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March 2007 - The Logging and Sawmilling Journal

MARKETING

BUILDING THE BRAND

Forest companies looking to set their product apart in the marketplace sometimes need to look no further than product branding, as a New Zealand furniture manufacturing company—which has its own ecosystem management system — is finding out.

By Tony Kryzanowski

A big buzzword in forest product marketing circles these days, as countries aim to solidify existing markets and expand into new markets, is “branding.” For example, various Canadian forest companies are working toward presenting a common maple leaf brand to market Canadian lumber and building systems in the Chinese housing market.

Marketing guru Peter Biggs spoke last year of the importance of companies setting themselves apart from potential competitors at the New Zealand Forest Industries conference, held in conjunction with an international, three-day equipment and technology exhibition in Rotorua. “You stand out by having a really strong brand, and with a brand that sticks,” Biggs says.

One way to attract customer interest in an environment of lightning quick changes in the tastes and demands of consumers is to engage them in an interesting experience. “People are prepared to pay more for a good story,” says Biggs.

Probably the sector most skilled in using storytelling as a successful marketing ploy is the high-end, solid wood furniture industry, and New Zealand-based furniture manufacturer Dave Macfarlane is a master storyteller, marketing his product under the Design Mobel Ltd company label.

Dave Macfarlane (above), owner of Design Mobel, wants to set the company apart from its competitors. “It’s all about points of difference,” he says. “We didn’t want to be a standard manufacturer like the guy down the road and the guy down the road from him.”

What’s notable about Macfarlane’s approach is that his company controls every aspect of the manufacturing process, from carefully harvesting native and unique New Zealand wood species, to milling and manufacturing the components for his company’s line of beds and bedroom furniture. He employs a team of in-house furniture designers, and is also developing a line of bedroom accessories—right down to the owner’s pajamas—to package a total bedroom experience around the Design Mobel brand.

“We want to turn the bedroom into a place of solitude, a haven, and a sanctuary,” says Macfarlane. His company has just launched a hugely popular I-Pod equipped bed, meaning that individuals can now plug into their favourite tunes from their bedside while nodding off to sleep. The company is also investigating the addition of bedroom aromatherapy, as well as producing CD’s aimed specifically for the bedroom environment.

Dave Macfarlane (above), owner of Design Mobel, wants to set the company apart from its competitors. “It’s all about points of difference,” he says. “We didn’t want to be a standard manufacturer like the guy down the road and the guy down the road from him.”

“These days, we are all working harder and harder, longer and longer hours, and are becoming more and more stressed,” Macfarlane says. “At Design Mobel, we want to turn the bedroom into a place where you can leave your TV, computer, and cellular phone outside, and take time out and relax.”

The company markets its products in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, and globally over the Internet. It has been looking for a strategic partner to market its products in North America for some time, but so far has not found a company compatible with its business philosophy. So Design Mobel may establish its own retail outlets.

It’s no surprise that the company has had difficulty finding a strategic partner because its brand philosophy transcends bedroom furniture and accessories, and includes its forest management philosophy. It has managed to obtain an extremely rare licence to harvest New Zealand native timber in a sustainable manner on 16,000 hectares of Maori-owned land. It harvests primarily tawa, rimu, red beech, and silver beech, entirely by heli-logging. “It’s an expensive way to do it, but as far as we are concerned, it is the only way to do it to protect the natural ecology of the forest,” Macfarlane says. “In fact, by managing the forest in this way, you are improving the ecosystem.”

The harvest includes logs from a variety of age groups to help maintain a balanced forest environment, and the company’s harvesting activities are closely monitored both internally and by the government. Macfarlane says the company can’t afford to let this aspect of the operation falter in any way because of the high profile it has achieved with its forest management practices.

Design Mobel has also reduced its landfill refuse by 90 per cent from its manufacturing operations as part of its overall sustainable environment philosophy, and is working to find a way to eliminate the remaining 10 per cent.

While beneficial to the environment, the company’s unapologetically zealous approach to balanced ecosystem management is also a positive marketing tool.

Its approach undoubtedly resonates positively with those consumers equally zealous in their concern for the environment.

Design Mobel’s ecosystem management program includes a government-sanctioned initiative aimed at eradicating the introduced Australian possum population that is capable of devouring a staggering 24,000 tonnes of vegetation per night. It also has a longstanding policy of planting a tree for every bed and furniture suite it sells.

In terms of getting noticed in the furniture market based on its raw material, red beech is unique in its colour and only grows in New Zealand. Rimu is also exceptional for its grain and colour. Therefore, gaining access to these species has already set Design Mobel apart from many international competitors. “It’s all about points of difference,” says Macfarlane. “We didn’t want to be a standard manufacturer like the guy down the road and the guy down the road from him.”

Macfarlane has combined his love for the environment with strong business acumen. Design Mobel has been in business since 1989, and Macfarlane has a clear vision of the company’s philosophy and where it is headed. It’s grounded in over 20 years of experience in the furniture manufacturing business and a background in the joinery trade, working in the factory trenches.

Coupled with the company’s focus on environmental management and use of unique species is its awareness of the importance of design. It not only employs furniture designers, but a fashion designer for its bedroom accessories.

Controlling all aspects of the wood products manufacturing business for Design Mobel means a significant investment in primary and secondary processing equipment.

“Our key point of difference is design,” says Macfarlane. “We spend a lot of time and money on design, research and development, and marketing. We see ourselves as much more of a design and marketing company than a furniture manufacturer.”

Typically the company will develop designs, then gauge consumer response through processes like focus groups; it has learned from experience that consumers really don’t know what they want until they see it.

Its bed frame construction design concept is based on the flexible slat bed style, traditionally a more European style of sleeping. To market its products globally, it uses an Internet tool that allows customers to insert information about their physical dimensions to arrive at a bed configuration to match their body weight and frame. The final piece of the puzzle is the ability to ship product in containerized packages anywhere in the world — and it has done exactly that.

Once Design Mobel has established its product mix through market research, it takes the “theory of constraints” approach to product manufacturing. This is an approach of recognizing bottlenecks in the manufacturing process and focusing resources in those areas. “It’s all about feeding the bottleneck,” says Macfarlane. “We put 100 per cent of our resources at the bottleneck in production. It doesn’t matter if people are standing around up and down the line, as long as the bottleneck is running at 100 per cent capacity.”

By taking this approach, the company has reduced its production process time, from dried sawn timber to loading the finished product on the truck, from 32 to eight days. Its goal is to reduce that production timeline to five days.

“This approach has put a fair amount of cash in the bank,” says Macfarlane, “and frees up our factory space.”

So whether it’s Canadian 2x4s from spruce-pine-fir or bedroom furniture from New Zealand, the marketing experts say that success or failure with old and new customers in future can be determined by the interesting story your brand conveys to them.

It’s likely that many forest companies still have a ways to go to identify their points of difference so that they can communicate their brand attributes in such a way that it engages customers in an interesting experience. Some may respond that because their customers are suppliers, and not end-users, that branding may not be as important.

However, what’s the difference? Regardless of whether the purchaser is a wholesaler or an end user, a customer is still a customer—and in today’s competitive market, customer loyalty can not be taken for granted.

This page last modified on Monday, August 06, 2007