Steve Baxter, co-founder and COO of tech company GTRsuite, is new to the furniture industry. And oftentimes, these newcomers—who don’t have any bias or past information to go on—realize some extraordinary things.

Joining just a year and a half ago, Baxter’s background in tech led him to create GTRsuite a tool that gives manufacturers the ability to put store locators on their site, which then directs customers shopping online to their nearest brick-and-mortar retailer.

While talking to Baxter about GTRsuite, we began to talk about e-commerce in general and “disrupting the disrupters.”

One of the biggest challenges that independent retailers face today when they're up against big box stores is that they don't have any competitive advantage from a product perspective.

That’s according to Mike Derro, vice president of furniture and bedding at Nationwide Marketing Group.

The FAM caught up with Derro during Nationwide’s PrimeTime event in early February to talk about a new private label product line from TSI, Sherwood, and Nationwide. The line is called Encore and Derro says the mattress program should solve some of the raw materials issues that may have prevented smaller manufacturers from being able to deliver.“By being able to partner with TSI, if there are any raw material challenges in the future, retailers are backed by one of the largest manufacturers that just happens to be a private label called Encore.”

We’re big fans of driving store traffic—and we have several articles to prove it.

We often talk about how to get people in the door but don’t talk enough about the actual in-store events. Here are four simple tips for creating retail events that will drive more sales.

Chances are if you are familiar with furniture stores, you’ve undoubtedly seen the windows plastered with brightly colored signs that read “price reduction,” “no interest,” or “no down payments”?

For years, the furniture industry has bragged about the “no, no, no”, but has that hurt the image of furniture?

After all, furniture is about style, fashion, function, and comfort, and terms like “no interest” bring up thoughts of used car salesmen or cheap discount stores.

The messages that our industry sends to consumers don’t reflect the way so many people in our industry look at selling furniture.

Doug Stewart's news podcast will focus on business strategy and zooming out to see the bigger picture when it comes to retail and the furniture industry as a whole.

Mattress University, an educational presentation at Nationwide Marketing Group’s Primetime event in Nashville this week, dove into the current retail landscape with a panel that included Tim Deets of TC Home Furnishings, Chris Schunk of Lake Effect Furniture & Mattress, Karl Tobler of Mattress Warehouse, Salt Lake City, and Lee Burns of Mattress Direct, Baton Rouge, La.

Podium hosted a webinar that shed light on five retail marketing strategies that retailers can use to win locally.

Logan Wooden, product marketing manager at Podium, led the seminar with guest Chris Strong, marketing manager at Watson’s Furniture.

If a sales associate wants to be good at their job, they need to have a unique set of skills.

Yes, they need patience and the ability to multitask and keep track of several things at a time—from customers to phone calls to daily tasks.

But they should want to help others and create relationships with customers. The retail industry is geared toward making people’s lives better, so they need to have a desire to sell them the right product to improve their life.

First, it laid off key executives including its CMO, COO, and CTO. Then Phillip Krim stepped down as CEO as the company went private and was eventually acquired by Durational Capital Management.

The acquisition took the industry by surprise for a number of reasons. One of which is that many people do not know anything about Durational Capital Management.

Blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer delivered the opening keynote for Nationwide Marketing Group’s PrimeTime show in Phoenix on February 6 and shared a powerful message with attendees about how to use challenges and adversity to propel their businesses to new heights.

Between talking about personal experiences crawling into a volcano with Will Smith on the DIsney+ show “Welcome to Earth” and climbing Mt. Everest with 19 others (the largest group on record), his message centered around the idea of living a “No Barriers Life”— a mindset of constantly challenging yourself to grow and evolve.