Retail Success: Furniture Mall Focuses On “Ohhh Yeah!”

Interview with Jeff and Jamie Winter

Furniture Mall’s formula for success is ‘happy family, happy guests, happy business’ in that order. They are known for their jingle, their in-store trikes, “Oh Yeah!” Team, Solutions Specialists, and much more.

Jeff and Jamie Winter never expected to be in the furniture business, much less find happiness there. So, how did these brothers, who enjoyed successful engineering careers, end up owning two Furniture Malls in Kansas, one in Missouri and an Ashley Home Store?

Their Story

“Jamie and I grew up in the furniture business,” explained Jeff Winter. “We dusted the showroom and worked in the warehouse and delivery. But we knew that running a furniture store wasn’t what we wanted to do with our lives.”

Jeff attended Kansas State University, earned an engineering degree, and then worked for Maytag for 16 years, eventually becoming the senior director of Maytag Laundry Products.
“During that time, our folks sold their store, Winter Furniture. I had my dream job, so never in a million years did I expect to be called back into the furniture business. Then, in 1999, I got that call. Mom and Dad were on the line, saying they planned to open a new furniture store in Topeka, Kansas. And we all said, ‘Why in the world would you want to do that?’ They replied, ‘Because we think we can do it better.’ One thing led to another, and I soon moved my family across the country to help start Discovery Furniture, which eventually became Furniture Mall of Kansas.”

Jamie Winter, 10 years younger than Jeff, shared his brother’s lack of interest in a furniture retailing career. He earned a degree in electrical engineering and became director of manufacturing for Continental, a motor vehicle products supplier. “I did that for 16 years,” he said. “In 2009, I also decided to move back home to be near family and join the growing business.”

When asked if their background in engineering leads them to approach Furniture Mall’s business differently than most of their peers in the furniture industry, Jamie replied he didn’t think so. “Working with people. That’s what it’s all about,” he explained. Jeff agreed. “Our real passion is growing people and making things better.”

However, anyone that knows them would say they focus a lot more on metrics and numbers than the average furniture store owner.

Becoming Furniture Mall

By the time Jamie Winter joined the company in 2009, Discovery Furniture had expanded by opening three stores under one roof with three separate entrances. The stores were named Discovery Furniture, Room Makers and Mattress Headquarters.

“We had Discovery Furniture on one end of our campus, a mattress headquarters in the center, and Room Maker’s on the other end,” Jeff recalled. “We purchased Marling's Furniture, a higher-end store. And when Macy’s left the Topeka market, we considered purchasing their building.”

They did, however, have a couple of concerns regarding their growth trajectory. Market research indicated that operating stores under different names wasn’t working as a cohesive branding strategy. And they feared that adding the Macy’s building with its two floors and multiple entrances would complicate matters further. The brothers decided that if they were going to be attached to a mall, their solution was to rebrand the entire operation as Furniture Mall (at that time) of Kansas.

“The business expanded rapidly from that point,” Jeff said. “Our current Furniture Malls are between 120,000 and 160,000 square feet, not including Ashley or our 200,000- square-foot DC.”

Formula for Success

“Furniture Mall’s formula for success is ‘happy family, happy guests, happy business,' in that order. We believe that if we care for our work family, they will take good care of our guests. And if we don’t make too many dumb decisions along the way, we will have a happy business. We focus on helping everyone to be their best selves by believing the right things, earning trust and respect, serving others, and turning ordinary into extraordinary moments.

“It’s a three-wheel trike model with a big front wheel that steers and back wheels that support. For us, the front wheel is a happy work family."

Corporate Chaplain: Jamie explained, “We try to help employees navigate difficult business and personal situations. To succeed at work, they also need to be successful in life. Our full-time corporate chaplain makes that happen more often.”

“Even though he has a Ph.D. in theology,” Jeff added, “our chaplain does not push our values onto anyone. His function is to help our people navigate their lives. He helps our work family with their finances, relations with friends, family and life in the furniture business. He makes hospital visits and officiates at weddings and funerals. When we were a smaller company, it was much easier for us to be involved, but now, with so much going on, it feels good to have him step in when we can’t be present for people.”

The Jingle, Trikes & Smiles

When asked what Furniture Mall is best known for, Jeff answered, “It’s probably the jingle we’ve featured in our advertising since about 2010 (QR code on page 30). It’s more than just a marketing piece; it represents the feeling we want our work family to embody and our guests to experience when shopping at Furniture Mall and enjoying their purchases afterwards at home. When Jamie and I are out in the world and say we’re from the Furniture Mall, people start singing. Recently, I was serenaded by a group of plumbers digging up a water line in front of my house!

“The other thing we are known for is the adult- and kid-sized trikes guests use in our stores. These make the in-store experience fun and unique. It’s hard for an adult to ride a trike around our stores without smiling. There may be good reasons not to have trikes rolling around a furniture store, but the benefits outweigh any risks. There’s a restaurant here in Missouri called Lambert’s Cafe that’s known as the ‘Home of the Throwed Rolls.’ Instead of delivering rolls to tables, they throw them, which people remember. Our trikes have a similar branding effect.”

Ohhh Yeah! Team

Furniture World asked Jeff to explain other ideas Furniture Mall has introduced to make customers smile. “When guests arrive, instead of being greeted by sales staff, they are welcomed by our ‘Ohhh Yeah!’ team,” he explained. Furniture Mall has always offered shoppers free food and beverages. In 2024, they took their greeting to the next level by providing customers with a printed menu. The Ohhh Yeah! team takes orders from guests for items such as cappuccinos, lattes, soft drinks, cookies and more as people begin their shopping journey.
“This sets the stage for one of our solutions specialists—we don’t call them salespeople—to approach shoppers."

Solutions Specialists

Here’s how it works: An Ohhh Yeah! team member radios the order to the Howdy Cafe. When it’s ready, the cafe alerts a solutions specialist, who delivers it to their next guest. “This makes most of our guests feel comfortable and cared for. It also helps take their guard down. For those people who don’t feel comfortable accepting free stuff, that’s OK, too.

“The same is true for guests who are just looking. For a while, we gave those people a card with green and red sides. Showing the red side indicated, ‘I just want to look. If I need assistance, I will ask.' Showing the green side telegraphed, ‘I’m ready. I have a question.’
“Although I could make generalizations about how customers’ expectations are ever-changing, there’s no single perfect process we could provide that would fit every guest. Some want to browse on their own, and others appreciate a full design center experience,” Jeff observed.

“We’re constantly aware that we must adapt our marketing and processes to suit our guests. That’s part of the fun and part of the challenge.”

The Furniture First Effect

The Winters family joined Furniture First before Discovery Furniture opened in 1999. “We can trace most of our important strategic decisions to either a performance group meeting or private discussions with other Furniture First members,” Jamie recalled. “The benefits of belonging are more than just buying power; the relationships we’ve developed have pushed us to do better, challenged us to think differently, and held us accountable.

“Owning a store can be stressful, but having relationships with other retailers dealing with similar issues has been a game changer for us in terms of our business strategy and direction."

Energy & Culture

Jeff remembered that growing up, Winter family vacations always included visits to furniture stores. “Our parents would point out when a store had what they called ‘energy’—a vibe dependent on company culture.” Apparently, the Winter brothers absorbed their parents’ lesson, starting with how they approach hiring at Furniture Mall.

Jamie observed that it’s common to walk through any of their stores and hear laughter. “If Furniture World readers visit Furniture Mall, they will notice that our solutions specialists are having fun with customers. Even during serious meetings, when decisions are made and actions taken, we enjoy what we do. That mindset starts with the people who work at Furniture Mall, especially our managers.

“We look for new hires that align with our core cultural values of being humble, hungry, smart and family-focused,” Jeff explained. “This approach was prompted by reading ‘The Ideal Team Player’ by Patrick Lencioni. It’s not original to us but fits who we are.”

Humble: “The first attribute, humble, describes a person who is willing, excited and curious about learning new things. Without that, people can’t learn and grow."

Hungry: “Hungry selects people who can do more and are eager and willing to do whatever is needed at Furniture Mall. Being hungry fits well with our dirty fingernails and roll-up-our-sleeves mentality."

Smart: “Smart is more about people smarts than high IQs. We value people who are compassionate, able to understand other people’s needs and who carefully consider how they react and respond. Those people work best with our guests and as team members."
Family-Focused: “The final attribute we look for is being family-focused. Jamie and I were lucky to have that growing up, but not everyone does. Even so, we try to hire people looking to fit in and belong because that’s necessary to build strong teams and support our company culture.”

Automation Tools

Jamie recalled that following his years in the engineering industry, where every decision was backed up with data, he was surprised (and perhaps appalled) by the lack of data being used in the furniture industry. “While getting ready to go to my first official High Point Market in 2009,” he said, “I inquired about Discovery Furniture’s buying strategy. My dad replied that we would visit all our current vendors, look for some new product we think we can sell and then buy it. That sounded crazy to me.

“So, I began to develop a set of tools to make buying and merchandising decisions based on data. We automated as much of the reorder process as we could back then and started measuring sales metrics to enable more effective coaching. When I shared some of what we had learned during a performance group meeting, another retailer asked if we could help them do the same for their business. That was the start of Tools2Win. We began putting a team together to develop the software further. Tools2Win now supports 250 storefronts nationwide, helping retailers automate to make smarter, faster decisions based on data.

“Here at Furniture Mall, we automate wherever we can, but we believe a more personal approach is needed for customer interactions.”
Jeff added, “There are tons of great ways that AI can be used in retail furniture store operations, but we aren’t replacing customer communications on the lead side with automated AI systems. We believe that face-to-face personal communication is what our shoppers crave. So, when someone talks to us, we feel that we should respond personally.”

Other Ideas

Best Ideas: The brothers shared that one of their favorite things to do in performance group settings and at the annual Furniture First Symposium is to recognize best ideas. They now harness that power at Furniture Mall. In the last quarter of 2024, they implemented 27 new ideas submitted by employees.

A Thousand Rooms: Furniture Mall boasts a thousand rooms of furniture and mattresses on display in each store. "Many furniture stores say that they display, for example, 100,000 square feet of furniture and accessories. People have trouble visualizing what that means. Furniture Mall’s displays are mostly arranged by good, better, and best by room. There are also destination departments, like recliners and some lifestyle, also good, better and best."

Merchandising: Furniture Mall applies an 80/20 rule to its merchandising. Eighty percent of its inventory purchase decisions are data driven. The remaining 20% are more fashion-focused to create excitement. “We don’t expect this 20% to be top sellers but having a wall of furniture highlighting the latest Pantone colors attracts attention by standing out in a sea of brown furniture.”

Advertising: Sending relevant emails to guests has proven to be successful for Furniture Mall. The next best is streaming and broadcast TV and paid digital ads. SEO content marketing, such as value-added videos, has become more important to drive people to www.thefurnituremall.com.

Furniture Mall’s video content employs a ‘they ask, you answer’ philosophy, which Jeff read about in Marcus Sheridan’s “They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer.” Furniture Mall also sends customized direct mail pieces to website visitors who recently looked for sofas or made a purchase.

Retail Challenges

When asked to name some of the major challenges independent retailers will likely face in the next two to five years, Jeff responded with the following:

Succession Planning: “As many independent furniture retailers continue to age out, succession planning and preparing for the next generation of leadership is their number one challenge.”

Company Culture: “A second challenge for furniture retailers is building a culture that attracts and retains talent. People don’t usually grow up thinking, ‘Man, I want to be a furniture salesperson and work in retail.’ Creating workplaces people enjoy is the best way to attract and retain real talent.”

Winning in the Marketplace: "To compete as independent retailers, we must focus on what online and big box retailers can’t deliver well —personalization, experience, and trust."

Growing: "Growth isn’t just about getting bigger—it’s about getting a little better every day. As the old saying goes: When you stop growing you start dying."

Staying Relevant: "Guests expect faster, better, cheaper, relevant options, and convenient shopping experiences. If we retailers don’t evolve, and change, we lose relevance."

“On the plus side,” Jamie noted, “being an independent furniture retailer has advantages, including being able to adapt faster, personalize better and create deeper relationships than big box or online-only retailers.”

A People Business

“We believe retail is truly a people business,” Jamie Winter concluded. “At Furniture Mall, the key to winning is to have a people-first focus that reflects our company culture in ways that make our guests and work-family say Ohhh Yeah!”

"How did these brothers, who enjoyed successful engineering careers, end up owning two Furniture Malls in Kansas, one in Missouri and an Ashley Home Store?"

HIGHLIGHTS:

“We try to help employees navigate difficult business and personal situations. To succeed at work, they also need to be successful in life. Our full-time corporate chaplain makes that happen more often.”

“We look for new hires that align with our core cultural values of being humble, hungry, smart and family-focused.”