Posts Tagged ‘Lane Home Furnishings’
How I Did It: Selling Wholesale Direct-to-Consumer
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Pablo “J.P.” Kochen created Wholesale Furniture Collections so that he could sell and ship to any customer, in any state. His main motivation: the stories he kept hearing from customers who attempted to purchase furniture online, only to see their checks disappear with the companies.
Kochen’s Florida-based company has since joined an increasing number of others that are selling wholesale direct-to-consumer. These wholesalers generally adjust from merely receiving orders to dealing directly with customers, then earning their trust. For Kochen, that meant teaching the basics of secure online purchasing.
Kochen first began selling furniture in 2005, to interior designers decorating model homes along Florida’s west coast. People who saw these model homes became some of the company’s first regular clients.
“We saw that potential going nationwide, not just locally,” he said.
Wholesale Furniture Collections now works with seven delivery companies to ship from manufacturers like Drexel Heritage, Lane Home Furnishings and Kincaid. Nowadays, as Kochen estimates, at least a fourth of company sales stem from word-of-mouth.
The majority of company sales are made online, through a Web site made shortly after the company’s founding. With this, most of the advertising efforts are also online, the latest being the use of advertising platform Google AdWords.
“We just keep trying to market ourselves better,” Kochen said, later adding, “What’s good for us is that now people are shopping around, so we’ve been getting a lot of those clients.”
But those clients are sometimes too tempted by low prices. Companies that sell for three times less than the retail price can get away with asking for full payments, only to never deliver the pieces of furniture, Kochen said.
“The problem is, there’s a lot of bad business out there. The consumer can get in trouble really easily.”
To build confidence in his company, Kochen explains to individual consumers – who he estimates make up 70 percent of sales – the basics of making a secure online purchase. For one, he encourages first-time customers to pay by credit card rather than by check, so the purchase can easily be tracked.
“I tell my clients, you gotta worry about how you pay for this,” Kochen said. “They come in wanting to pay with a check and I say, ‘Listen, I don’t want you to stress about this later. Pay with a credit card and then, send in an order with a check the second time you do business with us, after you get to trust us.’”
Also, rather than taking a payment in full, Wholesale Furniture Collections first accepts a 50 percent deposit, and then only takes the rest of the payment once a delivery is scheduled.
Up to 2,000 customers from the United States and Canada usually purchase from the company around this time of year – and Kochen is one of six in the company headquarters ready to address their needs.
Despite news of the economic environment, Wholesale Furniture Collections is still striving for a 30 percent year-to-year growth, Kochen said.
“For the bad economy, we’re doing okay.”
Tags: buying wholesale, christina lee, direct-to-consumer, Drexel Heritage, furniture, Kincaid, Lane Home Furnishings, online, Pablo "J.P." Kochen, Wholesale Furniture Collections
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