Retail strategist Connie Post and Affordable Design Solutions have been engaged by Furniture Connection to design the retailer’s new, 46,000-square-foot store from the ground up.
Based in Clarksville, TN, Furniture Connection is an independent retailer that launched 20 years ago in Oak Grove, KY. The family owned and operated company is now breaking ground on a second Furniture Connection store to be located in the high-traffic, fast-growing Wilma Rudolph Boulevard area of Clarksville.
“This store has been in the plans for about two years now,” relates David Berggern, President. “We’re one of the few stores in the area that is locally owned and operated, and we have really worked hard over the years to be an everyday low-price provider, and to deliver great service and great value.”
According to Berggern, among its key brands, the new location will feature galleries from Flexsteel, Bassett and La-Z-Boy. “We have engaged Connie’s team because she specializes in creating customer experiences and bringing everything to life. After all these years, while our traffic is still vibrant, we recognized that it is shifting and there is a shorter path to purchase today. We’re one of the two stores that the customer is going to buy from in this market, and we want to be the one store. I think customers today are after an experience, the difference now is that that experience means more than ever. They want to be wowed and it’s up to us to wow them so they don’t walk out of your store to go buy it on the internet.”
Even so, Berggern believes “there are lots of ways you can still beat the internet retailers, and one of them is to have the product in-stock. They can get it in a week off the internet, but we’ve found that in some cases they are willing to spend up to ten percent more just to get it today from someone they trust. Frankly, the propensity for our customer to buy today is better than it has ever been, because the customers coming into our stores are buyers, they are not window-shoppers. People simply don’t browse these days.”
Although the retailer says, “We still do a good bit of special business with Bassett, La-Z-Boy and Flexsteel, everything we have on our floors from those vendors is also in stock and backed up in our warehouse. So, if the customer wants it exactly like it is floored, we have it. And if they want to do special order, we can do that too.”
“I’m really excited that Furniture Connection has chosen Affordable Design Solutions for this project,” Post says. “David Berggern got his start in furniture retailing during his assignment in the Army in Mississippi. At the time, he was surrounded by dirty window stores that did what they did to survive, and he was determined to find ways to do it better. Furniture Connection drove right through the Recession be delivering tremendous value and better service, and we’re thrilled to play a role in his next level of growth.”