CLICKS NEED BRICKS: The mortar of the online story and the demise of FurnitureFind is what’s in store

So FurnitureFind, a generally accepted kind of online retailer pickpocket, found reality in what seems to be a predestined demise: You can’t sustain success in biting the retailer hand that has been feeding you.

For almost a dozen years, the so-called online furniture retailer found it couldn’t keep feeding off the customers of bricks-and-mortar stores.

The rustling had to end one day, as more street situated and savvy stores realized the Internet was their enabling partner and not some mysterious cyber enemy.

The news coverage is remarkable for the amazing candor of FurnitureFind’s management in acknowledging a flawed business model, as well as what the company’s demise confirmed:

Pure online retailing without creating demand is always doomed. And stores with a bona fide physical and online presence are the future.

Their complementary Internet venues are used as credible paths to the stores and not just thin sales platforms.

What FurnitureFind did correctly is promote the validity of online shoppers wanting to find or search for furniture, preferably locally.

The search function needs to be left to the professionals, the honest and trusted service providers with the capacity and resources to deliver. The discipline of precision online search is a profession no different than law, accounting and medicine, which is rightfully outsourced.

Our industry’s recurring error in judgment is the false believe that everything can be done because self-styled furniture executives believe they can do everything except focus on the core competence.

The real search solution for our industry is partnering with a large, trusted service provider, working with and through the leading trade associations or other encompassing and influential entity.

If manufacturers want to be found, they first have to invest in retailers who are the electronic divining rods to shoppers searching for furniture locally.

Thinking globally and acting locally is the mortar fastening the bricks to the Internet Highway.

Comments

[Wistful]

"Our industry's recurring error in judgment is the false believe that everything can be done because self-styled furniture executives believe they can do everything except focus on the core competence."

belief, not believe (You’re right. Oops! Glad you’re reading IF carefully. I made an error, and you and others caught it.)

Why bother to point out a simple typo/misspelling? Because it underlies a lack of attention to detail not just in the words of the post, but the analysis of the situation as well.

The long and short of it is that furniture retailers and manufacturers need to embrace technology because their consumers have embraced technology.

It's too bad FurnitureFind's electronic catalog concept did not take off in 2005 when it was first conceived. It would have been a beautiful partnership of technology and the ability to touch and feel.

Meanwhile, if the furniture industry wants to stop its downward spiral, they need to re-invent themselves. There's a desperate need for a change in how the consumer views furniture and how the furniture industry - thought of by most consumers as bad used-car-salesmen - presents themselves.