Page 32 - Lighting Magazine January 2020

Fine-Tuning SUCCESS
Many furniture pieces and wall art are hand-crafted and hand-painted in ELK’s factories in India and Vietnam.
“All these touch points add up to how our customers feel about our brand.” —Dave Pamer, CEO
In effort to help combat rising costs due to the tariffs on China, ELK will be further utilizing its company-owned factory in Indonesia. There, a team of artists hand-paint wall art and develop new painted finishes that can extend across its product categories. The Indonesian factory is also where original furniture hardware wood-carving designs are then approved for sand-casting production.
“Our objective in these categories is to be in control of the ‘jewelry’ on the product — unique finishes and hardware that define the product es- sence,” Gardner says. The company also sources in India and Vietnam as well as China for specialized products such as white marble from exotic Agra, hand-collected shells from the shores of Bali, and root bundles sustainably harvested from the teak forests of Java. As part of its commitment to social responsibility, ELK runs a sustainable tree planting program and a new clean water initiative through its Indonesia factory.
Another primary concern is customer care. “We need to continue the mirror test,” Pamer states. “Do we clearly understand our channel customers’ busi- ness requirements and are we organizing, staffing, and training our team to be proactive and respond to these?” According to Pamer, the customer ex- perience must be looked at in a wholistic manner and will include constant improvements to the showrooms, website, order fulfillment performance, and interaction with customer service teams. “All these touch points add up to how our customers feel about our brand,” he states.
With these new systems and targets in place, ELK executives are confident that this new decade will bring stronger relationships and loyalty with its customers. 
28 enLIGHTenment Magazine | January 2020
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