"Assortment Styler is the only research tool that could provide us with a systematic and quantified overview of the trends within home design, with the detail necessary to provide insights beyond color and general style. It has been an invaluable tool for better streamlining our resources in product development to ensure the best possible fit into overall home décor trend direction.”
NOW WHAT?
We applaud the IHA’s decision to cancel the show. With the virus already in sixteen states and most European countries and 90,000 worldwide infected and with its long incubation period, there was a high probability that there would be innocent carriers at the show and that many more would have come away with the virus, carrying it home to family and coworkers. It was the right call and, no doubt, a tough one.
So where does that leave your business for 2020? You didn’t have the opportunity to sell your new products in and you didn’t get retailer feedback as to which products to run with.
We have some suggestions as to what to do next.
First, because you didn’t get retailer feedback, sharpen your assortment planning and production planning with feedback from real consumers. Let us prepare a proposal for Product or Concept Testing that ensures 1) you are introducing strong new products backed by consumer demand and 2) you have demonstrated to your retail partners that you have eliminated the risk of new product failure to them by doing your due diligence with consumers first. And don’t worry – consumer research is not expensive or time consuming – see the next blog post for more information.
Second, listen to the news and keep on top of consumer lifestyle changes that may impact business. We believe that much of the speculation makes sense; that we are going to see a lot of school closings, corporate travel restrictions, possible corporate work restrictions and a lot more time spent working from home. Based on our experience, that’s not a bad thing! We went virtual two years ago – meaning we closed our office and we all work from home. We are more productive than ever! We aren’t slowed down by bad weather, traffic, car problems or anything else. We get to sleep a little later and we don’t spend nearly as much time in unproductive meetings. We get a lot done!
With more people working from home, and more people avoiding crowds and staying home, there will likely be a surge in online shopping - from food purchasing to household goods. This brings us to our third suggestion - now is a really good time to revisit your website and online presence to maximize its utility and appeal to consumers. If you sell cookware, appliances or food prep tools, do you offer recipes? How often do you update them? Do consumers like them? If you sell cleaning tools, do you offer cleaning tips? How does your traffic compare with your competitors’ traffic? Where does your traffic come from? Is it from Facebook? Organic search? YouTube? Pinterest? Do you take advantage of Google Analytics? If you don’t know the answers to these questions and feel you should, send us an email. We’ll share the details on our Website Performance Review Service.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out (Rick@designres.com) if you have other thoughts or concerns relating to the show closing or the coronavirus. Perhaps others have the same thoughts and we can all help each other.