Home Decor Shopping | The Learning Project 39/365

6 September — Real Life Observation

Are you a fan of Pinterest homes or do you follow DIY furniture Instagram handles?

I am.

Due to COVID, our interior designer is unable to visit the site and go for furniture selection. Hence, from the last few weeks, I am accompanying my family to shop for our new house. We have been taking quotes, looking at material and designs for sofas, curtains and so on.

I observed a few things about interior designing or home decor market. It’s huge and there are few big players who command the market. Since home decor nowadays goes for big-ticket size investment people want to be very sure of what they are buying.

Like any other luxury shopping, the Home decor is a statement symbol hence there are a lot of aspects which includes even toilet fittings. The kind of variety you get in the market even for a minutest of things are mind-boggling.

For us selection criteria were:

- First and foremost fabric and design

- Second, how much discount is extended by the shop owner

- Third, the quality of workmanship

- Fourth, delivery time period

Now I would like to take you through what I observed in the selection process for curtains, sofa fabric and sofa designer:

1. Reference — I believe this is the most important aspect in as it helps us to save time. Infact these days BNI members are heavily relied upon. My brother is a member of BNI. We actually visited 5–6 stores based on those references.
2. Unique product – After visiting so many shops we realised even though they all had D-Decor catalogues still each one of them had something different to show to us. As we want to give whole work to one person but we liked craftsmanship of one and fabric of other hence contemplating on whom to give the contract.
3. Thoughtful cataloguing – DDecor understood the market well. All their catalogues are very strategically crafted. They understood that not everyone can be an interior designer but would love to do their selection of decor. Best way to do it is to give them a set with visualisation with the fabric of sofa and contrast curtains etc. It makes it easy to decide and gives that feel-good factor to the buyer. As they will love it once it will be done as the selection was their own.
4. Presentation wins the Game – The presenter should be as much interested in the selection process as much the buyer. We spent at least 4 hours in each of these shops in a go, they actually saw almost 500 catalogues till now. Since it was such a long sitting the shop owner had to be more enthusiastic than us in order to keep us engaged.
5. Proactive – Market is fierce hence relation-building here matters a lot and proof points to showcase your work. We have currently shortlisted 4 guys for this contract now it will go to the person who will be actively following up. This gives an assurance to the buyer that the person will be active once given the contract maybe that doesn't happen but mentally that helps.
6. Domain Expertise — My father is a very curious man. He likes to discuss everything in minutest of details, which intimidates a few people but interests most of the others. As they like to discuss what they are experts of. One way to analyse the vendor is to talk to them in detail about the product, the longer the conversation they can keep more is their knowledge.

Working in an IT firm I always thought the sales process for software companies is very different. After going through this elaborated buying process I realised it is not the case. All the above points stand very true for any buying process. Few things can be added to these points though.

I will also share how these shop owners were judging us in this buying process tomorrow. Hope this was a good read for you.

Do share your thoughts.