Are your customers gravitating towards carpet or hardwood flooring in the bedroom?
How about herringbone or chevron-patterned tiles in the kitchen?
Is purple really making a comeback?
The way people decorate their homes is constantly evolving. What’s “in” one year may be “out” the next. In reality, consumer preferences can change even faster than that.
As a home decor manufacturer, it’s crucial that you’re staying on top of such trends — or, better yet, getting ahead of them — and making your business decisions accordingly. Otherwise, it can be very easy to make a wrong turn, leading to missed opportunities, unsold inventory, and, ultimately, lost revenue.
This underscores the importance of consumer data.
Instead of making decisions based on what you think people want, consumer data allows you to make decisions based on what they’re telling you they want — serving as the compass that can help drive your business forward.
So, as a home decor manufacturer, what type of consumer data might be available to you? And how do you go about accessing the right type of data that can provide meaningful insights into consumer behaviours?
Let’s find out.
Using consumer insights to drive business decisions
You might be thinking: “Well, I already have access to sales data that tells me what my customers want.” Certainly, there’s some truth to that statement.
But there’s a key difference.
Sales data tells you what’s selling, based on past performance. Consumer insights help you understand why, uncovering the trends, patterns, and behaviours driving purchasing decisions. Put the two together, and you can really start to understand what makes your customers tick, and where the market is headed.
For instance, consumer insights may reveal that your audience is attracted to a particular combination of paint colours, before that’s been reflected in your sales data. Maybe you’ll discover that your customers are most likely to renovate their bathroom in the spring, and their basement in the fall. Or, perhaps, you’ll see that customers are opting for circular rugs over rectangular ones in their nurseries.
These insights become instrumental in informing marketing campaigns, merchandising and pricing strategies, inventory management, and product development, helping to focus your efforts on what’s likely to resonate with your target audience.
The result?
Quicker, smarter decisions. Lower costs. And more sales.
Every consumer interaction with your brand, whether through your own channels or those of your retail partners, is an opportunity to learn something about them — and how they view your products. A wealth of insights could become available to you.
The big question is: how do you find them?
The right data is hard to come by — especially for manufacturers
A lack of consumer insights is one of the biggest challenges companies face today, according to 54% of marketing decision-makers surveyed across Canada, the U.S., and Europe. As a manufacturer, this challenge is even more pronounced, since you may not have as much direct contact with the end consumer.
For instance, you’ll probably be able to track which of your products and category pages are being viewed the most on your own website. But such data is incomplete without also being able to track the viewership numbers across your retail network.
So, in many cases, you’ll have to rely on your retail partners. But the quality of consumer insights you receive, if any, will vary by retailer. And it’s unlikely you’ll have access to them in real time. Instead, you may have to wait for quarterly updates. By then, new trends may have already emerged, essentially rendering the data useless.
Alternatively, you could conduct or commission your own market research. But this can be extremely costly and time-consuming, once again leading to outdated findings. And such research often relies on secondary data sources or a small sample of direct consumer feedback. In other words, it may not present a complete picture.
No wonder organizations believe poor data quality is responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses. The right data is hard to come by.
Unleashing the power of Roomvo analytics
The industry-leading room visualizer, Roomvo enables shoppers to virtually preview your floors, rugs, countertops, wall coverings, and paint in their own homes.
More than 5,500 home decor brands around the world have Roomvo set up on their websites, resulting in up to 4x more product views and 5x more conversions. And millions of consumers have visualized products using the platform.
That’s a lot of data to work with.
Enter Roomvo PRO, a centralized analytics portal that gives you instant access to consumer data gleaned from visualizer usage. Now, as a manufacturer, any time a customer visualizes your products with Roomvo — even if it’s on a retailer website — you’ll be able to gain unparalleled insights into their preferences and behaviours.
On your dashboard, you’ll have the ability to view several metrics, including your most-viewed products, brands, pattern designs, styles, colours, collections, and categories. You can also sort product views by room type, pinpointing where exactly shoppers are placing your products in their homes, and by date or retailer.
Scott Levy, president of Arley Wholesale Inc., said such data has helped him predict industry trends and facilitate constructive dialogue with retail partners. By analyzing data on Roomvo PRO, he could see that slate was coming back into fashion, allowing him to adjust his inventory to meet upcoming demands. In other instances, he used the visualizer data to persuade retailers to feature his products more prominently.
“We’ve seen it multiple times. A product line is in the top 20 of my visualizer, but it’s not in the top 20 of my sales. Why?” Levy said. “A lot of the time, the product is four or five years old, and retailers have moved it to the back of their stores.”
“With Roomvo’s data, we can prove to retailers that the product deserves to be at the front of the store. This isn’t me telling the retailers to do this — it’s the consumer.”
Let your customers lead the way
The ability to anticipate and align with the ever-changing desires of the modern homeowner is crucial to the success of any home decor business. It can be a challenging proposition, especially for manufacturers. But when you get it right, and let your customers lead the way, the results can be transformational.
