Can Raymour & Flanigan win with the trade?

Catering to enterprise is turning out to be excellent small business for Raymour & Flanigan. One of the premier household furniture retailing chains in the region with 130 merchants, the Liverpool, New York–based corporation is going aggressively into the industrial furnishings marketplace with its new B2B initiative concentrating on hospitality, institutional and wellbeing-treatment-facility customers.

For a retailer that has constantly focused on consumers furnishing their properties, this represents a big expansion. So considerably, it appears to be to be going nicely: “We’ve by now exceeded our anticipations for the first calendar year, and we expect to double that around the following 12 months,” Jennifer DeGennaro, the company’s director of small business development, tells Business of Property. “The response has been outstanding so far.”

Raymour & Flanigan had offered to the enterprise buyer earlier but under no circumstances as part of a formalized plan right up until previously this calendar year, when it introduced a full suite of benefits, like trade bargains, specific financing, white-glove delivery assistance, exclusive purchasing of committed merchandise, and nearby aid for charities and social corporations that turn out to be consumers.

The corporation is not the very first retailer in the furnishings area to go following this sector, but it is putting its full weight powering the program. “We reported, ‘If many others can do this—if Bob’s and Williams-Sonoma can do it—so can Raymour & Flanigan,’” states DeGennaro. “And we imagine we can do it better.”

Going after the business enterprise customers does of system have worries for a retailer applied to working with unique consumers furnishing their very own properties. Solution alternatives can be incredibly distinct from what is on the floor—the company doesn’t sell on the internet yet—and your standard furnishings keep salesperson isn’t essentially utilized to working with the sizing, scale and logistical complexity of business orders. DeGennaro says that, in an hard work to fulfill the requires of B2B consumers, the firm has specified a lot more than 1,600 staff particular schooling.

In addition to concentrating on business firms, the enterprise is hoping to get to designers, architects and dwelling stagers. Though there are programs to acquire an in-retail outlet presence for the method, the business is largely relying on its retail profits pressure to perform with these new possible buyers.

DeGennaro suggests that the very best income so far have appear from the housing sector, such as assisted residing services, transitional housing facilities and senior citizen housing. Although she declined to give revenue projections for the new operation—a move in line with Raymour’s private ownership and longtime plan not to release its finances—DeGennaro claims the retailer experienced its ideal 12 months at any time last calendar year and is wanting to the B2B small business as “a way to manage that craze and generate additional earnings.”

Homepage image: A 3D rendering of a typical area for Raymour & Flanigan’s new B2B assortment | Courtesy of Raymour & Flanigan