Search for a Dealer by zip code
Leather swatch colors and descriptions
Town and Country items shown by separate category
Overlayments of leathers and fabrics on frame photos (clickable)
Room Planning Guide - web based
I've been exchanging ideas with the person at Hancock and Moore who is in charge of their marketing and website. Since we have a lot of H&M traffic here on this forum, what do you want to see on their website that is not currently featured? I'll gather all comments and pass them along for review.
I'm going to post a poll to go along with this thread, but feel free to add additional comments.
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.
Definitely better & more revealing photography, please! I was just griping about this 5 minutes ago. It would be nice to be able to see pieces from all angles & zoom in on details to our hearts' content. For example, I am in the market for a sofa & 2 chairs that will be sitting in the middle of the room. What the pieces look like from the rear is an important consideration.
Also, I think most people would also like to have more information about H&M's leathers. I understand their reticence to publish colors since there's so much variation among hides, even in the same colorway. But a ballpark idea (with the requisite caveat about monitors, hides, yadayada included ) would be doable it seems to me. Not all H&M salespeople are as knowledgable as the owner of this website which means most prospective H&M consumers face a daunting task trying to make heads or tails of the confused (to them) offerings.
A search function which allows us to instantly find dealers nearest to our zipcode would be handy.
But what would really be fabulous is a way to find a floor sample of a piece we're interested in. For example, punch in XYZ sofa, then your zipcode & out pops the nearest place we can take it for a "test drive".
But that's probably too much to ask unless they have an inventory tracker with all their dealers loaded on the system.
I second everything leilani stated! It would be nice for them to say which leather their piece is shown in, with ,of course, the necessary disclaimers about variance, etc.
I would like to know the stores that carry H & M. It wouldn't be difficult to call them to see if they carried the particular item I am looking for. And pictures with more views or click to rotate would be nice. Yes, leather swatches organized by grade would be helpful, too.
I think it would be nice to have a general idea of what leathers I am interested in before heading to the dealer to see them in person.
Looking at the dealers rings of swatches is quite overwhelming due to the large number of choices.
Posting the swatches/names/descriptions of the leathers on the H&M website would give me a general idea of what I am interested in and be better prepared when visiting the dealer.
This would save time for both the dealer and I.
Thanks Duane.
-JF
I think it is really unbelievable that you want to buy a $5000 sofa and can't find it within a 100 mile radius in metropolitan Boston. It isn't easy to even find out who carries their sofa's and then when you do there are 2 or 3 (always Austin, apparently a top seller) in the entire store. H&M needs to incent their dealers to get more and different product in their showrooms. I have been to 5 dealers this month and sat in a total of 8 sofa models. How about a manufacturers showroom in the Northeast? I also second the requests for looking at leathers on line, consumers really do understand that monitors are not accurate representation of product, at least you would have a ballpark of swatches to ask for. Though I really want to, it is a lot of work to buy their products.
Believe it or not, largely as a result of the comments here on this subject, H&M called today and told me that they decided to put the leather swatches on their website! So you see, a little grassroots effort now and then does pay off. It will be a bit of an undertaking, so don't expect to see them right away - and certainly don't expect the on-line samples to be dead-on accurate. The smart shopper will use the web photos as a way to narrow choices, and then request actual samples from the dealer of their choice.
As for stock in the stores, that's going to be determined by how well you - the local store customer - supports that store. One can't expect a store to load up on inventory when shoppers are using the resources in that store to sample the goods then go on-line to order from someone else. Its expensive to inventory goods, they do become 'shop-worn' and if the retailer is not getting the return on investment why would he want to load up on the brand? If people support their local dealer through purchases made at that store, then the floor presence will increase naturally with in the line. That's the business aspect of it all.
H&M - is not going to install regional product showrooms around the country because they are prohibitively expensive to do so.
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.
We've had this discussion before but I really think a few regional showrooms in high traffic areas (within 1-2 hours driving distance of Boston, NYC, Dallas, LA, San Fran, and a few others) would propel sales much higher and more than pay for themselves.
Requiring customers to buy subjectively-pleasing and very expensive products sight unseen must lead to thousands of lost sales. Even a nut like me who's willing to drive all over shopping-haven NJ to look at sofas can't find much H&M product to sit in.
Samples of leather swatches and more views of a particular piece of furniture are a must. A detailed description of the type of leather and if it is protected or not should have been on the website as well. I must say that buying a piece of furniture this way is a pain and with some dealers just telling you what you want to hear to make the sale, its is very difficult for the customer to make an informed choice.
I had to call H&M about 4 times to get dealers that carry the brand, and when I finally contacted them they did not even have one single piece.
Its been a part time job buying a sofa from then.
Along with the current photos of their frames, I'd like them to just divulge the leather that it happens to be covered in. That would be oh so helpful! Sometimes I see a frame I really don't like, but a leather I think looks really good, but I have no idea what it is.