Over the past two years, retailers in the furniture industry have had to pivot, adapt and think differently in order to thrive in today’s retail environment. And thrive they did. Last year was one of the strongest years for the furniture and bedding industry we have ever seen.

Just like retailers, your NMG furniture and bedding division has had to pivot, adapt and think differently about the category. How can we be better communicators to the membership? How can we maximize our Vendor Partners’ potential? Over the past year, we created a few easy-to-follow programs that help bring awareness to product availability and bring recognition to NMG Vendor Partners that you might not have known were a part of our portfolio of brands.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the initiatives and the role they’ve played in helping you boost your furniture and bedding business.

NMG MARKETPLACE

The NMG Marketplace has proven to be a valuable and versatile tool for our Vendor Partners and Members. The Marketplace allows vendors to highlight sales on discontinued models or those with a high inventory of SKUs. Additionally, they can run 24-hour flash sales on a product. Most importantly, the Marketplace has become a Member-exclusive application that will allow the vendor to get their product directly in front of you quickly and efficiently.

This application is very easy to set up. You can use the quick link on MemberNet, click on “Marketplace” and it will bring you directly to the Marketplace portal where all the products will be shown.

In this portal, you will see an image of the product, the NMG exclusive price and the inventory levels. The inventory levels are shown in real time. You can accurately know how many of the products are available at any given time.

We have had the Marketplace live for a little over a year. It’s been encouraging for us to see our vendor community take advantage of how easy it is to reach over 3,400 Members with a simple click of a button. Now, our goal is to help you, our Members, continue to see the value of the NMG Marketplace and drive your continued use of the platform. Remember, these items are exclusive to NMG Members. As soon as a product goes live on the Marketplace, you will be notified via email and then you are off a running. If you have any questions, please reach out to the furniture and bedding team or your MSM.

NMG PICK 5

Our portfolio of Vendor Partners that you can work with is always growing and evolving. One of our jobs here at NMG is to narrow down those choices for you and make it easier to choose which vendors you want in your store.

Here at NMG there are over 90 different Vendor Partners within the furniture and bedding portfolio. Many of those vendors you might not be aware of. In an effort to bring awareness to some emerging brands and what they have to offer, the Furniture & Bedding team started the Pick 5 initiative.

Each month, we highlight five manufacturers from our portfolio of vendors. For each vendor, there is an information sheet that has a brief description of the company and what they have to offer, current NMG program highlights, a best sellers list or list of available products, and an exclusive offer for the NMG membership for that month. There is even an information video that accompanies the info sheet for each brand.

Currently, the Pick 5 is sent out on the 1st and 15th of each month to the membership. The response from the membership has been very positive as they feel this gives them an inside look at vendors they would never have thought about doing business with. If you have not taken a look at this opportunity, I highly recommend looking at this month’s Pick 5 to see if any of the vendors can bring value to your showroom. We here at NMG feel they will.

In closing, the team here at NMG has been amazed with the membership. You’ve come up with so many out-of-the-box ideas to drive traffic to your stores, buy goods in different ways — just thinking differently to not only survive but thrive in this environment. We hope the two out-of-the-box ideas you just read about bring you closer to NMG and help you learn more about all of the different products and manufacturers that you have access to.

Thanks for all that you do, because without your determination and passion for your business, NMG would not be here today.