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Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Colleen’s Classic Consignment – Las Vegas, Nevada

A Hidden Treasure Hunt in Las Vegas

“We don’t sell icky stuff,” is Colleen’s Classic Consignment’s tagline and they stick by that rule.

Kevin Aiken and Colleen Aiken, Colleen's Classic Consignment

Colleen’s Classic Consignment wants their customers to know that they aren’t your ordinary consignment store; they are a place to find unique, gently used items as well as brand new products they have received directly from the manufacturer.

“Marketing our unique product mix is a big part of our current branding strategy,” said Kevin Aiken, CEO/CMO of Colleen’s. “What makes our store fun is we have a mix of new and gently used furniture, so you are going to see furniture that is really nice. We are trying to tell our customers that while yes, we are a consignment store, we aren’t consignment like you might expect. Through our website, Facebook and our commercials, we are really focusing on letting people know that we aren’t your normal, consignment warehouse store.”

Sixteen years ago, Colleen’s Classic Consignment opened its doors to the Las Vegas market as a Terri’s Consign and Design store. Kevin’s mother, Colleen Aiken, had just moved to Las Vegas and worked with Terri’s Consign and Design to open up a franchise operation in the city. Eventually, Colleen decided to venture into the business world on her own, created a new business plan and renamed all of her stores “Colleen’s Classic Consignment”.

Colleen assists a customer shopping.

In August 2010, Kevin joined the family business since he is an only child and saw that it was the right time to help his mom out. “Quite honestly, in my youth, I ran as far away from the family business as possible,” he said. “It is now getting to a point where my mom is close to retirement and the business was becoming much more successful. With me being the only real heir here, my mom felt the business was at a point where she could commit to bringing me on the team, while she works towards retirement.”

Prior to joining the home furnishings industry, Kevin worked in the travel industry, having last worked for Travelocity. With outside industry experience, Kevin is able to bring fresh ideas into Colleen’s as well as a positive outlook on the future. He exudes excitement to learn the home furnishings industry as well as the potential for it in the future. “Coming from another industry, I see huge potential in the home furnishings industry. I feel the furniture world might be a couple steps behind the rest of the world in technology, which isn’t a bad thing, but it just shows there is so much potential out there for future growth and it makes it exciting,” he said.

When customers walk into one of the four Colleen’s Classic Consignment stores in Las Vegas, they are welcomed by a fresh and exciting product mix.

Consignment stores often have a rotating floor, so it may not look the same two weeks in a row. “We have interior decorators in each of our stores, and our furniture is grouped into vignettes. As we sell merchandise, we are selling it directly off the floor. Often we will sell an entire vignette and then replace that empty spot with something brand new. It keeps our floor fresh and customers visit the stores often. It makes shopping at Colleen’s fun because we might not have what a customer is looking for today, but if they come back in a week, we will have the exact set that they are looking for. That ‘finding a hidden treasure’ thing keeps people interested and coming back in,” Kevin said.
It’s important for Colleen’s to continually market to people who are interested in consigning their furniture in order to have a constant flow of new merchandise. This is one area where Kevin and his team are focusing more effort than they have in the past. They recently created a marketing campaign to inform people about consignment through Colleen’s. “We just launched a commercial that says, ‘Today’s Lesson: What is Consignment?,’” he said. “We are trying to educate people on what consignment is. That commercial, mixed with our new website, which was built around generating more consignment business, are our first steps in educating people and gaining more consignment customers.”

They are also educating people on the benefits of using consignment as opposed to selling furniture on their own. One of their main competitors for finding consignors is the ability for consumers to place used items on Craigslist. To help educate, and find great products, Colleen’s has a few employees that do outreach to possible customers. They comb yard sales, estate sales and Craigslist for products—as well as educate the person who is selling the item. “We are always looking for deals, the best products and ways to educate the people selling the product. We inform them it is safer and easier to work with a consignment store like us. You only have one person coming to your home, we will pick up the product for you, do all of the leg work, and then mail you a check,” Kevin said.

The product mix of Colleen’s Classic Consignment makes the business unique compared to other consignment stores. They also deal directly with manufacturers, many that show at the Las Vegas Market, and offer their customers brand new furniture at a price point that others can’t compete with. This unique mix has helped Colleen’s stay profitable even through the tough economy that hit the Las Vegas housing market hard.

Kevin and Colleen are very excited about the future of their business. They see many opportunities on the horizon and are motivated to create a stronger business for their employees. “Our future will revolve around generating revenue online as well as expanding into other markets outside of the Las Vegas area,” Kevin said. “Our consignment model is really unique, and we have the ability to bring something new to the marketplace. If we have a business in New York and one in Vegas, and a customer happens to be moving from one city to another, they could essentially consign their furniture in one location, and build up credit for them to purchase new furniture at a different location. Essentially you could consign in New York, and pick out furniture in Las Vegas. I think this is an area where many companies haven’t really tapped into the possibilities, and I am excited to see what we can do.”

Another area where Kevin sees a great deal of growth potential is offering online selling opportunities. While the plan hasn’t been finalized, it would entail creating an area of their website to a product that would be offered for a limited amount of time. Once that time is up (or the product has sold), a new product will be featured. “We are sort of modeling our idea after the company Steep and Cheap,” Kevin said. “They put a product on their site for 30 minutes, or until it sells out, and customers then have X amount of time to buy the product. This creates a sense of urgency and if a product doesn’t sell, it rotates to the next piece of merchandise to keep people tuned in and the merchandise fresh.”

With all of the excitement, outside industry experience and positive outlook for the future, Colleen’s Classic Consignment will be furnishing the homes of many markets for years to come.

by Melissa Dressler, Managing Editor, Western Retailer

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Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Fitterer’s Furniture

In 1896, gold was discovered in the Klondike, Cracker Jacks and Tootsie Rolls were first introduced and Philip and Frank Fitterer opened Fitterer Brother’s Furniture in Ellensburg, WA. Prior to opening their own home furnishings store, Philip and Frank managed a popular Ellensburg Hotel, the Horton House. Once the hotel closed in 1896, the brothers realized they had a considerable amount of furniture and household goods on their hands. They decided to open their own furniture business to dispose of the excess goods.

The business was an immediate success, and Philip and Frank began to acquire more furniture from traveling salesmen and catalogs. When the Milwaukee railroad finished with their most northern line, Philip and Frank purchased the surplus of furniture. Eventually, the road to Seattle and Tacoma was completed, which provided Fitterer’s Furniture access to many more products. In 1909, Fitterer’s Furniture moved to its current location at the corner of Fourth and Main streets in downtown Ellensburg.

Today, the fourth generation of the Fitterer family continues to operate the store. Cousins Jon and Brad Fitterer are co-owners and continue to place emphasis and respect on their family history and traditions. “One thing our family has instilled in us is the pride that you have as a family-owned business,” Jon said. “The honesty and integrity that the family has was instilled by my great grandfather. Those are historic and enviable qualities that a family can have. We are a pretty unique furniture business.”

Fitterer’s attention to honesty and integrity is apparent in every aspect of their business, from their welcoming store environment, to home staging and delivery. Their attention to the customer is also evident through the generations of family members that visit the store.

A Welcoming Environment
The first thing you will notice when you walk through the doors of Fitterer’s Furniture is the sound of two parakeets. As the guardians of the store, their pleasant chirp often attracts the attention of children and adults. “If you came in and you had your children with you, that is the fist place they would focus on and it creates a bond that would start an immediate friendship with the birds and the store,” Jon said.

To make customers feel more welcomed in the store, everyone is greeted and offered refreshments and an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie. Customers can either sit down and enjoy their refreshments or start their journey through three-stories of furniture. “Our store is a lovely 1907 brick building that has a lot of unique character involved in it including a second floor that is suspended by steel rods. We have gallerized and individually roomed that area so it spider webs you through very desirable bedding and dining rooms,” said Jon. “We have done a focus on our third floor — which is by no means an attic — that is our sleep area. We have very subtle lighting which casts a nice, relaxing ambience on the area. When you come into our sleep area, it is developed for relaxation.”

Through creating different experiences throughout the store, Jon and Brad have tried to create a store atmosphere that is sensitive to the needs of the customer. They focus on what the customer will see, feel and hear throughout the experience and address these components to make it the best shopping experience for customers. Even the customer’s interaction with Fitterer’s employees is sensitive to the customer’s feelings and needs. By taking the time to learn about each customer’s life, employees develop relationships with each customer and are able to understand and address their wishes.

Free Delivery Anywhere within Washington
Fitterer’s Furniture offers customers free delivery anywhere within the state of Washington. This service has become a helpful tool in closing sales and creating loyal customers.

In order to provide this service free of charge with today’s high gas prices, Fitterer’s batches their orders dependent on where it will be delivered. “We don’t just deliver to the Seattle area, which is 150 miles away, every day,” Jon said. “What we have done is batch things so we can go to Western Washington and then go North on one day. The next we will go to Western Washington and go South.”

By batching their orders, they are able to deliver items all in one trip. Jon also makes sure each trip out to Western Washington is worthwhile by picking up items from their suppliers that are located in the region. “We have learned to make sure the truck that is coming back [from Western Washington] comes back with a back haul on it from three of our warehouse suppliers,” he said. “We will bring our freight back with us, so that offsets our fuel costs because we are picking up the freight ourselves. It is a big selling point and a huge closer for many customers.”

Home Staging
Fitterer’s Furniture offers home staging which assists their customers in selling their homes more quickly, while also getting the Fitterer’s store name and products out to a new audience. Since only 10 percent of home buyers are able to visualize the potential of a new home without any furniture, home staging has become an important aspect of the sale. Recently, Fitterer’s in-house interior designer, Amanda Johnson, staged multiple homes for a large company in the area, “Amanda just finished one of the most accomplished home stagings that we have ever done. Rather than staging the home and charging the company on a monthly basis, the business actually bought all of the furniture,” Jon said.

Occasionally the new home buyer will want to purchase the furniture that the home has been staged with. When Fitterer’s Furniture staged a preview home in the Suncadia Resort in Eastern Washington, they were delighted that one of the buyers purchased a large amount of their furniture as well and it added a little extra to their bottom line.

The Legacy of Fitterer’s Furniture
Through the 112 years in business, Fitterer’s Furniture hasn’t faced anything as tough as the next challenge Jon and Brad face — finding a successor of the business. With no family members interested in taking it over, that is the tough task the two will be focusing on in the next few years. “Both Brad and I are maturing, and we don’t have a family representative that appears to want to take over the business,” Jon said. “So that is where our goals are set, to see what the future is for Fitterer’s Furniture and make sure that we plan a succession. I don’t think either of us wants to see this business closed and the assets sold.”

No matter what happens with the future of Fitterer’s Furniture, their great family history and legacy of being respectable, honest people will remain in Ellensburg for generations to come.

By Melissa Dressler, Western Retailer Managing Editor
Originally published in 2007.

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Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Furniture West — La Grande, OR

Nineteen years ago, Gene DeMeerleer graduated from college with a degree in business finance and a financial job lined up in San Diego, CA. Little did he know at that time that he would turn down his job in the finance industry to start his own home furnishings business.

Having grown up in a small Idaho town, Gene was familiar with the family business. His dad, Jim DeMeerleer still owns and operates two furniture stores, Furniture Center in Moscow, ID and Furniture West in Moses Lake, WA. During Gene’s college years, Jim was buying and liquidating other furniture stores and occasionally asked Gene to help him run liquidation sales. Once Gene graduated college, he was given an opportunity to open a new store and if he successfully ran the store for a year, he could purchase it from his dad. Gene was intrigued by the opportunity for sole ownership of the store and decided to stay in the family business.

Together, Gene and Jim opened Furniture West in La Grande, OR in 1990, and since 1991, Gene has been the sole owner of the store. “My dad mentored me a little bit, but really it was a trial and error process when I began,” he said. “I mirrored his image as far as running a financially conservative business.”

Today, Furniture West is a successful furniture store that has grown and evolved as much as Gene. With nine employees, including Gene and his wife Velma, Furniture West has become a well-run and successful home furnishings business. This has been accomplished by creating a welcoming environment for customers, listening to great advice, finding new ways to motivate and train employees and keeping family first.

A Welcoming Experience
When customers enter the newly remodeled Furniture West showroom, they are greeted by fresh colors on the wall and consumer friendly displays. “We pride ourselves on keeping our showroom easy to shop and maximizing our selling opportunities,” Gene said.

One way of making the customer feel welcomed and comfortable in the store is by inviting them to visit the Welcome Center, which offers fresh baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, coffee, bottled water and balloons for customers’ children. “We want to become their friend and earn the right to sell them furniture before we ask. You want to make them feel welcomed,” said Gene. “We want the customer’s experience to be an excellent one, from the time you walk in and are welcomed to our store, to when our delivery service delivers your furniture and gives you their card and thanks you for doing business with us.”

Another way of creating a welcoming, no pressure environment is by paying salespeople a salary instead of commission. “Our no pressure environment is fueled by a salary paid sales force. We do have an UP system, and my sales personnel are expected to meet close-ratios and add-on sales minimum standards, but it is more of a team environment and less of a cut-throat, high pressure environment. We get comments all the time on how nice it is to shop in our environment! It is relaxing to the customer,” Gene said.

While Gene doesn’t pay employees a commission, he still uses sales incentives to keep them motivated to sell and improve their performance. The combination of a comfortable salary coupled with incentives, spiffs and bonuses has helped Gene have a low employee turnover.

Pick Gene’s Pockets
This year, Gene started a new program to motivate his employees called Pick Gene’s Pockets. Gene puts an assortment of money — $1, $5, and $10 bills — into a box and when an employee exceeds certain expectations or does something well, they get to pick something out of the box. “Brad Huisken suggested the idea during the last WHFA conference and I thought it was great,” Gene said. “It is a great reward for promoting the efficiency of your employees. Recognition and immediate gratification are powerful motivators.”

Staying Conservative
Over the years, Gene’s received a lot of great advice, but the advice that has and continues to pay steady dividends came from his dad, “Dad always preached that in the long haul the best course of action was to stay financially conservative. Do not extend yourself further than your comfort level. You’ll live longer! In today’s market, that advice is priceless.”

Even during this current economic downturn, staying conservative has helped Furniture West remain profitable. “We are not in a financial vice, we have the freedom to breath and ride through these tough economical times,” he said.

Family First
Gene considers his entire business and community a part of his family and has always stressed the importance of it. “You get one family in a lifetime — embrace it for what it is,” he said. “Everyone’s family is different as well as the relationships within.”

Gene has always welcomed and encouraged his employees to take time off for family functions. “Never get between an employee and their family. You will lose every time! A happy employee is a productive employee,” Gene said.

He uses this rule with his own family as well. While Gene is very active in the local community and with his business, he remembers that his family is first. “My philosophy is to always give back to the community you do business in,” he said. “But I have to keep it in check, because family is first and spending time with my family is the No. 1 priority. I give as much time as I can to the business community without jeopardizing my quality of life with my family and store.”

One way he is able to do both is by coaching his son’s sports teams. Gene is currently coaching his son’s soccer team, which allows him to spend more time with him. When Gene isn’t in his store or coaching soccer, he finds time to be an active member of the local chamber of commerce, the Rotary, the local search and rescue team, Boy Scouts Eagle Board, hospital foundation board and a lifetime booster of the Eastern Oregon University and La Grande High School.

The Future
In the future, Gene would like to see his company continue to grow and be progressive. He feels that the next hurdle for Furniture West is to be more proficient on the Internet. “This electronic super highway has changed the way we communicate and do business. I’ve been slow at adapting to this change. My website, my communication with my customers through email and my advertisements need to be improved. I’m putting forth a lot of time and money to catch up,” he said.

Gene sees Furniture West being present for many years to come, “Our future looks good. I’d like to say we’re on track for continued success. I’ve got to stay optimistic, this store is ultimately responsible for support eight families and in my world, my son and daughter will be attending college soon,” Gene said.

By staying financially conservative and being progressive to change, Gene is sure to be taking care of the Furniture West family for generations to come.

By Melissa Dressler, Western Retailer Managing Editor
Originally published in 2007.

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