A well established marketing principle states that you should ‘segment your market’; meaning that if you can draw a profile of your typical client, you can do a better job of targeting new customers through advertising. However, smaller private companies, such as Options Furniture, operating on a regional basis may need to take a more ‘scatter gun’ approach to maximise their potential market and cannot afford to limit their opportunities by using popular segments, such as age: gender, marital status profession or ethnicity in choosing media in which to advertise their products and services.

Major fitted furniture suppliers, operating on a national basis, may decide that their core client base comprises affluent professionals, aspiring middle class families, single young city dwellers, empty nesters or many more niches and choose to buy advertising space in publications that the target consumers read. Or that may have been the case in the past.

Massive changes in media, particularly the phenomenal growth of the internet, increases in social mobility and family structures present new challenges to all home improvement companies and their advertising and marketing arms.  The old ABC demographics may still be relevant in some markets but for a bespoke fitted furniture manufacturer the targeting problems are infinitely more complex than they were.

Options Furniture have an extensive database of old customers going back over 25 years, and if the old principles still held good we would simply look at the postcodes, decide which type of person lives in these areas, what magazines and newspapers they read and direct the media spend accordingly. But life, and marketing, aint that simple any moreSo, who is the typical client for bespoke fitted bedrooms, home offices, living room furniture or home entertainment units and can they be segmented by ethnicity, faith wealth, profession, marital status, geography, social status or their choice of media? In truth; No! All types of people from all walks of life and lifestyles choose to improve their homes by installing fitted furniture.

The only segmentation that may be of some value to Options is the division of the target market by age. We do not collect data on the age profile of our customers and even if we did, the fact that we have old customers returning who we last serviced 20 years ago these would still be shifting sands.

The unreliable but only available data we have on the age demographic of the typical buyer of custom-made, built-in and fitted furniture is purely anecdotal but, hey it is all we have got.

How old is an Options client? Well this is not an easy question to answer but I will attempt to address it in my next post.

New trends in fitted furniture. It’s new trends that keep the wheels turning in most industries and the bespoke fitted furniture market is no different.

Mostly in  the wardrobe or bedroom market and to some extent in lounge furniture and to a lesser extent in home offices, high-gloss is the flavour of the month.

Let’s take a look at what’s out there: High gloss is available in vynil wrap, laminate, curtain coated polyester, acrylic and hand-polished lacquered mdf. Most high-gloss doors are plain and flat but vinyl wrap also comes on panelled or ‘routered’ doors.

There are wide variations in the price, and quality of the various types of cupboard doors and broadly they are as follows:

Vinyl wrap. This is one of the cheapest door types but has two disadvantages: vinyl is a soft material, easily damaged and will dull down over time. Also, the wrap is quite thin and will show the imperfections in the  surface of the mdf substrate on which it is applied. The imperfections cannot normally be seen in the matt finish wood effects or plain colours but the light reflecting off the gloss finish will reveal every bump in the surface.

Laminate. Also, cheap and tougher than vinyl but is cut from large sheets of melamine faced chipboard that needs to be edged with an applied edging strip made from a softer pvc material that will not match the melamine surface and is often done as a contrast detail. You either like the look or you don’t. Again, the bumpy surface of the chipboard tends to show through and the gloss is duller. The manufacturers of the boards sometimes descibe this as an ‘entry level’ product.

Curtain coated polyester. The toughest and highest gloss of all with a mirror like finish. The high-tec, high cost plant required to curtain coat means that this product is only made in long production runs and it is only available in standard sizes and is not really suitable for bespoke or custom-made furniture.

Acrylic. Bright colours and good depth of gloss but scratches easily and expensive.

Hand-polished, lacquered mdf. The ideal material for the bespoke cabinet maker to work with. Any colour is possible and the hand-polishing removes all imperfections. Not the cheapest way to go but the lacquers (developed in the motor industry) provide a tough, durable surface and the only one that can be repaired just as your car can be resprayed.

The lacquers are sprayed on by hand, so the components can be individually made  with all the flexibility required for truly bespoke manufacture.

For the discerning client looking for  top-end high quality, high-gloss fitted bedroom or living room furniture click here to talk to a designer.

It was good to see that Ripples, the bathroom specialists, recovered from a difficult first half of 2009 to end the year just 12% down on a reduced footfall of 21%. This was achieved by making design appointments with 20% of visitors and converting an astonishing 90% of those quotations to orders.

Options Fitted Furniture are proud to be suppliers, through their trade division, Phoenix Doors, of bespoke bathroom cabinet furniture to Ripples.

Examples of Options bespoke fitted bathroom cupboards can be seen here.

Well done Ripples, an excellent example of how to trade through challenging times.

Mark Wilkinson, the Daddy of all bespoke fitted furniture designers has been awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

 As the founder of Smallbone of Devizes, Mark Wilkinson has had more influence on the fitted furniture industry than any other person. Although he primarily designed for fitted and even un-fitted kitchens, much of his creativity is reflected in other areas of the home, from fitted bedrooms to home studies.  His products are at the top end of the market and he always uses the finest raw materials and does not compromise on quality.

 Much of Mark’s output is manufactured from real hardwoods and he was the pioneer of the hand-painted look in custom-built kitchen and bedroom furniture.

Although he has, rightly, been a strong defender of his own interlectual property and quick to challenge plagiarism, the Smallbone ‘look’ is now as fundamental a part of the British furniture oevre as those of Chippendale or Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

You can find his influence here http://www.optionsfit.com/photo-galleries-furniture264.html.

The OBE is the culmination of a number of awards for services to interior design, skills training and charity.

Well deserved and well done Mark.