PURPOSE AND BEING: Living comfortably is the sustaining marketing message for sustaining satisfaction

Look at the beautifully evocative image above. Isn’t it what our industry is all about? Damn right!

In the oil painting — White Roses from The Ashton Company — the essence of our industry’s purpose and being radiates so bright. Even so, this enduring message of comfort is missing in all the vapid sale-price-item cacophony that is home furnishings promotions today.

In case you missed it, nowhere in the image are discounts, no-no-no nonsense and other mercantile chicanery.

Here’s how I discovered the image: A friend and I talked about our industry’s purpose and being. With passion, I said all of us — merchants, manufacturers, suppliers and all connected to the home furnishings industry — are engaged in the sacred responsibility of furnishing people’s homes.

Hearing that, my friend sprang to his feet, took me the arm and joyfully commanded, “Come with me. I’ll show you what we’re all about, but most people don’t declare.”

I really didn’t expect such a demonstrable response, and I’m so glad he showed me the purpose-encompassing image appearing in this post.

As a supplier of sorts, my friend is detached professionally from consumers, but is closer to their hearts and minds than many merchants and vendors who seem to be too busy selling. They choose to ignore or are oblivious to recognize our industry’s primary responsibility of ministering comfort and joy from function, design and style.

In the past when I have written about responsibility, I am characterized as a naïve twit, dispensing warm and fuzzy information that doesn’t have much to do with selling furniture.

To which, I ask, ”If you’re not in this business to help people live comfortably, then get out.” People don’t want to be sold sticks and cloth or closed. They want to be opened with ways to dream and attain those dreams.

No matter how real marketing is, real men feel they need to sell for sales sake. To them, marketing is for wimps and twits who creatively craft strategies that actually establish a lasting context for sales to exist.

Back to this glorious image above. My friend is rare at his professional level, even if it is so distant from the merchant-designer level. His exquisite empathy constitutes an enduring virtue that guides his personal life and helps focus an honorable world view.

“Just look at this painting and you will see what we’re about,” he exclaimed, pointing vigorously at what he called “an embodiment” of our industry’s purpose and being. “She is comfortable, relaxed, safe and contented in an environment she loves.”

What’s more, he explained, “The brightness of life flows into the room that envelopes her and anyone else who goes there.” Look closely, and you’ll see two glasses on the cocktail table.

Each of us in our own way needs to translate and convey the enduring message of this marvelous image into our own lives and circumstances to satisfy people, the consumers who pay the bills.

The comfort of White Roses constitutes a powerful marketing message of the strength of simplicity, in a well-designed living environment that honorably transports people to comfort they deserve and always want.

If we’re not purveyors of living comfortably, then what are we doing in and industry whose purpose and being is all about comfortable living?

By any other name, White Roses, is a marketing message that still smells as sweet as satisfying people to live comfortably.