Warehouse Expansion.
The Zenzu chinese furniture store is currently planning for the expansion of its business model beyond oriental furniture to incorporate solid wooden doors. The wooden doors business will be a separate marketing and company entity, currently with the working title domo doors, and we are targetting the import of stock into the UK this December in time for the peak retail season in January and February.
The wooden doors venture will replicate the business model used for oriental furniture with marketing heavily focussed on search engine advertising and search engine keyword optimisation. The sales, storage and distribution infrastructure to support this marketing effort will take advantage of that already in place for chinese furniture : on the sales side our current staff will cover all customer interaction with the simple addition of a dedicated salesline focussed on Domo doors; distribution will continue to be provided by our delivery partner Motorlink Distribution; the only area that requires significant investment and expansion is therefore storage.
The plan is to expand the rented storage area dedicated to Zenzu’s oriental furniture range. The expansion will provide a small office, an upstairs mezzanine display area and additional square footage for pure storage. Ideal for racking, the doors should not take up a hugely excessive storage footprint and by combining the door warehousing with the chinese furniture business provides some of the benefits of economies of scale. The combination not only allows for economies of scale but also provides the opportunity to have a more formalised display area. The plan is to be more active in advertising Zenzu and Domo doors as having a showroom facility. We are not entirely sure how to staff up for this offering as at present we have an unattended warehouse and only accept visitors by appointment. However, in partnership with Motorlink Distribution we should be able to accept Monday to Friday come in off the street visits. If this proves successful then we may consider an expanded weekend staffing service altough from day one we will continue to do weekend visits in a pre-booked basis only.
As we are an online company it is not crucial to have a showroom facility, especially as we offer a home visit service for our chinese furniture and also provide postal samples for customers to review. However, it is our gut feel that for the solid doors it may be a more requested service requirement to have the warehouse available for viewings on a flexible basis. Of course, it may be that the open door policy also draws more customers to see our oriental furniture pieces; perhaps customers who might otherwise no purchase with us. Of course, this is all conjecture and the benefits may well be negligible. However, we will not lose any investment in trying as the need to expand the current warehouse was unavoidable; the bonus of being able to see if a showroom facility is to our advantage is a benefit from combining the needs of two businesses. Watch this space..
