Retail Education
Home furnishings and lighting retailers face many challenges in this ever-changing economy. From new consumer expectations to online competition, today's retailers work hard to ensure their customers have access to on-trend products and great customer service. In this section, you'll find all things retailing — news, features, analysis and tools — needed to make your retail business a success.
How Designer Diana James Launched Her Own Line
Last Thursday night, interior designer Diana James cut the ribbon in her brand new store, Living Swell. Located in Marblehead, MA, Living Swell offers “refurbished mid-century furniture, handmade…
4 Tips for Planning a Showroom Event
In our February issue, we spoke with marketing and showroom experts about the benefits of seminars and events in showrooms. Just to recap, events and seminars bring customers in and provide free…
How to Survive the After-Holiday Slump
The months following Christmas can feel like a marketing wasteland. With no major holidays in sight until Easter in the middle of April, showrooms have few calendar opportunities to tie into major…
Market Watch: The Lighting and Home Furnishings Overlap
The lighting and home decor retail market is undergoing a transformation. This transformation, in response to several factors —online retailing, millennial purchasing power, technological…
8 Little-Known Skills for Amazon’s Alexa
As smart home technology becomes more popular and common place, showrooms and interior designers can expect to hear more about Amazon’s Alexa from clients. This voice service has the ability to…
Helping the U.S.VETS at 2017 ART +IDS Conference
One unforgettable part of the 2017 ART + IDS joint conference in Scottsdale, AZ, happening May 18-21, is sure to be the community service project benefitting an organization called U.S.VETS.…
How to Handle a Bad Online Review
The most recent survey from BasicLocal shows that 84 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. So when you receive a bad online review, you might feel anxious and…
Why Online Reviews Matter
When it comes to building a killer searching engine optimization (SEO) strategy, online reviews remain one of the most important components. Google considers an online review to be unique content,…
5 Answers to Tough Customer LED Questions
As LEDs grow in popularity, chances are more clients will be asking tough LED questions that interior designers or even home furnishings retailers may not know how to answer.
We asked experts at…
The Great E-Commerce Leap
There are plenty of reasons why businesses build e-commerce sites — better economic opportunity, a larger audience and more options for customers, to name a few. In the lighting and home decor retail…