How we Helped Furniture Leisure, Inc. Increase Their Sales
Today, we will tell you about Furniture Leisure, Inc. - a leader in the site furnishing industry that has been on the e-commerce market since 2003.
Furniture Leisure, Inc. sells commercial site furnishings (playground sets, park benches, bike racks, bleachers, etc.), pool furniture, and outdoor/picnic furniture.
The company runs 3 nopCommerce websites:
The story
We met Paul Hart - the President of Furniture Leisure, Inc. - at the second nopCommerce conference in Amstedram in 2016. Last year he contacted us with a particular request.
Furniture Leisure, Inc. wanted to redesign and upgrade their websites and were looking for a reliable nopCommerce expert to work with. Prior to working with us on custom projects, they used to purchase our nopCommerce themes, use them as a base design and tweak them to their needs.
What we did
In 10 months, we completed 3 custom projects for Furniture Leisure, Inc.
- We upgraded Pool Furniture Supply from nopCommerce 1.80 to nopCommerce 3.70 and we did a redesign based on the Uptown theme.
- We did a redesign of Furniture Leisure based on the Brooklyn theme.
- We upgraded Picnic Furniture from nopCommerce 1.80 to nopCommerce 3.70 and we did a redesign based on the Brooklyn theme.
For all three websites we built a custom plugin that redirects old URLs to new URLs.
How we did it
- 100% trust. To complete the projects, we had access to Furniture Leisure's code in GitHub and we would like to thank them for the trust!
- Transparency. For each of the projects, we built a demo website on our server so that anyone from Furniture Leisure, Inc. could view all changes that are commited.
- Flexibility. Since Furniture Leisure, Inc. is based in Florida, USA, and we are in Europe, we had a dedicated channel in Slack so that we would be available at all times. This way, the time difference was not an issue.
The Interview
We got to interview Paul - we talked about how he became an e-commerce entrepreneur, what drove Furniture Leisure, Inc. to look for a solution like ours and how our services helped them overcome their challenges and increase their sales.
Q: The 3 words that best describe your personality are...
A: Loyal, Interested, Daring.
Q: When you were a child what did you dream of becoming when you grew up?
A: Probably a professional skateboarder or musician. Luckily I can still enjoy both of those things even though I’m not “pro” status.
Q: Speaking of childhood, if you could become a character from a children's book for a day, which character and book would you choose?
A: Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Q: What's the best piece of advice you have ever been given? Who gave it to you?
A: To treat other people the way you would like to be treated – My Mother.
Q: What was your big break?
A: When I joined Furniture Leisure full time in 2008. I did not know we would accomplish so much over the next ten years.
Q: What have been the hardest parts of getting to where you are now?
A: Load management and staying current with new technologies & marketing philosophies. As a small company we are required to wear many hats throughout the week while also keeping ourselves up to speed on any new possibilities that exist.
Q: The 3 words that best describe your brand are...
A: Responsive, Efficient and Friendly.
Q: Could you tell us a bit more about your business? How did you decide to become an e-commerce retailer?
A: This decision actually pre-dated my time at Furniture Leisure and occurred in 1998 when our founder John Gravlee along with his College roommate from N.C. State decided to set up what would become the predecessor to Furniture Leisure. Before that they were selling to the Orlando Hotel market by going directly to each property and working with the property managers. As the web began to mature and Google was busy setting up their first servers in a garage, John realized the potential for business that existed online and created one of the first online shops for commercial outdoor furniture.
Q: What specific challenges or needs did you face as an online store owner that led you to look for services like ours?
A: When we started in 2003 we always used an in-house or local development team however after one of our primary devs had to leave us in 2010 we decided to outsource our development needs and see what results we could get. Finding a highly competent developer for our platform proved to be a challenge in our local area so we decided to take the chance on working with a remote team for the first time.
Q: How did you go about searching for a solution to your problem? Could you describe your selection process and what criteria you were looking for?
A: Working with a development team remotely requires great trust and clear communication so initially we found it safer to work with companies based in the USA. However after meeting the Nop-Templates crew at the second nopCommerce conference in Amsterdam I could tell that this was a team I could not only trust but that would also deliver some of the best work in the nopCommerce space.
Q: How did you learn about us and what made you choose us over other companies you researched?
A: Prior to working together directly we would purchase your templates to use as a base design and then tweak them to our needs. I found you guys by searching for the highest quality template designers in the nopCommerce space.
Q: How did our services help you overcome your challenges? What were the benefits for your business (e.g. increasing revenie, higher conversion rate, etc.)?
A: The most obvious improvement and result in my mind from our work together is that once we launched our new sites we immediately began to see larger online orders with our website. Because of the nature of our business we actually have many customers call us to place their order. However with the new site we began to see more consistent and larger orders being placed without the customer ever needing to contact us.
Q: What did you like most about working with us?
A: The quality of your work and the responsiveness to our business needs. Sometimes I will need to request some technical assistance on a site that we are not working on at the moment and the Nop-Templates team is always very responsive and happy to assist us with things like server management and any technical issues that may arise with our websites. It is great to know we can rely on them to be there in case of an emergency.
Q: What would you tell others who might be considering our services?
A: Don’t hesitate. If you are looking for an e-commerce team that is responsive, dedicated and always friendly you have found them in Nop-Templates.
Q: Paul, you are based in Florida, US, and we are located in Europe. Do you think the time difference was an issue?
A: At first I thought it might be an issue because we only have about 2 hours of business that overlap during each day. However, this has turned out to be just fine. Using available tools to collaborate and work on projects has helped us tremendously and with each project we get a better understanding of each other which produces better results.
Q: Is there anything else you want to share with us? Feel free to share your recommendations, thoughts, and feedback!
A: I have enjoyed all of my interactions with the Nop-Templates team. You guys are top quality people on top of being great professionals.
Q: If someone were to make a movie of your life, who would you hope to play you?
A: Bill Murray, and ideally it would be directed by Akira Kurosawa.
We would like to thank Paul for the time!
It was a pleasure working with Furniture Leisure, Inc. We are looking forward to future collaborations and more exciting projects!
If you’re looking for a nopCommerce expert for your next custom project, drop us a line!
