How to start a furniture store
Today, our focus is on how to start a furniture store. There is hardly anyone who does not appreciate vintage furniture. In fact some of the richest people in the world still purchase vintage furniture till date. The furniture making business keeps thriving and some styles never go out of fashion as some businesses have been on top of their game for decades. If this doesn’t scream great business prospect, then what does?
Are you into carpentry and would like to start running your own business or you don’t know much about woodworking but you would love to start a furniture store but are not sure how? Rest assured, in this article you will find out some shocking facts about running a furniture store, what you will need to put together and how to go about starting your business.
Know your wood
To a woodworker or a furniture store owner wood is everything! Without wood you don’t even have a career to begin with, wood is why you do what you do and what puts food on your wooden table. As a matter of fact, the first thing anyone who wants to have anything to do with carpentry as a vocation or business must learn to appreciate is wood. Knowing where wood comes from, how it’s processed, stored, preserved, transported and turned into furniture is a must in this business. Here are a few things to know about wood:
Wood is elastic
Who would have thought this was even possible? It only takes someone who knows wood, the science of it, to understand this. When trees are cut down and sliced into logs of wood, they look nothing like elastic materials and no one would think they could ever move but they do. This knowledge will save your career, business and even people’s lives. There are different factors that could make a piece of wood increase in size and if that happens after you must have finished working on the furniture and installed it in the customer’s home or office, serious damage could be done later on.
The first condition that affects how wood takes shape is the manner in which they were cut out from trees. This determines how they shrink. There are three main classes of wood according to how they were cut out; the rift sawn, quarter sawn, and plain sawn woods. They may all be cut from the same type of tree but knowing that is not enough to work with them immediately, they all shrink or bend differently and if you use them for the wrong type of furniture there could be consequences.
The porosity and moisture of wood should also be looked at closely. Some wood types are more porous than others and that has a lot to do with the type of furniture you should make out of them. The porosity will also go as far as determining what type of equipment or tool will be used on the wood. For example, if you use the same tools you used on a less porous wood on a very porous one, the porous wood will be ruined in an instant. The moisture of the wood is also vital because it will affect the weight, make it more dense, and if a very moist piece of wood loses water after the woodworker must have made furniture out of it, it could shrink and become totally different from what he or she originally made.
Other factors that could make wood expand or shrink is the temperature or atmospheric condition of where it was made into furniture. When wood gets kept in a place, it adapts to the temperature of the environment and that helps it maintain a definite size. Funny as it seems, a woodworker has to be certain that the conditions under which the furniture was made will match that of where it will be installed. For this reason, many woodworkers have formed the habit of making furniture where they would like to install it. Pressure also affects wood that’s why woodworkers have barometers to help them know when to and when not to make furniture.
It doesn’t matter whether you make the furniture or not, knowing about the nature of wood will save you a lot of trouble, stress and bad customer reviews.
Facts about starting a furniture store
No one should ever dive into the furniture store pool unless they know a few things that would make sure they don’t drown; one or two of them might come as a shock to you.
There are many things to learn outside of woodworking
Another realization that will shock anyone who’s about to start a furniture store is that they will need to know about other unrelated fields in order to run their business. Business today is determined by how receptive your target customer is towards your products or services. This drives many businesses into hiring specialists in different fields to handle different aspects and because you do not have the financial capacity to hire these professionals, you will have to do some of these things yourself. You are into the sale and production of furniture and not a marketer or an accountant but you will have to learn how to be all three and more. These professionals have tools, software and other means of carrying out their duties and you will have to purchase some of these software and learn how touse them. As time goes on, you will find yourself using accounting software to balance the books and prepare invoices as well as getting marketing or SEO tools to keep track of how well your business is doing online.
Focus shifts to other things, especially marketing
Running a furniture store is a different ball game altogether- totally different from just making furniture. As the business owner, you will begin to think more of how to make profit and how to have a sustainable business- you move on to planning and strategizing which will take most of time along with the day-to-day running of the place.
Getting all the necessary tools and professionals to market your business might be a bit expensive for you so you have to do it yourself. You will find yourself making calls to media houses for advert rates at some point and you will end up spending more time on the internet, especially social media, to monitor the progress of your online status and how people are responding to it.
Your creative ideas take a back sit
Your passion, those incredible designs that you just can’t wait to start working on and the many other ideas you have generated while surfing the internet will all take a back seat or get thrown in the trunk even before you start negotiating with your client. Of course since when you started playing with furniture as a child until now you have always made furniture for the love of it and as a way to express yourself but in reality, this is a business and the sooner you realize that the customer’s needs come first, the better for everyone.
You might have to hire more that you expected
Times have changed and every business needs a lot of professional input to meet some required standards. Your business will need many to have an online presence which involves creating a website and opening social media accounts for your business among other things. Using social media will help you be seen and it will also enable you connect with clients and other people in the industry but a lot has to be put into it these days.
SEO is as important as anything else you can think of as far as marketing your business and staying relevant is concerned and you might need to hire professionals to help you in this area. You will also need a lawyer to assist you in case something goes wrong or there is a misunderstanding somewhere. Being the owner of the business automatically means that you will oversee everything and that will mean you will have to employ other people to do the work you won’t be able to do anymore.
You will also need professional photographers and graphic artists to help you take very good pictures and create flyers for campaigns especially for social media marketing. A really important agent you will need as time goes on is a source; someone who is physically present to help you make findings and even purchase materials in a different city or country that you need for your business.
Qualities you should have
- Good negotiation skills
A furniture store owner must know how to negotiate and be really good at it. It is not just enough to know how to get a good deal on an item but it is also important to know when someone is trying to get a good deal out of you. Negotiations will be done on a regular basis and you will need to cut costs every now and then. If you don’t know how to negotiate, you could get ripped off and not know it. Imagine bragging to your fellow furniture store owners about how you got the best deal on an item and you find out that in reality the seller got the best deal of the day the moment you paid for the item. Be armed with information and have a budget before you buy anything or place an order; that will give you an edge.
- Woodworking experience
Woodworking is science and art at their symbiotic best. The best furniture store owners are woodworkers and it is easy to see why. A woodworker learns to study wood, spends hours transforming wood into luxurious furniture and fall in love with the process with time. All the knowledge gathered during that time will make a furniture store owner know the right wood for the right piece of furniture and he or she can give good advice to clients regarding any issue as far as furniture is concerned.
In addition, having worked for someone else in the business will help fortify anyone who intends to start their own business with information on what it would take and how much workforce or money it would cost to get different aspects of the business done. A greenhorn will make lots of mistakes if he or she does not have a comprehensive knowledge of what the process of turning plain chopped pieces of wood into furniture looks like and such mistakes could be costly; after all, ignorance is expensive.
Is it better to make the furniture you’ll be selling or buy them instead?
Whether you want to be a manufacturer or retailer is totally up to you, and if you can do both then you should. There are things to consider before you make this decision because they both have their pros and cons so it depends on what you are comfortable with. If you choose to make the furniture yourself, then you must have all the equipment necessary and manpower. And if would like to be a retailer there are places to get very good quality at a reasonable price.
Some of the world’s leading furniture makers are the USA, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Italy, Holland, and of course China. Italy used to be the world’s leading furniture exporter before China came along and now the Asian powerhouse and Indonesia have become the hub of quality and affordable furniture in the world.
China has the famous Foshan Furniture Market where they have an entire mall dedicated to the sale of furniture as well as the Shunde wholesale furniture market where even renowned companies like IKEA get their furniture cheap. Indonesia on the other hand has the Jepara “City of wood” where every type of furniture and wood are produced. In cities like Jakarta, Semarang and Surabaya, furniture factories can be found where companies and individuals from around the world purchase furniture.
Do you have to go to Asia? That won’t be necessary as there are people who live in the vicinity, known as professional “sources”, who charge a certain amount of money to help outsiders purchase goods in person and make sure that they are shipped to your location. You will have to be careful in choosing a source but with some help from other people in the business, you should be able to find a good source.
Starting a furniture store
Knowing all the necessary facts there is about the furniture store as a whole will make it much easier to launch your business. There are some basic steps to take in order to have a business to your name which must include having a clear plan of what the business represents, what your objectives are as the owner, how you intend to carry out day-to-day activities and your expectations.
If you start a business without any authorization by the government, you should be worried because you are already doing something wrong. The next thing you must do after birthing the idea is to get the business registered, that will protect your idea and keep you on the right side of the law. The following are equally important:
Start small
If there was ever a time to start a business, that time is now. It is good to make plans and have realistic expectations but overthinking can kill the dream before it is even realized. Start your business with the little resources you can gather. A furniture store requires a good amount of capital to start as you will need plenty woodworking equipment and manpower to keep the business running.
However, if you wait until you get all the resources in the world, you will almost never get anything done. Look at your budget, have a list of the necessary equipment a successful furniture store has and see how many of those equipment and tools you can actually afford. A little bit of opportunity cost will be useful here because limited funds will make you forgo some items. Get what you need and if your intention was to cater to a hundred customers a month, make it twenty and work with that until you are able to expand your business.
Read Also: See Why Business is Like a Seed
Source support
The average furniture store newbie needs support to launch the business, especially in the financial aspect. It is not the easiest or most cost effective business to start but there are ways to get what you need for less the price. A workshop, equipment, the advertising, store or warehouse and even delivery vans are needed and they are not cheap to come by that is why other means to secure them should be looked at.
Getting a loan is the most straightforward means of purchasing all these and more but you could also consider leasing or renting some equipment that you will need but cannot afford at the moment. Cut a good deal with everyone you’ll be involved with as you run your business- ask to pay the wood supplier in installment, agree to supply free furniture every year for the next five years if you must for free advert slots, encourage influential people to invest in your business for a reasonable share of the business if you have the chance and propose a pay structure to your workers get that will see them get some benefits for reduced bonus. Think through your strategy so that desperation will not make you lose your business in the end.
Join an association…or more
This might not be necessary for other businesses but in the furniture industry, you need to join the relevant associations. Start by joining the local association; most states or provinces have at least one registered body or group of furniture makers and furniture store owners that will prove instrumental to the progress of your business in the long run. A lot of information and new government decrees or policies that affects the furniture industry will be passed across as well as other means to help the business grow. You will know people and learn more about the business, you could be given contacts in the industry from all over the world to help you along the way. And members of an association are known for having each other’s backs.
Make your business known
After you must have made up your mind on where and how you intend to get your business moving, you must strive to make it known to the world; that’s how they know you exist. Location is very important and you will make sure your business is based where it can be reached. While doing that will save you some trouble, you will have to go a step further by making it seen and that’s where marketing comes in. You may not be able to afford it but start with what you’ve got by working with local photographers and have them capture beautiful images of your furniture for online marketing. Go to religious gatherings and offer to polish the pews or refurbish other pieces of furniture for free and in return they could acknowledge your efforts. You could also create an event for other local woodworkers and even though that will make you cough out some money, it will bring the people to you this time around.
Be relevant
Many businesses that were thriving decades ago are either sold or have completely shut down. This can happen due to many factors but one of the common factors is their failure to keep in touch with the new age. It is easy for thriving businesses to get complacent and lose sight of the loopholes they have until other emerging rivals spring up and take over as the top dog in the business. to keep your business running, you must keep in touch with reality. Always be on your toes and have eyes and ears everywhere so that you can be informed whenever something is about to happen that you could use to your advantage. Think and find ways to solve problems with your business, that will make you sought after in the industry. Get ideas from every possible means no matter how silly they may sound. Many bright business game changers have come out of some of the daftest sources ever.
Read Also: How to Start a Remodeling Business
Finally
Put the wood to work and start providing comfort for your clients with a touch of creativity. The possibilities are endless in the furniture store as anyone could spot your furniture and that could take your business to the next level. Get your business the security it deserves, put yourself in a comfortable position regarding purchasing what you can afford as you start, do great work for your customers and enjoy the paycheck and satisfaction that comes with doing what you love.