THREE R’s FOR SUCCESS: Readin’, Right-Sizin’, and ‘Rithmetic will straighten the learnin’ curve for the transformational economy

Passing the rigorous test of succeeding in a transformational economy requires furniture retailers and manufacturers to bone up on three R’s: Readin’, Right-Sizin’ and ‘Rithmetic.

Readin’ — The Readin’ part is easy. All the news stories about how consumers are adopting a “needs” approach in all they do and buy defines the sustaining contours of business today.

If you’re marketing to wants instead of needs, you’ll be coming up wanting.

Get your head in today’s mercantile game: It’s needs over wants in the marketplace. The McMansions are not in McFavor. So all that behemoth furniture, those statement and stately Paul Bunyan case goods are passé in the right-sizing economy.

Wretched excess is for phony fantasy television programs, not to mention a probable badge of dishonor.

The new real world is appealing to the needs of people whose living and lifestyles embody the parsimonious virtues of the Great Depression: Be smart, be frugal, beware of squandering hard earned money.

Right-Sizin’ — People wanting to enjoy comfortable living are right-sizing their homes to conform to how they live in this new economic normalcy.   

They’re not downsizing nor upsizing, they are consciously sizing up what they need to conform to how they live in their domiciles (homes, condominiums and apartments). 

My friend Gale Steves (former editor of Home magazine) has written a breezy guide book, Right-Sizing Your Home. She will be previewing the book (published next month) in a High Point Market designer workshop/book signing luncheon on Tuesday, April 20, noon-1:30, at 101 South Main Street, Restaurant-Plaza level. Reservations for limited seating required: marketing@highpointmarket.org

‘Rithmetic —  Do the math about the transformational economy. Consumers are interested in right-sizing, a fact confirmed when the News & Record (Greensboro, North Carolina) published a feature (see story below) about Gale. More than 450 people wanted to attend this trade only event. Amazing.

Project those numbers across the nation, and you can see that presenting fresh alternatives to help people live better in place will be mutually rewarding. 

The more retailers and manufacturers learn how the principles of right-sizing, the more precise they can be in what is produced and presented. 

Catch the right-sizing drift from Gale: I believe in right-sizing. It was in the late 1980’s that I first began noticing out-sized homes in all different parts of the country, with rooms either too big or too tall, or too small to be useful. At the same time, I realized that many older homes, mostly not so big, had rooms with labels in no way relevant to the way we live. What’s wrong with this picture?