​I always try and promote technology companies that want to enter the home furnishing category for one simple reason. Technology levels the playing field, PERIOD. It will help you show more, tell more, and sell more. Without embracing new technologies, you WILL become irrelevant like so many dominant retailers from the past that no longer exist, and the 20,000+ furniture retailers that have disappeared in the last 10 years … because they didn’t adapt, and if you don’t, there will be a place for you in history. 

This new technology for the home furnishings category is perfect for furniture, rug, accessory and lighting retailers. It is also an amazing designer tool, too

The old way of doing search was through words/descriptions. The deeper the description, the more likely you would narrow your search based off the content on websites. Remember the Long Tail Book published July 11, 2006? That’s eleven years ago and was the bible for the internet then, as AI and visual search are today.

So, why am I writing about Artificial Intelligence you ask? Because embracing this phenomenon is not a fad, it is in everyday life experiences. Think everything Google, Siri, Amazon, virtual assistants and now Pinterest. You know that social platform where people interact with HOME FURNISHINGS!
​
Think how you search today. You may start with key words/descriptions, but when you see something you like, what do you do? You try and find “similar” products
Think how people/you search today. You may start with key words/descriptions, but when you see something you like, what do you do? You try and find “similar” products.
Think Amazon. When you find a product, you think you like, it feeds you “like and/or similar” products below your image. And they also feed you – “Other people purchased”. That’s artificial intelligence working … for you/consumer.

By now, everyone knows that follows me I have a passion to help our retailers drive my traffic, to their website and their brick and mortar store.
Having lost close to 40% of our brick and mortar stores in the home furnishings category is nothing short of devastating. There are just too many excuses that people use for this demise, many are valid, and many are not.
​
Excuses are defined as:

So let’s break down each product, starting with the most important one, Lens. That gives users a way to open their camera, look at any image and Pinterest’s Lens feature will automatically pick apart the objects in an image. That can drill down into foods, animals, or even patterns like hexagons. That gives users the ability to start searching for related elements through that.

Exactly and when it comes to home furnishings, we have a language all to ourselves

As you will notice, Women engage with Home & Décor and it’s #3 with women in two of the most important areas on this site:

Do you want to engage Millennial/Social Customers? Ask for their pinterest board and let them discover what you sell based on their "terms" and what they like. 
The best part of this concept is their Pinterest Boards convey your customers taste and preferences and their search for what inspires their design has been narrowed significantly.

So back to Visual Search. Why would you NOT want an artificial intelligence app that is part of your web platform and as a tool for your salespeople to help customers FIND THEIR LOOK, especially if it’s affordable, easy to integrate and has been proven virtually everywhere on every platform that it works? (If it didn’t, no one would be using it and constantly improve on it).

I'll just call this as I see it. Most furniture retailer websites are just plain BAD. They don't show a ton of product, some don't have prices (REALLY), many don't have a narrow your search option and so on and so on.

Those that have a narrow your search have terms like transitional or other terms we as an industry use that consumers have no clue what that means, frustrating people on the website looking for what THEY want.  (Take a look at your "time on site" analytics. If it's less than 90 seconds, you have a problem).

​Enter AI ...

• Customer finds something they like and they click on it. The AI App takes over and immediately shows “like” products.
• ​Customer takes a picture, or has the URL of the product they are looking for. They upload the picture into your AI App, or paste the URL and it finds “Like Products”.

Take the information below as an example.

Click the images to enlarge

 A customer comes in your store with an image, a URL and wants to know if you have anything similar OR a Customer emails you a link or an product image on their mobile phone or even a magazine picture which you can then use this tool, BOOM, the salesperson takes that information and instantly shows everything similar in your catalog – yes, I said catalog, not just what’s on the floor or if it's a web inquiry, they send them back page-links that show them all the options available from YOUR catalog.

Now you have even more reasons to put everything you have open to buy in your website to compete with all those e-commerce goliaths … you know the companies that all do ONLY special order because they don’t have storefronts.
​
I did a demo with this company, and it looks awesome. 

​The home furnishings category is one that most technology companies ignore for a variety of reasons. Primarily because it is made up of small/medium sized retailers with few national players. To penetrate this category, you also must be an insider because we don’t readily accept outsiders for whatever reason as I wrote about;

Technology is scary, especially if you are not tech oriented, but what is scarier?
Losing your business, laying off employees and having to revert to that ubiquitous LIQUIDATION SALE​