FurnitureDealer.net Launches New Business to Provide Free Websites for Furniture Retailers

Minneapolis, MN, April 14, 2009 – FurnitureDealer.net, the premiere full service Click-to-Store furniture website and online marketing provider, today announced the launch of a new business dedicated to helping small and budget-conscious furniture retailers use the Internet to grow their bricks and mortar business in the challenging economy. The new business, called furnoodle! provides furniture retailers with a free website including searchable product catalogs with oodles of products designed to generate in-store leads. Furnoodle! is a self-service website that is so easy to use, a retailer can set one up in less than 30 minutes after the verification is complete. The service is absolutely free with no strings attached. “How can we afford to do this?” questioned Andy Bernstein, president of FurnitureDealer.net. “Because like many of the most successful internet strategies, Furnoodle! websites are subsidized by third party advertising.”

“FurnitureDealer.net’s core strategy will be to continue serving medium and larger furniture retailers with premium, full-service customized solutions,” said Bernstein. The free self-service furnoodle! websites will allow the company to reach and serve these new retailers, and will also help FurnitureDealer.net become a more meaningful partner to manufacturers and product suppliers, who will now have an incredible way to get more of their products shown by their retail clients (and ultimately found by consumers) through these online showrooms. They will also gain a powerful way to get their brand and product stories told directly to the consumer, but in ways that benefit their bricks and mortar retailers.

The online furniture opportunity is Click-to-Store. The vast majority of furniture consumers want to buy locally through stores, and need assistance purchasing, but want to use the web too. “There are two important things a furniture retailer can do to make money with their website: first, show products to help site visitors find merchandise and get ideas for their homes, and second, encourage interested consumers to either call or come into the store. Furnoodle! is built to do both of these things, and does them very well,” said Bernstein.

Why do furniture retailers need a good website? The internet has had such a fundamental impact on the way consumers shop for furniture, that it has become imperative for most retailers to have a good website. More than three fourths (78%) of furniture customers today research and pre-shop online before making their purchase. In an environment where the online shopper can visit ten websites in twenty minutes, the local retailer is losing customers to the internet-only retailers who have superior websites. “What should be most alarming for local bricks and mortar retailers,” claims Bernstein “is that despite not having showrooms, inventory or local reputations, the internet-only furniture retailers are growing while selling the exact same merchandise – all across the country – at prices between 20% and 40% higher than the local retailers.”

What’s Included With the Free Site? Furnoodle! websites are powered by FurnitureDealer.net’s proprietary, furniture-specific website software platform that also powers the full-service custom websites of 10% of the top 150 furniture retailers in North America. Furnoodle! websites include an impressive list of free features that are typically not available or included on the most expensive retail websites, including tools to narrow your search by product attribute or dimensions, save to favorites accounts, link to a free room planner, request more information button which generates email leads sent right to the store, store profile pages with maps and directions, print and TV ad posting, link to your online credit application, and more. Perhaps the biggest benefit of the free website is that the retailer can select and display an unlimited number of their suppliers’ products from FurnitureDealer.net’s continuously updated content library that features more than 40,000 products from 220 leading furniture and mattress manufacturers, including Broyhill, Aspenhome, Legacy Classic, Lane, Flexsteel, Rowe, Bernhardt, Lexington, Century, Ashley, Hooker, Berkline, Riverside, American Drew, La-Z-Boy, Stanley, Canadel, Lea, Riverside, Klaussner, CR Home, Universal, Smith Brothers, Sealy, Serta, Simmons, Restonic, Tempur-Pedic, and many more.

Ease of Setup. The site is easy to setup. Dealers simply create their account at www.furnoodle.com, verify their identity, and enter information about their company, their store location(s), and their service offerings. They then select which products to show from the FurnitureDealer.net product content library. The service model is 100% do-it-yourself. According to Bernstein, “We have invested heavily in the development of self-service controls and online instruction that makes a furnoodle! website easy to setup and use.” It will take someone longer to listen to a sales pitch from the other guys than it will to setup a free furnoodle! site. It’s free, simple, and powerful. What do you have to lose?”

The Business Model. In the past, FurnitureDealer.net has offered low cost websites, but the sites did not generate enough income to pay for the amount of support needed to attract and satisfy clients. About two and a half years ago, FurnitureDealer.net made a commitment to start investing in the infrastructure and business model to offer these free self-service websites.

Furnoodle! found creative ways to make the sites free. First, creating and maintaining a furnoodle! website is do-it-yourself, using simple administrative tools—so once the site is activated, the price of customer service and technical support is excluded. Second, the sites are subsidized with third party advertising. “The business model for furnoodle! was inspired by successful free website services such as Google and Facebook,” described Bernstein. “We’re charging advertisers to display their ads and feature their products on the furnoodle! sites as a way to offset the cost of great product content and superior functionality for budget-conscious retailers.”

We had reservations about putting third party advertising on our clients’ websites, until we realized just how common it has become for websites, including many of the biggest and best retailers - like Walmart.com, Delias.com, and Barnesandnoble.com – to show third party ads on their sites. When we show retailers the features and benefits of the furnoodle! website, and compare it to the incredible cost of time and money to build this type of website in-house, nearly everyone gets excited about it – especially in this tough economy when companies are looking for ways to reduce budgets and generate more store leads.”

The furnoodle! approach eliminates the high cost of commissioned salespeople, graphic designers needed for site customization, and the need for expensive technical support and maintenance staff. The business model of providing free website services that leverage substantial upfront fixed cost investments in software, product content management, hosting and self service tools, and that are subsidized by third party advertising, has been widely successful with online companies. Furnoodle! is a translation of this strategy into the online furniture product catalog. Google, for example, offers a wide range of free services such as Google Search, Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Analytics and Google Calendar at no charge to users, as well as a range of private, more custom, higher-end service and more differentiated services through a fee based model. FurnitureDealer.net will continue to offer the premium furniture catalog and online marketing services to retailers who want more customization, service and marketing.

“Our research shows that free self service models lead to higher levels of user satisfaction than fee based models targeting the low price points, because the inexpensive websites are often under-funded which leads to either poor ongoing service and/or inferior actual websites,” according to Bernstein.

Even the Sales Approach is Self Service. There is a lot for a retailer to consider when choosing a website, and it is difficult to sort through the over-promises and pushy sales pitches. As the newspapers and advertising agencies are struggling, we have seen a flood of so-called experts in the furniture website business all claiming to know the Internet and offer expertise. Rather than try to figure out how to charge clients for an expensive sales force or spending money on expensive marketing materials, furnoodle! created an informative website www.CompareFurnitureWebsites.com where retailers can learn about various furniture websites options available today, view video demonstrations and explanations, and setup a free furnoodle!.

Free Marketing Too. In addition to being a great online showroom with an incredible product selection, furnoodle! comes with a one-of-a-kind marketing strategy. All FurnitureDealer.net websites, including furnoodle! sites, are featured and promoted through a network of search engine-friendly home furnishings industry-specific marketing sites, including the AHFA’s rapidly growing FindYourFurniture.com site - which is a nationwide search engine for furniture where every product has a “where to buy” function that directs consumers to local retail stores.

About FurnitureDealer.net – With more than 40 retailer clients including 15 of the 150 largest independent furniture retailers in North America, FurnitureDealer.net is the premiere Click-to-Store™ expert in the home furnishings industry, helping retailers and manufacturers implement successful multi-channel growth strategies that convert online furniture shoppers into local in-store buyers. FurnitureDealer.net provides full service world class websites with detailed product catalogs, product content management, search engine optimization, email marketing, sales training and channel integration consulting. For more information, visit www.furnituredealer.net. For more information about furnoodle!, visit www.furnoodle.com.