Editor's Corner
An introduction to each Furniture World issue, plus observations and editorial comments from Russell Bienenstock.
I’m confident that many of you have given some recent thought to updating your workplace harassment policies and education.
This holiday season my mind muses on season-appropriate themes of gratitude and turkeys.
With regard to gratitude, it is generally accepted that grateful people have less stress, which scientists say translates into better health and longer lives.
The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same!
In this edition of Furniture World, our Point/Counterpoint duo, Bill Napier and Ed Tashjian, debate the efficacy of print vs. digital.
62 years of service to the furniture industry.
A tough furniture industry trailblazer at a time when few women worked outside the home as traveling salespeople. Thelma was an icon of persistence, likability and humility.
Some days I come to work believing that not much has changed in our industry. Other mornings, like this one, the world seems full of possibilities.
Before the recent election, my friend Ed Tashjian let me know about an article he wrote, “Five Lessons Marketers Can Learn from Trump.”
“The most successful retailers have been able through nurturing, to obtain and develop exceptional employees throughout all areas of their businesses - whether it be sales, administration or distribution,” says Wayne McMahon in his “State-of-the-Industry” report.
I’m thinking about disruptive change, the type that could make furniture factories and retail stores as we know them obsolete; the kind that could do to furniture manufacturers and retailers what the last 20 years of the 19th Century did to cabinet makers.
Since the year is new, considering, “who the hell are ya?” both personally and for your business, can be an illuminating exercise. The question is a sidewalk restatement of Socrates’ observation, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.
Is peeling a banana an apt metaphor for your retail business?
For those of you who haven’t heard, there’s a (big) tiny home movement brewing.
An ES explains what your company does, why it’s unique and interesting. It needs to be short enough to deliver to a prospect during a brief ride from the first to the fourth floor.
Often, organizational change is the result of exposure to big ideas that can transform the nature of a business and how its employees, customers and supplers interact.
For those of you who make the biannual trek to High Point, I encourage you to visit the Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library.
Are you a fan of the movie “Groundhog Day”? If so, you may remember the following lines which have implications for furniture retailers... "It's the same thing your whole life, wash your hands, sit up straight, don't chew with your mouth open,... Oh yea, don't drive on the railroad tracks!”
Without proper attitude, even superior sales skills and impeccable product knowledge can fail to create customer buy-in. So, what is an optimal attitude for retail salespeople?
In 1980, the year I joined Furniture World, Jerry penned a six-part series our editor brilliantly titled, The Epperson Report...
In 1980, the year I joined Furniture World, Jerry penned a six-part series our editor brilliantly titled, The Epperson Report...
Thoughts about change and Furniture World's Magazine's
How positive, empathetic and effective are your employees?
Selling mattresses is about to get more adversarial.