In a challenging year for furniture sales, made-to-order furniture manufacturer Main Cottage has found the web to be a retailing channel that has boosted sales by up to 25% after deploying a mix of rich media content to help customers shop for products, chief marketing officer David Petersen says.
"We take orders nationwide from an audience who often never see our products in person before making the purchase,” Petersen says. “This can amount to rooms of furniture and a total dollar value of $20,000 or $30,000 in a single transaction. It's crucial that we get customers as close to a showroom experience as we possibly can to both ensure satisfaction and minimize returns."
Main Cottage, which is based in Yarmouth, ME, and operates only three retail stores, has deployed Adobe Systems Inc.’s Scene7 Dynamic Image Rendering application to support the ability of online shoppers to visualize multiple textures, material, colors, patterns and surface options. By dynamically rendering images, the application eliminates the need of Main Cottage to generate, store and manage multiple-sized versions of each image, Adobe says. The dynamic generation of images in any size or resolution has reduced Main Cottage’s photography and production costs, it adds.
Main Cottage uses the Dynamic Rendering application to manage the production of web content, including the development of product vignettes and e-catalogs. The company’s content management team quickly learned to use the application site-wide, says Cordie Southall, Main Cottage’s marketing director.
The Dynamic Rendering application also supports Main Cottage’s product development efforts. As its product designers develop new fabric ideas, for example, they can draw, scan and import sketches into the Scene7 application, saving time in conducting reviews of new designs and bringing new products to market, Main Cottage says.
On web-based kiosks in Main Cottage’s physical showrooms, shoppers and Main Cottage sales associates can use the Scene7 technology to quickly configure a sample room with furniture images.
"Anyone who hasn't made the choice to connect with customers through a rich web site is going to lose business to those who are,” Petersen says. “Affluent consumers aren't going to wander around from store to store to find furnishings—they want ease and convenience and a rich online shopping experience."
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