This project researches and develops a marketing strategy to assist a specific domestic manufacturer. Before putting forth the effort to appeal to potential consumers, it was important to target whom those potential consumers might be. Then, determine what would appeal to this group. Finally, incorporate digital design techniques in the process.
Baby boomers have been the target audience for marketing campaigns for a very long time. But now two generations are even more important, X and Y. According to the 2008 U.S. Census Bureau these two generations, ranging in age from 20s to 40s, outnumber baby boomers by over 30 million and largely influence business practices and consumer marketing in American society. (Brown). This fact may have more to do with the decline in the furniture industry than the competition from imports. As someone who worked in the furniture industry for many years, I viewed the tendency to resist change as its most significant flaw. There are important differences between the boomers and their offspring regarding how they make decisions, particularly when making purchases. A different approach is necessary in order to appeal to the younger consumers.
There are two directions I could have gone with this project.
One was to educate the target audience about the product. Upholstery Journal Magazine suggests that Generations X and Y are less familiar with the furniture buying process(Brown). This could be part of the reason that imports have fared so well. A store selling inexpensive, mass produced merchandise is less intimidating than a more formal upper end furniture store. Also, if a consumer feels unprepared to make an informed decision on a purchase it is more comfortable to make a smaller investment. The industry needs to create a customer base that understands the basics of furniture construction and knows how to identify a quality product. Fortunately, behavior patterns of this younger group make it easy to find a platform for the education. According to a study done by AMP Marketing Group, Gens X and Y rely on research when shopping. Ninety-four percent said on line research positively influenced their decision to make a purchase, and nearly four in ten said they bought a product because of the research they found (media post). I considered making an educational video about upholstery construction.
The other direction was to provide a platform that has more appeal to Generations X and Y. Upholstery Journal Magazine’s statement “ They (Generations X and Y)
are drawn to elite products that allow them to individualize their style, and are driven by technology(Brown)” spells it out. If this consumer is given an outlet where he or she can be creative and personalize choices with the assistance of current technology there will be a good chance that furniture would be purchased. This project creates that platform.
Michael Thomas Furniture is a high end upholstery manufacturer in Liberty, NC. It provides a private label collection for Calico Corners, a large furniture retail chain. Recently a “design your own” program was developed, named Selections 3000, and I was asked to assist with the promotional materials. Unfortunately I was unable to complete the work in time for the launch of the program due to an injury, but I have produced a sales tool that provides the creative outlet on a digital platform that should appeal to the target audience, Generations X and Y.
Drawings of the product were done on Google Sketchup. The actual product line is much larger, but for this project there will be three categories which require the customer to choose between three or four choices: three cushion styles, three arm styles and four base styles. This will create 36 sofa designs, which would be very time consuming if all of the possibilities were drawn by hand. On Sketchup each sofa component was drawn and assigned to a layer. By turning layers on and off as needed, all 36 complete sofa drawings and 12 “sofa in progress” drawings were done with roughly the effort of drawing four sofas. Another benefit Sketchup offered was changing the drawing style with a simple click. Tom Jordan, the owner of Michael Thomas, requested a hand drawn style which was fitting considering that the concept of the project is to offer the opportunity to the end consumer to design his or her own sofa. I rendered several versions of the drawings in various sketch styles, but the unrendered version was a better fit for this projects aesthetic style.
Increasing my knowledge of computer-aided design was the purpose of the class and producing this project certainly achieved that goal. Even though I had been using Sketchup for a year, previously it had been for producing architectural designs primarily involving straight lines. Drawing upholstery required using new tools and new strategies. It would have been easier to use Adobe Illustrator for the graphic design segment, but I used Adobe InDesign because it includes features that were helpful with this type of layout and I wanted to acquire the ability to use this program. However, the images would not export from InDesign to Flash so I eventually designed the graphics with a combination of Illustrator and Flash. The biggest challenge was Flash. The drawing tools and the time line were manageable, but I could not make Action Script work without a tutor.
When I complete projects I have always been able to look back and see how I could have produced them more efficiently, but never as much as I did this one! Now that the project is completed, I can describe the most efficient way to create the project. Here is the process:
• Create sofa images in Sketchup. Each component of a sofa, such as an arm or a cushion, is drawn separately and placed on its own layer. Layers are turned on and off to create the different styles.
• Export images of each complete sofa and each “sofa in progress” (an example would be a sofa with cushions and arms, but no base) as a jpg.
• Open images in Photoshop, make corrections and delete background.
• Create a graphic layout in Illustrator for an opening page, instructional page and “design your own sofa” page which all incorporate the graphics created in Sketchup.
• Copy and paste into Flash as scenes.
• On the introduction page create a motion tween which will make an image of a sofa change every two seconds into another sofa image. Create a gleam, which makes each letter in the title of the program appear to brighten sequentially, with the use of a motion tween. Create a button from type and use Action Script 2 to make the informational page appear. The page is actually a scene in the same Flash file.
• Copy and paste the sofa image with the motion tween attached from the opening page. Repeat the process of creating a button and giving it the function of moving to the next scene.
• On the “design your own sofa” page create buttons with the cushion style images. With Action Script 2 program each button to move to the scene that matches its style. The graphics which are functioning buttons on this page are highlighted with a rectangle and directions for the user. The graphics which are not buttons are subdued with a black rectangle with its opacity reduced.
• Each cushion style scene is identical, except for the “sofa in progress” image. These images include seat cushions and a specific back cushion style, but the rest of the sofa is missing. On these scenes there are cushion and base graphics which need to be subdued as the ones were on the previous page. Change the arm style graphics to buttons and program them to make movie clips appear. Also program a button to go back to the cushion option page/scene in case the user wants to change his/her cushion choice .
• Movie clips have their own time line. Make movie clips which include a sofa cushion and arm style only, and complete sofas which use those particular cushion and arm styles with each of the base styles. Connect buttons to the movie clips to make the current scene evolve. With this process 48 different sofas will be shown on the program.
The program could be taken further to offer more style options and to display how each sofa style would appear with particular fabric choices. It would be time consuming to produce all of the graphics necessary for such a cornucopia of options, however putting these options into the Flash program would only involve putting movie clips inside movie clips inside movie clips and so on.
This process has produced a tool which could enable someone with no design or design software background to participate in the design experience. With this tool a manufacturer or retailer could allow customers to have fun, actually see what their custom designed furniture would look like prior to purchase and, hopefully, become comfortable enough to buy lots of furniture.
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Brown, By Amanda, and Lizzie Nguyen. "Marketing Upholstery to Generations X and Y - Upholstery Journal." Home - Upholstery Journal. Web. 26 June 2011.
"MediaPost Publications - Home of MediaDailyNews, MEDIA and OMMA Magazines." MediaPost - News and Directories for Media, Marketing and Online Advertising Professionals. Web. 26 June 2011.
