Saturday, August 24, 2013

Why Are Furniture Firms Always Marketing A Sale?

By Michael Johnson


We've all seen those Television adverts promising large money savings on a wide variety of sofas, however it may possibly surprise you to find out that it's not only the repeat offenders at the lower end of the marketplace which have a love for advertising cut-price furniture on a close to constant basis. As any business student with inform you, cutting prices can be a sure-fire way to increase sales but which every price promotion reducing profits, why are furniture businesses usually on sale?

The answer seems to lie in the nature of furniture production, which in recent years has become a mass produced consumer good within a international age. With profits delivered by cutting costs by outsourcing manufacturing to cut price destinations, sofa retailers have been ever more keen to decrease prices in an attempt to secure market share via sheer sales volumes. However, as the marketplace has consolidated around a smaller number of retailers, competition has become very fierce, applying further downward stress on prices which has made sale prices ever more common.

It wasn't always this way. Originally the preserve of a wealthy elite, sofas have always been a great exclusive luxury item with a rich established heritage stretching back via royal dynasties all the way to the Ancient Egyptians. Even a century ago, soon after the manufacturing revolution, sofas were nonetheless mostly manufactured in the home market in a range of artisan workshops and factories, employing techniques that had barely changed more than five hundred years of Western history. In such circumstances, sale promotions were more or less unheard of, with retailers able to clear practically all of their stock at full price as the rising middle classes sought to enhance their home decor.

Fast-forward towards the present and we see a very different image. Today the regular sofa sale has moved from being a regular annual or bi-annual occasion to becoming the standard for mid-market and cost leader vendors trying to increase their top line . Within this new atmosphere, persistent sales messaging is making customers a lot more sensitive to price which critics claim is leading several companies to cut corners with regards to quality, upholstery and components. Arguably this is one of the crucial factors why luxury sofas have grown to be increasingly popular in recent times, as consumers shift away from mass-manufactured goods in favour of higher quality alternatives.

In the end even luxury manufacturers run sale periods even though these tends to be a much more discreet events. One particular instance of this is the rise of online flash sale websites such as Secret Sales, Made and Achica who effectively make their money by acting as clearing portals for high end brands who do not want to devalue their items by running a sale but nonetheless need to discover a strategy to sell their surplus inventory with each new season. Purchasing on the internet using these websites is a excellent strategy to find a genuine bargain, where you pay a low price but receive a considerably higher quality product then you would otherwise expect. In these difficult economic times, it's likely that such internet sites will grow to be ever more popular in recent years.




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