by Sydney Wells and Jim Morgan will enhance digital marketing efforts, communicate domestic capabilities across key brands
HICKORY, N.C. — Sherrill Furniture has revamped its marketing department as part of a long-term plan to grow the company’s digital marketing efforts, including a new B2B eCommerce platform that helps customers better visualize and understand its domestic custom capabilities in case goods and upholstery.
The company recently hired industry veterans Sydney Wells and Jim Morgan, who bring nearly 40 years of combined marketing experience to the company.
Wells has been named director of marketing and comes to the company from Theodore Alexander, where she served as director of marketing for the past three and a half years.
Before that, she was director, e-commerce for marketing and technology services company Officialize. Before joining that company, she was marketing manager and later senior global e-commerce marketing manager at 2XU. Prior to those positions, she also held several other marketing roles at other agencies.
In her new position, Wells will be responsible for growing the company’s digital presence and business as well as managing traditional print marketing, publicity and events to create a consistent brand experience across various media channels for the company’s brands and customers.
The Sherrill Furniture family of brands includes Hickory White, CTH-Sherrill Occasional, Motioncraft, Precedent Furniture, Mr. & Mrs. Howard, Lillian August and Whittemore Sherrill.
Jim Morgan has been named the company’s new art director for marketing.
For the past 10 years he has been senior creative director at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. Before that, he was art director for Witherspoon Media Group and before that was art and creative director for Condé Nast International.
In his new position, he will be responsible for the design and execution of marketing communications across, print, digital and web platforms. In this capacity, he will help the company establish a unique and consistent design aesthetic for each of the company’s brands. He also will work with Wells to execute corporate marketing strategies.
Both report to Dax Allen, vice president, marketing at Sherrill Furniture.
Allen said that these hires replaced individuals in junior level positions who have since moved on from the company.
“So we took a chance to reorganize the team and increase the depth of experience that we had,” he told Home News Now. “We have added about 40 years’ worth of experience with these two hires. We are adding a career’s worth of experience here that is really going to help us get a lot further with our strategic goals and initiatives.”
He said that Wells will help the company spearhead and execute its B2B eCommerce platform between now and mid-2023 with a digital experience that he described as offering customers “the simplest, fastest and most reliable custom furniture selling process.”
“And I think that every customer that we sell is going to be really see a significant benefit from that, just in being able to reliably, quickly customize furniture, visualize it for their customers and be able to demonstrate it in augmented reality if they want — or on mobile devices — and have a fully custom experience when they are using our website,” Allen added. “From everything we know about what is in the industry right now, we are going to be bringing tools that really don’t exist anywhere else in furniture…I think it is going to really going to be a significant move for us.”
He said that Morgan’s background in retail with Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams will help bring advanced selling tools to retailers and also help tell the company’s story as a domestic manufacturer across the Sherrill Furniture family of brands.
“He has worked across a lot of the major shelter publications, and I think part of the benefit of that is really going to help us advance the perception of our brand with the public in general, but more specifically with designers and the trade as we are trying to make that Sherrill story known,” Allen said. “It is a Made-in-the-USA company for case goods and upholstery and that is a capability that I think is probably not fully known in the industry.”
In addition to the new hires, Allen said he has reorganized the marketing team to have Kara Sherrill, digital marketing specialist report to Wells. Noah Carney, marketing coordinator, continues to report to Allen.
