Buying on the Internet, Ordering, Shipping and Repairs

[JackOlso]

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, over the years I've bought several truckloads of furniture for my houses and offices. Even 25 and 30 years ago, I bought some of my furniture from out-of-state dealers, including those in NC with showrooms only a few miles from where the furniture was made.

Overall I've had more success with the furniture I bought from out-of-state than with the stuff I've bought from local dealers. I'm not sure why that has been the case, but I haven't gotten any better service from the locals than I have gotten from the out-of-state dealers, but I have paid the locals more money.

Today, with the huge presence of the internet, buying from dealers in other states is now a real possibility for more and more consumers everyday. When I first started buying out of state, it was more difficult. Sometimes I had to fly to the large warehouse showrooms, and every time I ordered I had to make sure I had the correct manufacturers numbers, color codes and other data. Local dealers often used tags that misrepresented the correct codes to prevent price comparisons or ordering from other dealers. When I bought over the phone from furniture brokers that I knew and were willing to put my faith in, it was a little scary at times, but it has all worked out well.

Duane is one guy I don't worry about. He is one of the best leather furniture and reproduction period piece hard goods dealers I know. Anyone who has bought furniture from Duane understands what I am saying. I hope everyone who has been a customer of Duane's will use the internet to post positive recommendations for him and The Keeping Room. Duane is one of the few dealers who gets the internet and the impact it is having on the furniture business. Talk about a business that's stuck in the past.

Try getting anything repaired in a timely manner from a furniture company. Try getting it back in just weeks instead of months. This is a business stuck in the past with no orientation toward customers, or should I say the final buyers of the furniture.

The furniture industry needs to wake up. They're still thinking and living in medieval times. No wonder so many furniture stores have closed. No wonder the industry has had some really poor years lately. China didn't kill the industry. The industry killed itself with complacency. Yeah, I know it's complicated. I spent 30 years running companies that had to compete with everyone everywhere in the world. But if you don't start moving until you smell smoke, it may be way too late to save your butt much less the building!

Duane is one of the few people in the business using the internet effectively to improve his sales. Duane could do more if his suppliers didn't do things to hinder his progress. But what he has been able to do is impressive.

Duane's competitors sit around pissing and moaning about dealer and territory exclusivity. I know because I used to hear the same crap. Territorial exclusivity is another name for lazy, non-competitive bridge trolls.

Why am I recommending Duane? Was my experience with Hancock and Moore perfect? No! There were a couple of minor problems.

Duane stepped up and did what he could to help. He gets it. He's a one man band who runs his ship like his family's economic lives depended on it, and they do.

My father owned a small hardware store when I was a boy. One day when a customer came in I didn’t wait on them fast enough, or perhaps I looked as though stopping what I was doing to pay attention to them was annoying. After the customer left, my father said to me, “There’s only two things you need to know about customers. They decide what we have for dinner tonight and what you get for Christmas. Outside of that, they don’t matter much!”

My father’s store was in a very poor part of town. Some of the kids that lived there couldn’t afford to replace the tires on their bicycles when the tires wore out, so they would ride on flat tires, and sometimes just the rims. One day one of those kids came into the store with enough money to buy two new tires and two new tubes. He was beaming.

Later in the day, I looked out of the window in the front of store and saw the boy ride by with the tires on his bike completely flat. When I pointed him out to my father, he stepped outside and called the kid over. He took the tires off the bike, repaired the tubes, pumped up the tires and sent the kid on his way. I looked at my father and asked him why he had fixed the tires.

He said, “When one of the kids puts a new tube into a tire, they often use a screw driver to push them in, and it punches holes in tubes. I know I’m not responsible for their damaged tubes, but when they ride their bikes down the street with the tires flat, everyone in the neighborhood knows where they bought those tires.”

Now with the internet, my neighborhood just got bigger. I can tell a million people where I bought my flat tires! Very little goes unreported upon these days. Apparently the furniture companies don't get that either. (There are a lot of American industries that need a major change in management because they don't care about the customer either. It's not just the furniture business.)

Duane and my father understood many of the same things. Duane will survive in the shrinking furniture business.

He doesn't have a marketing department, or an engineering group, but he does have grateful customers who can accomplish the same thing as the world's best marketing department. Get on the internet and talk up The Keeping Room.

Duane's helped you. Please promote The Keeping Room and My Furniture Forum.

It's that simple.

PS No, Duane didn't ask me to post this. I only know Duane from buying furniture from him, so if you don't like my post, blame it on me.