Furniture Guild Update – New Lead Times, Newsletter, Workshop Wednesday, Configurator News

t’s been a minute since I’ve reached out so I just wanted to give you an update.

We’ve been cut back to 50% production for a couple months as that has been the level of our incoming orders.

This week we’ve noticed a very strong uptick in quote requests and orders are starting to pick up.

Melanie and Nicole have both expressed that consumers are looking for products with a shorter lead time.

I heard the same message from showrooms in the DPHA webinar on Wednesday.

I spoke to a bunch of customers yesterday that gave me the same info

We want to respond to the needs of our customers so we’re announcing pre-covid lead times.

We are going to add factory hours and capacity to meet the demand.

1. Lead Times
   1. 4-6 weeks standard, non-metal products
   2. 6-8 weeks standard, metal products and Automotive Finishes
   3. 2 week CAD lead times for custom
   4. Guilder 2 weeks to your door
2. Monthly Newsletter – Contacts
   1. We are putting together a monthly newsletter with a ton of good content. We’ll be using leveraging social media, website, blog, configurator with this newsletter.
   2. Our showroom contact list is probably out of date. I’m sending this out to everyone I could find but if you could help me gather showroom salespeople contacts I would really appreciate it.
   3. I want to make sure we get the content to all showroom salespeople as well as A/D
   4. If you would like your customers, designers, architects to be included in our newsletter, please send me their contact info and I’ll make sure they are on the list.
3. Virtual Training
   1. Training from Nicole has been extremely well rec’d. We’re offering both one-on-one and group training for those interested. This is available to showrooms or your A&D customers! Please email nicole@furnitureguild.com to setup
4. Instagram and Workshop Wednesday
   1. For the past month we’ve been hitting our Instagram really hard. We’ve built our followers up to over 10k which is pretty decent for our industry. Please encourage your customers to share their install pictures and tag your showroom and/or us. #furnitureguild We will give them credit on any repost which will only add to their following.
   2. Workshop Wednesday – Starts back next week. I’m expecting a pretty good response from this as we’ve almost tripled our following since we last ran factory video footage. We’ll be in COVID mode of course which kind of stinks but it is what it is.
5. New Bath Products
   1. I have some new vanity designs we’re going to be releasing soon based on our Kinley shelving concept from the Home Collection. More on that soon. Designs based on:

                                                               i.       Kinley shelving https://www.furnitureguild.com/products/furniture-guild-home/157/kinley-shelving

                                                             ii.      Lucas Closed Nightstand https://www.furnitureguild.com/products/furniture-guild-home/150/lucas-closed-nightstand

                                                           iii.      Lucas Open Nightstand https://www.furnitureguild.com/products/furniture-guild-home/151/lucas-open-nightstand

1. Configurator
   1. New Configurator should be live mid-August which is going to be a game changer.
2. Home Products – Not a ton of action on this during the pandemic but I suspect this is going to become a bigger piece of our business.  Home Price list is now on the downloads section of the website. This is a great way to upsell your bath customers. More and more people are carrying design from their bathroom to the bedroom. Keep in mind that the discount for active Furniture Guild Bath dealers is 50% off on all Furniture Guild Home products.
3. Current COVID Mode Production – Here’s link to blog article. https://blog.furnitureguild.com/tfg-covid-19/

That’s all for now! Thank you all for your continued support. In this crazy time.