Premier furniture manufacturer shortens in-store sales
cycle and improves multi-channel experience using Scene7 for online upholstery design
NOVATO, Calif., March 15 /PRNewswire/ — Scene7®, provider of the leading on-demand rich media platform, today announced that Thomasville Furniture increased its online draping application usage 1100 percent after implementing Scene7 for dynamic rendering of fabrics on upholstery furniture. Thomasville has also significantly shortened its sales cycle by providing in-store staff and consumers access to the same furniture design technology to visualize and print out their home furnishing selections in photo-perfect quality prior to purchase.
Thomasville, a full-line manufacturer, offers furniture for every living style in dining room, bedroom, home entertainment, home office, occasional, youth, and fabric and leather upholstery. Thomasville sells its furniture through more than 150 independently owned Thomasville Home Furnishings stores, as well as over 400 leading independent retail stores. As Thomasville began blending its online and offline experiences, finding a Web-based product that offered real-time updates, high-quality fabric rendering results and was user-friendly for both its consumers and sales personnel was critical. “When looking for a fabric draping application to partner with our room planner tool, we chose Scene7 hands-down because of its superior rendering engine and ability to integrate with a rich Flash user interface,” said Eric Tessau, EBusiness Manager at Thomasville. “Since launching with Scene7, the feedback from our customers and the stores has been overwhelmingly positive. The stores are able to get better quality renderings more easily, and much more quickly. And, corporate is happy because new product lines are immediately available to all users in real-time.”
Prior to implementing Scene7, Thomasville used a desktop solution in its stores that it moved online; however, the Web product was not user friendly and did not offer the quality rendering Thomasville was seeking. In addition, the rendering process was slow and awkward, taking up to three minutes for each product. Also, Thomasville’s previous solution did not allow for real-time updates; rather, new color and fabric swatches were scanned and put on to CDs that were then sent to the stores. This process took approximately four weeks before reaching the stores, and the updates were already out of date by the time they arrived. With 800 fabric and 200 leather options, updating swatches in real-time is critical to Thomasville.
Moving to Web-based Scene7 On-Demand for its fabric “draping” made dramatically improved photo-quality results available to both its staff and customers. Today, customers are coming into the retail stores with print outs of designs they create at their convenience; the in-store staff can easily break down the designs by section and by fabric, provide the SKU numbers and pricing, and customers are ready to buy. Additionally, in-store design consultants can try out various combinations for customers using high-quality, photo-realistic renderings of custom furniture suggestions. Since custom items are expensive and not returnable, this added capability has been beneficial in helping customers make decisions. “With this application that quickly produces high-quality custom product renderings, people are three steps further along in the buying process,” added Tessau.
Thomasville also uses Scene7’s platform to create all new thumbnail images in consistent, neutral colors or the “color of the season” for all of its upholstery listings, allowing customers to focus on the furniture itself as opposed to the fabric or pattern. Thomasville plans to rotate thumbnail colors quarterly to keep up with fashion color changes — something the company would not have been able to consider without Scene7.
Scene7’s platform offers a powerful rich media management, publishing and serving environment. Scene7 customers, like Thomasville, enjoy a complete solution to author, manage and seamlessly deploy rich media such as dynamic content serving, color change, zoom and alternative image views. Dynamic content serving is the baseline that allows manufacturers, retailers or anyone doing business online to easily expand their use of visual merchandising while adding rich interactivity to their shopping experience. Thomasville is looking to expand its use of Scene7’s platform to add dynamic zoom to products.
“Thomasville’s results from blending online and offline experiences demonstrate the importance consumers place on visualization,” said Doug Mack, CEO of Scene7. “We are thrilled to be able to support their initiatives and to deliver rich media solutions to help bolster their business.”
About Scene7
Scene7 — provider of the leading on-demand rich media platform — enables companies to grow revenues, enhance customer experience and cut production costs. Scene7’s solutions are built on an integrated technology platform — for unrivaled breadth, depth, scalability and ease of use. Solutions include Dynamic Imaging, eCatalogs, Product Configurators, Targeted Email & Print and Image Management. Available both as software and On-Demand, leading companies worldwide have selected Scene7, including Amazon, Harrods, Macy’s, Office Depot, Levi Strauss & Co., La-Z-Boy and QVC — and partners IBM, Microsoft, Akamai and Adobe. Visit www.scene7.com.
