Page 98 - Lighting Magazine June 2018

“We see strong customer engagement on all social media platforms and it’s an important touch point for retailers to reach potential customers as they go through their decision- making process.”
— Bryan Johnson, Shades of Light
Retail Strategy
96 enLIGHTenment Magazine | June 2018
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acquisition, both via the catalog as well as online. There is a fair amount of modeling and analytics that go into targeting new customers for any of our marketing channels. That information is typically generated by third-party service providers.”
Social media has also begun playing a major role. “We see strong customer engagement on all social media platforms and it’s an important touch point for retailers to reach potential customers as they go through their decision-making process,” he notes. “It’s not uncommon for customers to have “wish list” boards with their favorite products, so imagine the engagement (and ultimately sales conversions) when price drops or promotions can be passed through those same platforms and show up directly on the customer’s wish list.’”
Customer feedback indicates that they care about the added value they experience when do- ing business with a company like Shades of Light. “It really comes down to individual preferences and personalities,” Johnson reveals. “We get requests from customers to help them select $300 chande- liers as well as $3,000 chandeliers.”
There are several key di erentiators that John- son believes sets Shades of Light apart:
» Maintaining a curated product assortment, “we do our own in-house product design and development.”
» Operating a UL-certi ed production facil- ity (in Virginia) where we fabricate our own designs.
» Maintaining inventory levels in an 83,000-sq.- . distribution center as opposed to being a pure drop-ship model that has to rely on manufacturers’ inventory levels.
» A true focus on customer service
“We take pride in what makes us di erent and communicate it across all channels, whether it is online messaging of our value proposition, e-mail communications, or in hard copy print,” Johnson states.
In this world of immediate satisfaction, when many customers are used to ge ing 1- or 2-day shipments from major online retailers, it’s critical that companies like Shades of Light can provide timely product delivery. Having their own distribu- tion center is a huge factor in making that happen.
“We also understand the importance of ‘mes- saging’ to consumers when they are at the point of making a purchase decision,” Johnson notes. “If we have [a product] in stock in our distribution cen- ter, that is conveyed directly to consumers on the product pages. If it is not in stock, we display the approximate lead time it will take to procure it from the manufacturer in order to set realistic delivery expectations.”
Shades of Light does not rely on vendor pro- motions to encourage sales and doesn’t use its marketing to promote speci c manufacturer brands. However, it does appreciate doing business with manufacturers that support their retailers by