by In this business, success in retail is primarily contingent on two things. The first is having the right product. And by right, I mean it must look right, perform right and be priced correctly.
The second condition is knowing when to enhance, tweak or even change a product to keep it in the passing lane of retail’s fast track.
After reporting on the home furnishings sector for decades, I’ve concluded that, for good reason, suppliers fail often when trying to meet that second condition.
When a supplier opts to redesign, tweak or reimagine an existing product, it may often involve switching suppliers, raw materials, production procedures, channels of distribution and more.
Which is why good enough is good enough for some suppliers.
Then, there are guys like Joe Savovic, president and CEO of Soundstage USA LLC.
As long as I have known Savovic — and it has been a very long time — Joe embodied the tenet of Kaizen manufacturing (aka continuous improvement) long before the term became a buzzword in our sector.
A few markets ago, Savovic introduced an innovative line of furniture that incorporated a very sophisticated sound system.
If you missed the original story, you can read it here.
Despite a strong response to the line, in speaking with Savovic last week, he told me he had an aha moment and realized that, “Initially, shoppers are coming into a furniture store to shop for furniture, not necessarily an amazing audio experience.”
As a supplier focused on quality product at value pricing, Savovic said, ““Our job is to give the customer something they think they can’t buy for the money they are prepared to spend.”
Now, along with two other industry veterans, Howard and Michael Slavin, Savovic has reworked the line and is putting the finishing touches on new groupings of stationary furniture made in Vietnam that still feature his high-definition audio components, but at sharper price points.
“I’ve always said the greatest inventions or innovations of our lifetime are things that we didn’t know existed or that we wanted,” Savovic told me, adding, “So, for me, that meant changing my story from here’s incredible high-definition hidden in furniture to here’s a great- looking living room set at a great value. And it also offers high-definition sound with a host of incredible connectivity.”
Specifically, Savovic said users can make a hands-free phone call from this furniture. They can listen to music, watch a movie on their TV, listen to audiobooks and much more.
With that in mind, Savovic will debut a new lineup of sharply priced stationary furniture, including a 90-inch sofa featuring four speakers and two subwoofers and Soundstage third-generation audio that can retail for $999.
“Larger sofa chaise units and sectionals, also featuring the high-definition audio components, will be set to retail at $1,899, and that is huge, because before this, just about anything in our line retailed at $2,999 or more,” Savovic explained.
All told, Soundstage USA is planning to show some 20 new groupings in his showroom at the October market.
However, buyers can get an earlier first look at the new line as the company says it will debut four new lines at the RTOWorld 2024 rent-to-own show put on by APRO and the TRIB Group this August in Orlando, Florida.
