“Our research illustrates 84% of millennial moms have purchased a product or shopped at a retailer because of cause relationships,” said Maria Bailey, whose marketing firm BSM Media specializes in reaching millennial mothers. “They also appreciate authenticity, so it’s imperative for retailers who engage in cause marketing to align themselves with organizations that make sense.”.

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The legendary furniture retailer, who will also be inducted into the Home Furnishings Hall of Fame at October’s High Point Market, started AFW with one store in Denver in 1975 and has grown it into a 14-store operation that currently ranks 20th on Furniture Today’s Top 100 list.

Throughout his career, Jabs has been an active mentor and has received honorary doctorates from Montana State University in 2012 and the University of Colorado in 2019. The 2019 award from the University of Colorado was in recognition of Jabs’ “achievements as a business and community leader, his commitment to inspiring and educating the next generation of entrepreneurs” and his support of the university’s Denver Business School.

Both the University of Colorado and Montana State have endowed business schools in Jabs’ name. These include the University of Colorado Business School Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship and Montana State’s Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship.

The self-taught businessman credits the success of American Furniture Warehouse to “the basic American philosophy of hard work, long hours, self-confidence, the courage to take risks and the desire to give value and service to every customer.”

An active member of the community and philanthropist, Jabs has lent his support to hundreds of non-profit organizations and has received hundreds of awards over the years.

In 2011, the Top 100 retailer provided the Junior Achievement-Rocky Mountain organization with 7,000 square feet on the second floor of its Thornton store to help thousands of teenagers get ready to manage adult financial responsibilities by participating in JA Finance Park, presented by Transamerica.

“In addition to providing physical space for the park, AFW has donated furniture over the years and built an office for JA staff in 2016. AFW staff even clean the park every day,” Kristi Shaffer, executive vice president for JA said at the time. “These contributions enable students and schools to participate in this incredible program at no cost, compared to other JA offices who have to charge participation fees.”

Jabs is a strong believer in financial responsibility. “Teaching financial responsibility to young people in today’s credit world is very important,” said Jabs of the Junior Achievement initiative. “All of us at AFW are happy to support JA and this important program.”

In 2018 Jabs became the first inductee into the newly created Arizona Home Furnishings Representative Assn. Hall of Fame and was presented with a check for $7,500 for his favorite charity, Easter Seals of Arizona.

In accepting the award, Jabs recounted his youth growing up in a small town, noting that when he went to his high school reunion, “I was the only one there. In our town, Third Street was the end of town. There was a ‘slow down’ and ‘resume speed’ on the same sign.”

The fourth of nine children, Jabs was born and raised in rural Montana, and his parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland who fled communism. Jabs’ credits his family for providing him a strong work ethic, a sense of family, a love of music and a love of freedom we have in America. In fact, this longtime musician’s entrepreneurial career began by teaching guitar and starting a music store in Bozeman, Mont. He started to add furniture to his music store and determined everybody needed furniture and not a guitar.

Jabs remains an active musician and often entertains industry audiences at furniture events across the country.

“Advertising drives awareness to your brand, while marketing tells your story and gives reasons for a customer to buy,” Weisblatt told attendees of Progressive Business Media’s 2018 NEXT Conference during a session on Retail Beyond the Transaction.

“The product needs to be relevant and appealing, and you also need the trust factor through the entire cycle, from the customer’s first contact through to purchase and after,” he said.

Using this formula, Weisblatt turned Sam’s Furniture into a destination store. He then created a new business called Click2Store.com to act as a resource for other retailers and manufacturers.

“One of the areas where a retailer can truly stand out creating both trust and relevancy is with reviews. The word-of-mouth factor both on the website and in-store is exceptionally important,” Weisblatt said. “The search function is also key relevancy factor. At least four items need to appear with each product search.”

Weisblatt outlined four additional strategies he suggests to create relevancy on the Internet:

• Social media matters: If you are not actively posting content that meets consumer desires, they deem you as irrelevant.

• Constantly list how many people are currently shopping the website to generate a sense of urgency.

• Showcase products together on the website similar to the way you would in-store. Weisblatt recommends Shoptelligence as a great partner for integrating the website and catalog.

• Identify site visitors, and follow up with them.

“We have often had contact with customers six or seven times before they come into the store,” said Weisblatt. “Perq, which offers online guided shopping solutions, is our partner for identifying potential customers on the site and reaching out to them to find out what they are looking for and any additional questions we can answer.”

Creating a dashboard for the sales team is also a necessity, according to Weisblatt. He recommended changing the compensation structure away from the multi-tiered reward and discretionary bonus to more of a pass/fail system where the sales force is rewarded for meeting set metrics. The dashboard method for creating easy to follow metrics can be used with Microsoft Power VI, Tableau and Google Data Studio.

“Having a report is an example of real data. You can show the salesperson if they passed the base metrics or not,” said Weisblatt. “It’s important to set these metrics in order to hold your organization accountable.”

Sam’s Furniture has iPads for its sales force and uses Google mail and Google chat, which enable it to catalog all customer conversations with salespeople so someone else on the team can reference the conversation if the initial sales contact is not available.

“We started with the customer experience and then worked back to the technology as Steve Jobs recommended,” Weisblatt said. “If you can fill the need of a customer better than anyone else, you win.”

The issue of trust is much more imprecise, Weisblatt said, citing the examples of Ashley HomeStores and Facebook.

“Ashley sold Durablend blended leather, and it started to peel,” said Weisblatt. “They accepted all returns without question, and it built trust for both the consumer and the retailer. Whereas, Facebook broke every rule of trust recently regarding privacy, and no one cared. I believe we are willing to give up our privacy as long as we enjoy the benefits of the experience.”

Weisblatt said it’s important to set up the proper tools for attention, relevancy and trust, so the entire organization, including sales, can take advantage of the data and customer information. This gives the whole team the ability to quickly take care of every customer.

MacGurn was part of the Reinventing Retail panel discussion at the 2018 NEXT Conference in Austin, Texas. Other panelists included moderator Jasmine Jaco from Cur8, a wholesale marketplace; Pasquale Natuzzi Jr., chief marketing and communications officer for Natuzzi Italia; and Teddie Garrigan, co-owner of Coco & Dash in Dallas, a luxury home accents retailer.

The Jerome’s campaign happens to be Tinder, the well-known dating app, and it’s helping the Top 100company hook up with a younger consumer set.

“We are shifting attention to the under 40 demographic,” said MacGurn, vice president of digital technology from Jerome’s. “Our company is getting a ton of traffic and interaction from our Tinder ads. We’ve adapted our tone and messaging to be more of what that demographic wants to see. We are also on YouTube and Pinterest. Interested customers can now book a free ride on Lyft to get to one of our stores. Making the customer’s experience a lot more holistic from start to finish has been very helpful.”

For his part, Natuzzi said he had to modernize his company’s website as well as reinvent all Natuzzi’s digital platforms over the past few years.

“We created our own 3D simulator because we wanted to offer an enhanced vision of the product,” said Natuzzi. “We wanted consumers to be able to zoom in on the grade of the leather. We invite customers to take photos of their spaces and send them to us. After 16 hours, they receive a notification and can go to the store and see our product customized to their space.”

Coco & Dash doesn’t sell product online, but it has found the use of social media and texting to be very helpful.

“We will have people who reach out to us after seeing our products on social media. We then redirect them to text,” said Garrigan. “It’s such a better conversation on text. We close a lot of sales even when people have not been in the shop.”

Garrigan said another area where Coco & Dash has been successful is by providing panels that offer information about design and architecture. Customers can come and experience what experts in the field have to say; then they spend one to two hours exploring the store.

“The store layout is so important; we make sure they have breathing space so they can feel their way through the shop,” said Garrigan. “Our three core principles are product, space and atmosphere.”

“Becoming more nimble is important, too,” said Jaco. “Retailers are getting better at running today’s business in the here and now while still being able to pivot quickly to prepare for the future.”

Natuzzi says his company plans to be ready to surf the digital tsunami and provide value and service very efficiently. “The only way to be consistent is to show one face, one brand and one way,” said Natuzzi. “But retailers need to share that one face across the entire portfolio.”

MacGurn said Jerome’s is now speaking with one voice across all platforms.

“Ten years ago the customer spent one and a half hours in the store, and that’s now down to 30 minutes,” said MacGurn. “Customers do research online beforehand, so the digital and in-store experiences need to be one and the same.”

Moving beyond the “Millennials-are-entitled, underemployed and technology-obsessed” thinking that characterizes many generational discussions today, Gwoke offered a detailed and nuanced assessment of the four primary generations impacting today’s marketplace, as well as a look ahead to the next generation heading toward the marketplace: Gen Edgers.

Gwoke pointed out one of the most common mistakes people make when looking at generational marketing: defining the future in terms of the past. “Even as we get into a next focus, we get into a ‘last’ mindset,” he said.

He cited the example of the “save” icon commonly found on computers today, which is a graphic representation of a “floppy disk;” something few under the age of 35 would even recognize.

“If you were to hand an actual floppy disk to a 13-year-old, they would think you had made a 3D model of the save icon on their computer,” said Gwoke. “Even technology companies are locked into old paradigms.”

As one example of how technology and culture can define generational behavior, Gwoke cited the rotary phone, a primary means of communication for Baby Boomers and Gen Xers that required dialing and remembering myriad numbers, as there was no phone memory. Also, unlike today’s cellphones, using a rotary phone often required “making an appointment” to call a friend to ensure they were home to answer, particularly prior to the invention of voicemail (patented in 1982).

By contrast, Millennials are the first generation with widespread access to cell phones in their formative years. “For the first time in history, you had people who could bypass the gatekeeper of parents and go directly to their friends,” Gwoke said. “You have to understand the impact of this when people ask why are Millennials so relaxed and unprofessional. This group did not grow up with the informal lessons on formality like so many previous generations did.”

Looking through this lens, Gwoke walked through the key attributes of each generation currently exerting the greatest influence in the marketplace. He noted that Baby Boomers came of age at a time of great optimism and with a large generational cohort against which they needed to compete.

“This is the generation that said, ‘Don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want’,” Gwoke noted.

By comparison, Gen Xers grew up at a time when “there were 50% fewer movies made for kids than for Baby Boomers or Millennials,” Gwoke said. Gen Xers were the first generation to see a U.S. president resign, the one that introduced the term “latchkey kids” and the first who could see all the things going wrong in the world 24 hours a day.

The result, Gwoke noted, is a generation that is more resourceful, more efficient and more skeptical. In dealing with this generation, Gwoke advised, “be a resource, not a salesperson.”

Gwoke also explored the post-Millennial generation, sometimes called Gen Z, who has taken Millennials’ obsession with social media and text communication to new levels. He noted the challenge previous generations had convincing Millennials that “are” is not spelled “R.” Today, post-Millennials are fundamentally changing communication styles with even more extreme abbreviation.

“This is a generation that grew up with imagery and bullet points,” said Gwoke. “When they see this litany of information (in descriptions or other marketing copy), they say, ‘It’s not worth my time.’”

Another key distinction of this generation — many of which are the children of Boomers — is they are the children of Gen X, growing up in a post-recession world and hearing their parents say, “No, we can’t afford that.”

“They’re being denied a lot of the things that Millennials were given,” Gwoke said. “This is a game changer.”

This is also the YouTube generation, he noted, pointing out that 80% of teens today use YouTube as a source to seek advice, research for school and do homework. “This is a generation that’s looking for someone to point them in the right direction,” Gwoke said.

Rod Martin, general manager of advertising firm McGarrah Jessee; Casey Miller, public relations director at LookThinkMake; and Tim McLain, digital marketing evangelist for Netsertive, shared insights on the most effective ways that companies can project their message at a time of unprecedented media clutter and changing consumer platform preferences.

Martin, whose firm helped launch the Yeti outdoor brand, stressed the importance of focusing on the customer and being authentic. “You start with the customers. The Yeti brand was started by two brothers who were super-passionate about the outdoors and were really tired of coolers that would fall apart in extreme environments,” Martin said. “They set out to build a better mousetrap. They wanted to build something that mattered a lot to a small amount of people, and what they got was very powerful brand ambassadors.”

He pointed out that delivering a national message to a local audience is not, in fact, localized marketing. Instead, he noted that messaging needs to be centered on those things that are unique to the local retailer and most relevant to the local audience.For those whose brand may have more local or regional relevance than national, Netsertive’s McLain stressed the importance of what he called “scaled localization,” a process for delivering messages with high local relevance, across many local areas. This is particularly important in today’s digital environment. He noted, for example, that Google has seen 500% growth in “Near Me” searches in the past year and that 80% of local purchase are influenced online.

“Retailers are more alike than they are different. You can leverage that from a digital perspective,” McLain said. “With the right tools you can take that store and start localizing it down to the store level because each store will be unique in its own way. They have different product cycles, different products to highlight at different times of year. You have to make sure your advertising is scaling that down to the local level.”

“It’s understanding the difference between national exposure, which might help deliver credibility and local, which might actually help you make sales.”LookThinkMake’s Miller noted that many times companies mistake the broadest reach — a national audience — for the most effective outcome: driving traffic or sales. “A common mistake that people make is they try to blanket their message to everyone,” said Miller. It’s more about trying to find the people who connect with the message.

All three panelists noted the importance of having a consistent brand message, indicating that companies often cannot control where consumers will first find or engage with their brand. “That’s why it’s so important that everything you do as a brand is consistent with who you are,” said McGarrah Jessee’s Martin.

Novosel is purchasing manager at the company her father started in 1969, while Ruby is president of two-store Ruby-Gordon Home, founded by his grandfather in 1936. Both retailers took part in a panel of industry leaders who discussed the importance of seamless retail at Progressive Business Media’s recent NEXT Conference in Austin, Texas. The two were joined by Shrenik Sadalgi from Boston-based home furnishings e-commerce giant Wayfair and moderators Bill McLoughlin, editor in chief of Furniture Today, and Allison Zisko, editor in chief of HFN.

Ruby said that after he joined the company, he shifted more advertising dollars to digital channels and cut back on the traditional newspaper, direct mail and TV channels.

“The ability with digital to know that 2,304 people clicked on an ad is more impactful than knowing that 40,000 people might have seen a TV spot on Channel 10,” said Ruby.

Updating the website has been a key part of Novosel’s focus in her new position.

“We have added delivery tracking for customers and are starting to add things to the site like live chat,” said Novosel. “We recently added Wi-Fi in the store and are working on getting virtual reality capabilities to help customers be able to see the product size and fabric detail right in front of them.”

Sadalgi said as an e-commerce site, staying ahead of the technology is part of Wayfair’s success.

“We just rolled out 3D and are using it as a medium to showcase the product,” said Sadalgi. “Wayfair has also just partnered with Magic Leap, a new company working on a head-mounted virtual retinal display that superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real-world objects. They do this by projecting a digital light field into the user’s eye allowing for spatial computing.”

Although the technology is still in development, Sadalgi says spatial computing allows the world around you to become your screen.

All three panel members agreed that proactively setting customer expectations as far as delivery is imperative for a seamless retail experience.

“Expectations are that the customer wants it now, but most of our business is custom furniture,” said Novosel. “We need to set the mindset that the delivery may take longer but the quality is worth the wait.”

“In my experience, everyone wants something different,” said Ruby. “The challenge is to figure out if the customer wants some hand holding or if they’d prefer to go it alone. Every customer deserves to feel comfortable during the process.”

Sadalgi said Wayfair’s goal is to offer delight as well as convenience.

“We have a room planner tool where people can drag and drop items into their space,” added Sadalgi. “It’s both fun and practical, and often leads to a sale.”

Challenges facing the retailers are not the same. For brick-and-mortar retailers such as Novosel and Ruby, finding effective salespeople has been a challenge. At Stoney Creek Furniture, the sales force isn’t commissioned so it can be difficult to keep people on staff.

“We find that it can be problematic to find people who are able to work evenings and weekends,” Novosel added. “Training, improvement and retention also seem to be an issue for many retailers.”

Ruby said Rochester is a depressed market, but it’s still hard to find people with the right skill set. “We have found that generally, Millennials don’t want to be in furniture sales. The trusted salesperson image of the past has gone by the wayside.”

The panelists united on the importance of creating a personalized experience for every person. They all reinforced the notion that they’re not so much selling a piece of furniture as they are helping consumers to create beautiful spaces.

“Since people don’t buy home furnishings as often, forming a connection is essential,” said Ruby. “Any way that we can demystify the furniture buying process is helpful.”

That was the message conveyed by Steve Dennis, founder of SageBerry Consulting and the keynote speaker at the recent Progressive Business Media NEXT Conference in Austin, Texas.

After a quick rundown of the woes faced by the furniture industry and retailing in general — including the unprecedented number of store closings in 2018; the struggles of iconic retailers like Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Sears; the record number of retail bankruptcies (“We will see a couple more this year,” Dennis predicted); and the stepped-up pace of consolidation — Dennis assured the crowd that although physical retail is in transition and definitely in need of attention, all is not lost.

“Just because you’re in physical retail doesn’t mean you’re in trouble,” he said. But boring physical retail is dead, he added.

Most retailers face two options: Compete on price, which requires one to “out-Amazon Amazon” and is a fast race to the bottom, according to Dennis, or provide experiential retail. “For most, the choice is to find ways to be fundamentally remarkable.”

Dennis, who prior to founding SageBerry was the chief strategy officer and head of multichannel marketing for the Neiman Marcus Group, offered a path forward with what he called “the eight essentials of remarkable retail.”

The first tenant is to be digitally informed but not obsessed. Up to 60% of physical store sales are influenced by a digital interaction, Dennis said, yet having a digital-first mindset can be a trap. Digital is not always better, nor does it always come first in the customer buying process.

Retail interaction should also be human-centered, which may seem obvious, but Dennis suggested that in some cases the customer-centric model has degenerated into mere customer service contact numbers and satisfaction surveys. Seventy-five percent of consumers want more human interaction, not less, Dennis said, citing a recent TWC study. He recommended rooting out customer pain points and coming up with solutions for them.

Essential retail also must be harmonized, which is a replacement for the word omnichannel. All aspects of the customer experience must “sing” together, he said, and retailers should be less concerned about separating their online and offline channels. “It’s all just commerce,” he said. He noted that “Nordstrom is way ahead of us” because it started breaking down the silos between channels years ago, while Williams-Sonoma never set up silos to start with. “Embrace the blur,” he urged the audience.

Although the channels may have blurred, mobile is becoming retail’s new front door, Dennis said, because the first bits of information a consumer gleans about a brand typically come via a smartphone. He also noted Google’s recent effort to map out consumer “moments” online: the I-want-to-know-moment (research), the I-want-to-go-moment (where is the store? What are its hours?), the I-want-to-do moment (DIY projects, a recipe search, the need for assembly directions) and the I-want-to-buy moment, which represents the actual purchase. “You must show up in all the moments that matter,” said Dennis.

Retail must also be personal. No customer wants to be average, and no customer has to be, Dennis said. Some marketers are very slow to move from mass marketing to personalized marketing, at a time when consumers are saying, “show me that you know me.”

In addition, retail must be connected and collaborative, Dennis said, and memorable. Retailers must be unique and relevant, and amplify the “wow” factor, he said. By example, he mentioned Boxpark in England, which is a mix of popup store, food and classes, and B8ta, which offers a platform for brands to simply show off their wares, demonstrating that some stores act as media: They don’t actually sell anything, but rather show off the latest, coolest products.

Finally, retailers must be radical. They must test and learn, Dennis said. “You need to have a culture of experimentation.”

Gaddis noted that the book’s title is a metaphor for the power we all need to succeed in today’s business environment. “It’s about building your strengths and unlocking your power,” Gaddis told the audience.

While the advice to build on your strengths might at first seem obvious, Gaddis noted that too often in business and in life, people focus on their weaknesses, spending time and effort to shore them up. “I learned a while back there were things I was never going to do well. A lot of the time we kick ourselves and say, ‘If only I could do that better’,” she said. “I don’t care if you fail at something. Let it go. Focus on things you do really well and get better and better at those.”

To help explain the importance of identifying and maximizing your own strengths and uniqueness, Gaddis shared the story of her early plans to start T3, founded at the height of recession in 1989. She reflected on a dinner with her husband where he challenged her to describe what would make her business unique and meaningful at a time when, in his words, “the last thing Austin needs is another advertising agency.”

After two unsuccessful tries that, in her telling, sounded much like the mission statements of scores of companies, Gaddis decided on this business mantra; “We’re going to do kickass work for clients who want to kick ass.”

“I talk about kicking ass a lot,” Gaddis said, citing three key attributes that underpin that philosophy. The first, she noted, is about bringing others along with you as you’re “kicking ass.” The second is about creating lots of great options. “You want to have a lot of options,” she said.

The third is about what she called “building buckets of good will.” She explained that this most often involves giving selflessly to help others in their own quest for success without expecting anything in return. “You do it, and you don’t expect anything back, but I guarantee you the buckets of goodwill get filled and you get it back,” she said.

Gaddis also strongly advised attendees to surround themselves with smart, strong people, noting that remaining open to such help can often fill a void at a key time in the life of a business. On a more operational note, Gaddis advised attendees to “timeline your life,” noting that committing to specific goals and writing them down can be a critical step in achieving them.

“If you don’t do this you’ll never do the things that get you to your dreams,” she said. “Get it down on paper, and you’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish.”

At that time, there were near constant discussions about Millennials aimed at helping companies understand this 84-million strong group of potential consumers who would someday — but not then — be critical to furniture companies’ success. They are still not fully understood, but their potential in the marketplace and the workplace is now upon us, and their impact is undeniable.

In fact, the biggest shift in the discussion is from why you should target them to how to reach and engage them. The short answer is: on their phones. At the conference, BridgeWorks Consulting’s Phil Gwoke, reflecting the far more nuanced and multi-generational approach that defines today’s discussions, noted that the oldest Millennials are nearing 40, are spending $200 billion annually, have overtaken Gen Xers as the largest segment of home buyers and, by the end of this year, will outpace Baby Boomers in earnings.

He also noted that studying the events, cultural influences and communication habits of each generation can serve as an effective guidepost to better understanding and more effective marketing. This will become increasingly important as an emerging Post-Millennial generation begins to make its influence felt in the marketplace.

This generation, which is taking the abbreviated communication styles of Millennials to a whole new level, is set to raise the importance of social media to entirely new heights. Gwoke noted for example that 80% of teens today use YouTube as a source to seek advice, research for school or to understand homework. If you’re not marketing there already, it’s past time to start.

That was another interesting evolution I noted at this year’s conference; it’s no longer necessary to convince people about the importance of using social media as a marketing tool. Instead the focus has shifted to assessing the most appropriate social media mix and finding the data and optimization tools that can best integrate this no-longer-new platform into companies’ marketing toolbox.

That is a significant change at a time when the furniture industry is seeing a generational shift not only in the marketplace, but also in the workplace. When this conference started, it was called Future Leadership, but it’s become increasingly apparent — seeing the young people across the industry rising to positions of authority, influence and leadership across the industry— that the future is now.

And that is the most encouraging and exciting shift of all.

– Bill McLoughlin