GETTING HIGH: Strung out furniture vendors and retailers push furniture as their mercantile drug of choice

When the going gets tough, the tough get pushing furniture, harder and harder. And that’s what’s happening with frightening regularity, without much thought to any unintended consequences.

At the Las Vegas Market, and elsewhere, manufacturers are hawking incredible deals to dump languishing inventories and stimulate business.

What’s more, they’re juicing business to keep their factories busy, more akin to treading water to just stay afloat and weather this sluggish business storm

Slashing prices to attract retailers may work in the short run, but will those merchants pass or push along the savings to consumers? And if they do, will the barrage of “factory specials” and other survivalist imperatives actually drive more business where it really counts — consumers?

In these challenging times, the industry resorts to reactionary product pushing tactics, conveying more desperation than authority. But that’s all they know, feeling a flow of lower prices will work again. This time it’s tougher, for sure.

The unintended consequences seem to be clear. Retailers will always demand bigger, margin- robbing discounts, as they introduce confusion in the market place with blowout promotions that confirm to consumers that buying furniture can be a mercantile rollercoaster ride.

No easy answer exists, except to restate the obvious that something different has to occur.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know what I will say again: The industry and its push-inspired participants need to establish a powerful, yet endearing marketing platform that conveys furniture as a critical element in living better and more comfortably.

“You’re right,” is the standard answer when I discuss the need with industry folk. And they all continue with, “But our industry has never done that.”

Sounds like a good reason to change.

A cohesive marketing pull overrides the inefficient selling push technique. You can’t make people buy anything, but you can establish context that establishes and sustains a desire.

The furniture business is similar to farming, a never-ending process of cultivating to enjoy the fruits of the labor invested. Find the right methods and ways of implementing them continue to a significant challenge to our industry’s associations, which seem to be equally stymied.

Unfortunately, for the retailers and their vendors who want immediate results from a problem years in he making.

They don’t have time, as they race to the bottom where there’s no winners, just whiners who are governed by schemes, pitches and exasperation instead of finding ways to help consumers satisfy their dreams, wishes and aspirations.

Go figure.