SIMPLE IDEAS CAN WORK: Friends and family can mean business if the food is good and table is set for action

Forget about the sales nostrums and bring on the food. Yeh, vittles to satisfy the real appetite for home furnishings.

While sales just blow past most people, food is filling and food for thought can be mighty nutritious. So what do I mean?

Set the table for selected consumers, preferably newsmakers in your community. Yeh, invite them to your store for a dinner party, with the dessert served as real pie in the sky in form of tasty discounts, under the observation of the local news media.

Need a theme? How about a report on your shopping experience at April's High Point Market? There’s a whole lot of information that can be shared from such a productive business adventure.

Back to the dinner party for hungry retailers. Think cooperatively in your community. A furniture merchant, fine restaurant, fabulous dessertery and story-starved local news media all conspire deliciously for fun and profit.

Everyone wins in cooperatively assuring high mutual visibility. Can you picture as group of convivial folk, dining on in style and talking style and design, during a well planned dinner party where the furniture and the participants are the stars? I can.

What happens is the furniture merchant receives the primary attention, with the help of others, and dinner guests come away filled with positive thoughts, and the local news filled with good story.

Now do it and get your just desserts.