizer where you can try out different covers on a recliner. This was a big effort, and will eventually encompass more pieces, but its a start. https://hancockandmoore.com/Products...ntiaroID=16126

* I offered this forum to Hancock and Moore free of charge, for them to take ownership of it and maintain it. Of course, they want me to continue to run it and respond to questions and do what I have been doing on it since 2008. The host server is paid up until this time next year, but the software running it is very much out of date and will require a new platform in the future, which will cost $ 5K or so to do something like that. We have more to figure out on that.

* We discussed a realistic MSRP, and I'd like to see it posted on items on the website. Right now, MSRP is a joke so everyone can "discount", and the consumer has no idea what something costs from looking at the website. Why have an MSRP of $ 14,000 on a sofa when the real price is closer to $ 6,000? It confuses people.....but it looks like its going the other way with even higher MSRPs to placate dealers who want to advertise "BIG SALE, 50% oFF" and all that. Ugh

* The industry is trying hard to avoid price increases. As we all know, everything has gone up since Covid - so I am surprised we haven't seen one in two years.