Feedback

Rob Walker, Orbital Vision Things change rapidly in the furniture industry, and the industry isn’t always geared up to face rapid change. We saw this during Covid – businesses either adapted and got online, or didn’t and suffered

Andy Stockwell, Gardiner Haskins From any sector, keep innovating, keep moving forwards. The pace of change in retail has always been fast, and this has accelerated exponentially in the last couple of years. If you aren’t keeping pace, you’re sure to be left behind

John Conroy, Morrisofa Europe The tech sector sells a full concept rather than a product – for example, buying an apple iPhone usually leads to buying Airpods, an iPad, iWatch and iPod to go with it. Why do we only try to sell a sofa, rather than a professionally designed roomset?

Mike Whitman, Iconography The importance of supplier-driven assets. If suppliers want their products to be chosen over their competitors’ (either by the end-user or by retailers), they need to offer that retailer support

Wendy Martin Green, Peter Green Furnishers As a smaller company, distribution is something we could learn from the online sector. Amazon and, dare I mention, Wayfair, have it down. They know how to get products almost anywhere, and quickly

Huw Williams, Toons Furnishers To analyse the peaks and troughs in trading and try to fix them. At the end of my first year at Toons I realised we had some significant slow periods. I used my knowledge of product sales in other retail sectors I’d worked in and introduced new product groups to level out the trading pattern – such as a Christmas department and garden furniture Steve Adams, Matress Online To be more transparent with our product-naming conventions. As an industry, we do a great job of confusing our customers with smoke and mirrors. To complicate the buying process even more, our terminology is alien to many customers – we need to educate and demystify at the same time

Mike Murray, Land of Beds I think our industry needs to look at a more varied supply chain and locally sourced materials

Peter Harding, Fairway Furniture The past 18 months has illustrated just how far behind many sectors the furniture industry is – lead time management, keeping retailers updated and controlling costs are just some of the things that could be significantly improved. However, as online gets ever more important, the biggest thing that could benefit both retailers and manufacturers would be a full appreciation of the need to provide full marketing assets for each and every item in a product range Steve Pickering, Sussex Beds Traditionally our industry has always been swayed towards a male bias. I believe a rebalance toward females, especially in positions of leadership, would be beneficial in terms of views and ideas. Considering the majority of our consumer decisions are made or influenced by the female party, it makes great sense to increase their influence

John Northwood (trade agent) Our sector has been lagging behind with the use of technology that is available now with some businesses. However, with the pandemic, a lot of individuals and businesses have now realised the benefit and are addressing this – but in my opinion, there is still a way to go

#390 March 2022

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