A national contemporary furniture retailer with a showroom in Western New York

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Buffalo Furniture Company’s Web Site Proves Useful Even For Local Shoppers

BUFFALO, NY -- When Advance Furniture in Buffalo launched its Web site, www.contemporaryfurniture.com last year, its owners knew a Web presence would make shopping easier for their existing out-of-state customers. They also knew it would significantly expand their business nationally. What they didn’t expect were so many online customers to come right from their own backyard.

Advance Furniture, a family-owned business for over 45 years, offers the largest selection of Scandinavian and contemporary furnishings—European and Domestic—in Western New York. A wide range of design consultant services, from window treatments to floor plan layouts, is also available.

For many years, loyal customers of Advance Furniture drove from nearby Buffalo suburbs as well as Syracuse, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and beyond to Advance Furniture’s 10,000 square-foot showroom. According to John Kenyon, national sales manager for the company, “There isn’t another store like Advance Furniture for several hundred miles. We are a high end contemporary furniture store, with nationally competitive prices.”

When www.contemporaryfurniture.com was launched, Kenyon had his staff of online customer service representatives fully-trained to help long-distance customers feel very comfortable with their purchases. What Kenyon has found is that in addition to this tremendously growing national customer base (Advance’s Internet business alone has doubled in the past year) many new online customers are from Buffalo, Rochester and surrounding areas.

“It seems that we are saving these customers a 20-60 minute drive to see what we are all about.” said Kenyon. “Our customers are using the Web site as a resource. They like to be pre-informed when they come to the showroom.”

“They come in to feel a fabric, see the true color swatch and make the purchase,” he added.

In other words, these local customers are “pre-shopping” by narrowing down selections by style, price and size requirements via the Web site. Because of this, Kenyon tries to keep the site as easy to use as possible. It’s been recently upgraded with enhanced graphics and navigational tools. It is divided into fourteen specific furniture and accessory categories, from art, to home office, to leather upholstery and area rugs.

Customers can fill a “personal showroom” which allows items to be selected and stored for later viewing, or e-mailed to friends and family for input during the selection process.

Online shoppers, including those who live locally, often trade a significant number of e-mails with the staff at Advance Furniture prior to coming to the showroom.

Kelly and Zyg Wlodarczyk, both professionals and in their 30’s, live in Orchard Park, just outside of Buffalo. They just furnished their entire home through Advance Furniture, yet they did most of their shopping at home.

“My wife and I would be trading eight to nine e-mails a day with Advance Furniture as we got close to each purchase. We’d receive an e-mailed photograph of a piece we were considering and then reply that its edges were too round, or that we needed something more streamlined,” Zyg Wlodarczyk said. “Fifteen minutes later we’d have more pictures.”

Eventually they visited the showroom.

“I don’t buy anything over the Internet that I haven’t touched,” said Zyg Wlodarczyk. “But before I went to Advance Furniture’s physical showroom, I knew exactly what to feel. In the past 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 you can go to the Internet.”

It’s not uncommon for other customers to initiate contact with Advance Furniture via e-mail from the Web site and have that turn into a 15-minute follow-up phone call by the store’s staff; and have that turn into several days of more e-mailing.

“This is not like buying a $29 hammer on the Internet,” says Kenyon. “ There are so many things, understandably, that have to be discussed in order to meet the customer expectations and to let them feel comfortable with their purchases.”

Accordingly, the staff at contemporaryfurniture.com have to be more than order takers… they have to be design coordinators. They have to know their product lines like librarians know their books.

“By the time our customers are ready to make a purchase, our staff knows their taste very well,” says Kenyon. “We also know what room or rooms they’re furnishing and how they want them to flow.”

Kenyon believes that this type of service, exceeding the expectations of the customer, is not uncommon in the high-end furniture market. What he does believe is that it is very uncommon for an online furniture store.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The original owners of Advance Furniture, Franklin Pusateri and Roy Pusateri opened for business to the public in 1955 as Advance Home and Garden. At that time, they sold hardware, appliances and home furnishings. In 1966, they recognized a developing demand for quality contemporary and Scandinavian furniture and began specializing in those types of designs. To better showcase its selections, Advance Furniture moved across the street to its bigger and current location, at 2525 Elmwood Avenue. Today, the store is operated by Franklin Pusateri's children Christine Kenyon and John Pusateri.

For company background and photographs, please call Shannon Schiefer, Creative Force,

201.807.9793

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

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