Faith has a heritage in working with retail brands. We were fortunate to work on the Choice flooring business for five years seeing them transition from Carpet Choice to a new brand, Choices Flooring. Flooring is a challenging business in that the market is characterised by a range of national and state brands, none of whom on their own boast a critical mass. The corporates are basically Harvey Norman and Bunnings. A key challenge for the industry is installation and ensuring that the customer service promised is delivered when either carpet or hard flooring products are installed. The business historically has been dominated by buying groups and independent marketing groups working under a franchise model. The three major specialist retail brands have been Carpet Call, Carpet Court and Choices Flooring.
Choices Flooring is owned by Newfurn Limited and are a member driven co-operative who have survived and adapted in a market where many co-ops have disappeared. They run a co-ordinated national marketing and merchandise program for 130 members around the country. Members are broken up by geographic segments which allow for joint marketing and promotional activity. Co-operative advertising dollars and member marketing fees were allocated to each segment for promotion and marketing according to the cost of media and the sales dollars they generated. This model is felt to be the most equitable for all the members with additional money being made in some segments to achieve strategic objectives.
Faith working with the internal marketing team used customer and insights research from Melbourne based research agency Truth Serum, to develop an integrated communications program which included all the major touch points that its prime target audience related to. Importantly we looked at the emotional and rational clues which were so important to generate a flooring purchase which on average is made every seven years. There are other cues such as moving home or extensions that prompted purchase, but essentially the key market was new homes and replacement.
The communications program was very comprehensive and included retail catalogues, magazines, television radio, press, direct mailers, online and digital. We developed a new website for the group as Carpet Choice as well as a further site when it migrated to Choices.
We also worked hard on an interior design project entitled ‘Destination Choice’ whose aim to was to engage with customers instore and assist them navigate the myriads of flooring options available to them. A lot of work went into developing a standard quoting system which attempted to lift the success rate in quoting from its average of 50% to 60%. A post-purchase service model was also introduced to achieve the highest level of service satisfaction. The better operators embraced this with vacuuming after installation and some little memorable touchpoints that saw the customers become advocates of Choices Flooring.
In the five years we handled the business the group held its market share against aggressive competition from Harvey Norman and Bunnings. Margins increased and advertising expenditure as a percentage of sales declined slightly. Our media team managed the $4 million spend across the country, planning and buying activity in every regional market in the country. We also worked with the internal finance team to deliver a reporting system that complemented the allocation of co-op dollars by geographic segment.
In every way possible Faith was a friend to Choices Flooring offering Branding, Design and Art Direction, Creative Direction, Digital, Media Strategy, Planning and Buying.