Customer Profile: EverythingFurniture.com

A furniture retailer brings a broad selection of quality merchandise online for a streamlined shopping experience.

When it comes to online shopping, furniture might not be the first product category that comes to mind. Yet, when you consider the benefits it offers, it can actually be a win-win proposition. For the consumer, it diminishes the hassle of shopping around for the right piece. For the seller, it eliminates the need to maintain thousands of square feet of retail space.

These are some of the many benefits Scott Perry, president and CEO of Everything Furniture Inc. has realized over the years. "If we had all the products featured on our web site on a showroom floor, it would probably fill a couple-of-hundred-thousand square feet," he says.

A Family Tradition
In 2002, when Perry and his wife started the web site, furniture was the obvious choice. "It's a family tradition," he says. "My grandfather was in the furniture business and my father still is active in the industry as a manufacturer's representative."

"In the beginning, we had about 200 products from two or three vendors," Perry says. "Now, we have more than 10,000 products from more than 50 vendors. And we're estimating that, by the end of the year, we'll have more than 100 vendors and close to 20,000 products. We're adding things as fast as we can."

Currently, the site features furniture for the bathroom, bedroom, dining room, entry and foyer, kitchen, and living room, as well as office furniture.

Meeting Customer Needs
Perry knows that the customer who buys furniture online has special needs and is determined to meet them head-on. "We've done extensive interviews and customer panels to see where they're coming from," he says. "We've come to the conclusion that our customer is the very busy professional who doesn't have the time or energy to drive around to five or six furniture stores to look for what they want. They need things quickly."

In addition to providing an extensive merchandise selection, EverythingFurniture.com aims to replace the in-person shopping experience by providing detailed information about each piece of furniture, accompanied with a variety of visuals to display the product. "We typically present alternative photography," Perry says. "For example, for a cedar chest, we'll show a picture of a drawer pulled out and the wood glide in the middle or ball-bearing glides on the side. We like our site to be as self-service as possible. And we have a call center to answer any questions."

The site also features updated buying guides and articles. "We try our best to inform customers about things like construction, techniques and quality levels," he says. "We offer a resource guide, which includes tips on how to compare furniture stores. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from our customers."

Careful Selection of Vendors
"Our customers not only want items quickly, but a good value as well," he says. "So, we're picky about choosing vendors that allocate warehouse space for us and guarantee that our product selection is in stock at all times or on short back order. We don't choose vendors with six- to eight-week lead times."

Damages in shipping can be a real problem in the furniture business, so packaging is a critical issue. "We also make sure our vendors know how to package well," Perry says. "We consult with many of our vendors about how to enhance their packaging by using corner blocks or reengineering their interior packaging with Styrofoam and different packaging techniques that I've learned over the past 10 years to greatly reduce damages and ensure that the customer is happy."

Efficiency From Front- to Back-end
With its recent overhaul of the site's shopping cart feature EverythingFurniture.com has realized new efficiencies. "We were one of the early adopters of Yahoo!'s Beta shopping cart," Perry says, "and we were able to take our customers from a four-step checkout process to a one-page checkout."

The redesigned cart consolidates the entry of billing and shipping information and order confirmation. "It has greatly helped our cart abandonment rates." The company has already seen a marked improvement in sales conversion.

In addition, communication with vendors is facilitated by the implementation of electronic data interchange (EDI) technology. "We used to have piles of invoices and purchase orders every day," Perry says. "Now, electronic transmission of orders and invoices eliminates paperwork and errors. And it allows us to continue to scale and grow the business with fewer accounting personnel."

Room for Growth
As EverythingFurniture.com grows, so does its visibility. The company's furniture contribution to the renovation project for a Los Angeles community hospital was recently featured on an episode of "Extreme Makeover." The company has also been recognized as one of the Top 400 Retail Web Sites by Internet Retailer and as a member of the Inc. 500 list.

In a category that saw sales growth of 24 percent last year, according to ComScore Networks, online furniture sales are here to stay. And so is EverythingFurniture.com.

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