Custom classroom furniture
Marketing and sales
MARKETING
Market position
- Are we selling just a product, or a part of a system?
- Does it reinforce and improve the market's perception of us?
Price
- Price expectation of the market
- Value for money
- Profitability
Promotion
- Brochures
- Conferences and sponsorships
- Media releases
- Design Awards
- Advertising
Service
- User information and advice
- Guarantee
- Ease of ordering
- Delivery time
Follow-up
- Assessing performance in the market
- Honouring guarantees
Furnware sees its strategy of extensive consumer consultation and engaging schools in the development of their products as a key part of their marketing strategy. "With schools involved in discussion groups and in testing our products they were buying into it in a participatory role," said Pat.
"Over the early years of the development of the Bodyfurn suite there was not only a massive research component but the new product required a major repositioning in the marketplace because the new furniture was going to end up costing about three times the existing unit cost. So we had to convince schools of its improved value.
"We also went to a lot of national and international conferences. Normally suppliers take a whole lot of product to show – we went along for a couple of years and didn't take any product with us. Instead we put up posters about the research we were doing and we had a height weight machine which we would get people to use and give them a print-out of their individual BMI index, just to get them thinking about this type of data."
"Bigger companies tend to create their own markets," said Steve 'They tell their customers what they need or want – they'll create the need for a product through their own marketing. We, on the other hand, don't tell the schools that they need something that isn't right for them – even though we could probably convince them – because down the line the company would suffer for it."
All new products have to be integrated into the existing product range which can cause issues. "We had a good market for our box desks, but we knew that they weren't right. But pricing is important to the market – a new product needs to offer a great deal more to justify even a moderate rise in cost. So with our new desks and storage units, and particularly so with our dynamic chair, there were considerations as to how much of a loss would be involved as the sales pattern changed."
Timing is also an issue. Pat said that there is a phase where the sales team had to tell schools that a new product was coming up that going to be a lot better than the box desks. "There's a difficult phasing in period that has to be considered and it does have cost implications. Some schools may put off a purchase, other might opt to buy the alpha desk with the top offset as preparation for retrofitting the new product."
Furnware is working at the top of the market selling directly to schools in New Zealand and Australia, but there is a strong belief in the company that, once the benefits of the Bodyfurn range becomes more understood, there is a lot of room for growth.
There is also a growing market overseas, particularly Hong Kong, Singapore, the US and the Middle East, but these markets often have several layers through which the product has to travel – there is a supplier and their distributors who need to take a margin – which can add a substantial amount to the cost.
It is vital in these emerging markets to show that the research has been done and that Furnware's furniture is the result, said Pat. "The expectation is the same as that in New Zealand – that chairs cost $35, whereas for our dynamic chair we're talking about $130. It can be quite hard – particularly when the sales people are used to selling commodities rather than systems that will change a classroom culture."
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