Sight unseen
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday March 31, 2011
Switched-on furniture buyers are turning to the internet for bargains in beds and beyond, writes Harriet Alexander. A sofa? Yep. A bed? Sure. A dog? Why not? There is nothing Katy Rowden would not consider buying online. Her Coogee apartment is a monument to armchair shopping, with lampshades from carinasherlock.com.au, chairs from mattblatt.com.au, a toy table from nanny-annie.com.au, bedheads from bednest.com.au and sofas found on domayne.com.au. The only reason she didn't buy her bed online was because she and her husband fell in love with a particular bed brand they encountered while on holidays in New Zealand and later discovered it was sold from a shop near their Sydney office."I got on a bit of a roll with [online shopping] because I'd gone to a few shops and sometimes you don't want to tramp around looking for things, so in the end, online was going to be easier for me," says Rowden, who moved into her renovated Coogee apartment with her husband and toddler in February."I buy so many other things online that, to be honest, it never seemed like a big decision [to buy furniture]."That sounds fair enough for small or cheap items but for most people, sinking a few thousand dollars into a piece of furniture that will be used, touched and seen every day requires a leap of faith. Not for Rowden.With a mouse in one hand and her plastic in the other, she is at the crazy-brave end of an online shopping phenomenon in which nothing is off-limits and furniture retailers are diving into the new marketplace.Stalwarts such as Matt Blatt are now being joined by giants such as Domayne, which recently added a shopping cart feature to its website, and myriad online-only small businesses.The New Zealand homewares retailer EziBuy has experienced a 100 per cent growth in its online business in the past two years. "To be honest, it was a small base but 100 per cent is really, really good and we're looking at pushing even harder over the coming season," says EziBuy's general manager, Ian Eakin. The buyers are typically women aged 35 to 55 with young children. More than half are from Australia."They get our catalogue and they sit down and they browse and they see it takes the hassle away from them walking around the shops," Eakin says. The most popular furniture items are outdoor tables and chairs.Suzannah Williams, a former film location manager, turned her passion for restoring old furniture into a business, Rustic Coast, last year. With prices ranging from about $100 for a kitchen chair to $1250 for a weathered coffee table, her pieces are not cheap and she says most customers inspect them before buying on the first occasion. But up to 30 per cent of them will buy a piece of furniture without eyeballing it.The latter are invariably repeat customers who have learnt to trust the photographs on the website. "They come and they have a look and they see it's exactly as it is in the photo," Williams says."Then the next time they want to buy a piece of furniture, they don't feel they need to come and see it."She tries to instil confidence by providing lots of photographs showing different angles and details, so people can see the textures of a piece without running their finger along the edges and see the dimensions without pacing around it.The owners of Beachwood, a boutique beach furniture shop in Avalon, are hoping that by selling their wares online they won't have to open a second shop to expand the business. They are now selling to customers all over Australia."People still prefer to pick up the phone during some point of the sale," owner Poppy Roxburgh says. "The shopfront provides confidence - that we are contactable seven days a week and have a retail front."Nicky Line, who sells upholstered bedheads through her website, bednest.com.au, says she often gets inquiries about the fabric but only one customer has asked to physically see the product before buying. Inspecting the piece defeats the purpose of buying it online. "The type of people who want to buy an upholstered bedhead are people who want some style but they're just so time poor," Line says.Louise Bell has witnessed the online furniture shopping phenomenon from both sides, as the owner of online homewares store Table Tonic and as an avid internet shopper from way back. A confessed shopaholic, she discovered the convenience of the web after having her first baby in 2004."I was at home a lot, I was time poor, it was convenient," she says. "You can go to the shops, walk around and see things but you go online and you have the world at your fingertips."Bell and her family moved into a new house in Avalon in December that is largely furnished from her online ventures. Moving from a Federation house in Cammeray, much of their furniture did not suit the modern beach house, so she sold it on eBay and went scouting for new items. She said one of the keys to finding the right stuff is having a clear idea about what you are after and being able to narrow the search terms on sites such as eBay.That was how she found a bed for her daughter's room."I definitely wanted a daybed and I wanted to have something where the head and the foot were the same height," she says. She teamed it with a bedside table from eBay and cushions from www.be-still.com.au, castleandthings.com.au and her own shop, tabletonic.com.au. She also hung artwork bought online from Lisa Madigan, Village and Have You Met Miss Jones.Bell says online shopping is almost always cheaper than buying from a shop and though she would draw the line at a couch, she would buy pretty much anything else.Hang it upThe very thought of it will send art connoisseurs scuttling into the closest gallery. But entrepreneurs have struck upon the perfect solution to the tyranny of the blank wall online art markets. Websites such as Art For You and Smart Art Direct enable customers to buy artwork without inspecting it in person at much cheaper prices than at the top-end galleries.Smart Art Direct has a small team of artists who continually create new abstract designs, which are then produced in Bali, before being shipped back to the Australian warehouse for sale.It began as an option for commercial clients but has expanded into the retail market for individuals."We follow the trends," the managing director of Smart Art Direct, Koula Mamalikos, says. "We look at what's happening in fashion for the following season ... and use what colours are going to be in the following year."Where to finde-furniture shops- rusticcoast.com.au- ezibuy.com.au- www.beachwood.com.au- bednest.com.au- domayneonline.com.au- mattblatt.com.au- perfectpieces.com.auHomewares- www.be-still.com.au- castleandthings.com.au- tabletonic.com.au- lisamadigan.com.auArtwork- artforyou.com.au- smartartdirect.com
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
