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Seeking to Simplify? A Houseful of Clean-lined Contemporary Looks is an Email or Two (or Three), Away.

In an effort to simplify life during these increasingly complex times, a growing number of consumers are gravitating toward clean-lined, contemporary furniture design.

"Life is crazy today between work and kids," says Zyg Wlodarczyk, a married thirty-something who lives just outside the city of Buffalo, NY, with his wife and two children. "You want a clean slate at the end of the day so you can clear your mind. You want your home to be a retreat."

Like many young professionals with little time for rushing from store to store in search of what they wanted, the Wlodarczyks purchased their furniture-enough to fill their entire home-via the Internet.

While online shopping was touted early on as a solution for the time-pressed, big-ticket items like furniture have typically not generated the same interest as small, inexpensive and easily shipped products like books and CDs. After all, one might reason, it’s difficult enough to make furniture-buying decisions in the real world, much less a virtual one. And, given the impersonal nature of the Web, how can anyone decide whether a chair will be comfortable, or if the red that looks luscious on the computer screen isn’t really an odd shade of pink?

Clearly, purchasing furniture "is not like buying a $29 hammer on the Internet," says John Kenyon, sales manager of Advance Furniture, a second-generation, brick-and-mortar furniture store, and co-founder of ContemporaryFurniture.com. "There are so many things, understandably, that have to be discussed to make customers comfortable with their purchases."

Interestingly enough, Kenyon relates that purchasing a sofa online often requires more time, interaction and information exchange between a retailer and a customer than normally occurs on the floor of a local furniture dealer on any busy Saturday morning.

That’s a good thing for information-hungry consumers, and it’s the reason the majority of online furniture retailing ventures fail. "We have to be more than order-takers at ContemporaryFurniture.com," Kenyon relates. "We have to be design coordinators. Our staff has to know their product lines like librarians know their books."

Both in the store and online, the companies specialize in fine quality contemporary and Scandinavian furnishings with a European bent. So, those in the market for, say, a sofa in royal blue suede with a serpentine curve and chrome legs, will be in luck. Yet, the staff’s extensive knowledge also means that those who aren’t quite sure what they want will be equally well served. "We’ve furnished entire homes across the country, online," says Kenyon.

Take Jonathan Sutton, a 41-year-old attorney from Tulsa, OK, for example. Seeking contemporary furniture that suited his lifestyle and personality, he ordered thousands of dollars of furniture from the ContemporaryFurniture.com site because he was "comfortable when sent sample leathers to validate exact color and quality, and wood samples to verify finishes and staining."

According to Kenyon, ContemporaryFurniture.com’s customers frequently ask to be sent swatches of fabric and wood samples, along with emailed photographs of the products. It’s also not unusual for the staff to follow up with a personal phone call. This high-tech/high-touch approach is typically followed by several more days of emailing between the design coordinator and the customer. "By the time our customers are ready to make a purchase, our staff knows their taste very well," Kenyon says. "We also know what room or rooms they’re furnishing and how they want them to flow."

"My wife and I traded 8 to 9 emails a day with the company as we got close to each purchase," Wlodarczyk says. "We’d receive an emailed photograph of a piece we were considering and then reply that its edges were too round, or that we needed something more streamlined. Fifteen minutes later we’d have more pictures."

Although the couple resides near Advance Furniture, they preferred to do most of their shopping from the comfort of home. In the past, Wlodarczyk describes, "We’d have to go to five or six stores, beat up the salespeople, and then spend a week or two doing this or that. Now, we can go to the Internet."

Thanks to e-tailors like ContemporaryFurniture.com, customers can receive the same personal attention they expect from a brick-and- mortar store.

CONTACT:
John Kenyon
Advance Furniture
(800) 477-2285

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