How We Saved Our Luxury Business by Selling to Middle America
By Peggy Farabaugh, Founder, Vermont Woods Studios, Vernon, Vt.
If we don't grow fast enough, we are out of the game. As more people buy furniture from China, the customer base for our hand-crafted Vermont furniture is shrinking, along with our prices and profit margins.
The thing is, high-volume sales aren't for us. We are still devoted to the high-end, artisan niche, but now we've broadened our line to more affordable products. Thanks to this new target market, and some aggressive online marketing and media blitzes, we're not just staying afloat; we're on track to double sales from the previous year.
Rethinking our niche
We entered this business with a passion for really high-end, custom-made artisan-crafted furniture -- the kind of furniture that Vermont is all about. After almost a year, however, sales were next to nonexistent. Vermont has a population of just 700,000 people, and no one comes here to buy furniture. We tried selling items online but quickly realized that you couldn't sell a $20,000 piece of furniture sight unseen. People need to meet the artisan and fall in love with his or her work to buy something like that.
Around this time, I attended the Las Vegas Market, an annual furniture expo. Speaking with sellers who have had success, I realized that to make a go of the furniture business you have to sell to middle America. We needed a product line that was affordable enough for people to buy online, while still maintaining our commitment to honor Vermont's woodworkers.
I started researching our competition. I networked with the professional association of Vermont woodworkers to find companies that still make beautiful handcrafted furniture but are bigger -- and therefore more affordable for consumers. I knew that offering a range of styles would be important, so we brought on three different local furniture makers to strike a mix of styles and prices.
Pushing and pulling our customers
Once we established the right product line, we needed sales. We took two approaches: pulling and pushing customers. The first tactic is about pulling customers who are already actively looking online for furniture onto our Web site. For this, Google AdWords has been our most effective strategy. AdWords helps increase the number of people who come to us by searching for terms like "Vermont artisan furniture." Setting this up is something of a science, but Google practically has a university where you can learn how to use AdWords.
The other way that I pull customers in is through superior customer service. We advertise lifetime guarantees on our products and will ship anywhere in the lower 48 for free. With such large products, shipping can be an issue. So we bend over backwards for customers to solve any shipping issues they might have.
Pushing, on the other hand, refers to bringing in clients who aren't necessarily looking to specifically for our products. For example, we'll target buyers who are interested in "green" lifestyles and furniture by emphasizing our mission: We work with local artisans who use wood that does not come from endangered rainforests.
Growing through persistence
Our goal is to have enough of a media presence eventually that we will push more customers to our site. I post like crazy for our blog, and write for other sites in exchange for links back to our site. PR is how I spend 50 percent of my time.
However, raising awareness is an overwhelming task. I hired a publicist one a year ago, and he helped us get some prominent coverage in outlets including Fox News, the Weather Channel, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But the press has been like a drop in the bucker so far. It is hard to measure the effect of these media placements, and we haven't been able to tie a single sale directly to this effort, which really bothers me.
Even so, I can't complain: Our sales have doubled since last year, and we're on track to reach $700,000 in sales this year. Growing the business has been very tough, but my staff is energetic and ready to go for it, so we don't see any reason why this train should stop.
Peggy Farabaugh is determined to find creative ways to make her business work: After a fire destroyed Vermont Wood Studios' original office, she bartered office space at a horse farm in exchange for doing farm chores.
-- As told to Caitlin Elsaesser
Resources:
- Learn how to get more traffic with Google AdWords.
- Avoid costly errors with AdWords.
- Read about fine-tuning your online presence.