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Southern Casual has discovered the secret of motivating new shoppers to buy while enticing former customers to make additional purchases.
Written
Sharon Sanders
Photography By Trace Choulat
There is no denying that it has become harder than ever for retailers to attract new customers who are serious about buying. Not only do today's consumers have less expendable income, but they are less willing to spend what they have. For Joan Shank and her youngest son, Keith Shank (owners of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Southern Casual Patio & Rattan), making a sale is not as much about attracting new customers as it is about keeping current ones coming back for more. Everything that the Shanks do revolves around making current customers feel that they've chosen the right place to shop.
Humble Beginnings
In the early 1990s, Keith, fresh out of college, started a mobile furniture-repair business, fixing outdoor furniture at hotels, motels, and condos along the sunny Florida coast. He slowly began to get requests from his clients not only to repair their furniture, but to get new furniture for them as well.
After the requests became more frequent, Keith decided to take his business to the next level. He teamed up with his mother to open a small casual-furniture store, in their hometown of St. Augustine, in 1992. To their surprise, the business took off on the first day that they opened the doors.
Four years later, the Shanks opened their second showroom in Jacksonville Beach, and 18 months after that they opened a third store across town, in Jacksonville. Today, after several more moves to gain showroom space, the mother-and-son team runs three Florida stores: in Jacksonville (the flagship store), in Ponte Vedra, and in St. Augustine, where the newest store opened in March 2007.
Three more Shanks—Joan's oldest son, Scott; her grandson, Toby; and Keith's wife, Danielle—are also involved in the business. “We've come a long way because we work hard to stay in touch with our customers' needs,” Joan says.
A Floridian Favorite
Southern Casual has built a reputation for carrying furniture and unique accessories that embody the Florida lifestyle. Its high-end showrooms are meticulously merchandised, with lifestyle vignettes featuring airy tropical prints and soothing pastel colors that inspire shoppers. The stores carry the latest styles in outdoor wicker, teak, and aluminum furniture from top manufacturers including Summer Classics, Tropitone, Lloyd/Flanders, Brown Jordan, and Cast Classics. The company was even named the Summer Classics 2008 Dealer of the Year for excellence in merchandising and sales volume.
“We try to promote the outdoor room as a way to de-stress and add relaxation to everyday life,” Joan says. The Shanks have successfully used unique accessories as sales tools to get customers to come back and shop, even after they've bought their furniture. “People want things in their homes that nobody else has,” Joan says.
She takes care to bring in only accessories that can't be found at other stores in town. She shops at Chicago and Atlanta gift and home markets and purchases pieces from local artists that include one-of-a-kind wall hangings, decorative vases, and pottery. “I never bring in three dozen of a piece; I will only bring in two or three,” she says. Joan even makes a point of varying accessories at all three stores. “I don't bring in a lot of anything, so once it's gone, it's gone. Customers like that fact,” she says.
The Shanks also make an effort to change the locations of furniture vignettes regularly and to refresh the window displays often. Joan says that she's constantly amazed that a customer might not notice a furniture group during one visit, but if it's moved to another spot in the store, the same customer will come back a few months later and see it, fall in love with it, and buy it.
The same principle applies to accessories. “I can't tell you how many times I've moved a piece of art or a wall hanging from one side of the store to another and had it sell the next day,” she says. She admits that changing the showrooms is a lot of extra work for the staff, but it's well worth the time and effort.
Expect the Unexpected
Southern Casual's showrooms and merchandise keep customers coming back again and again, but its customer service does so as well. Joan proudly describes Southern Casual as customer friendly. “When you walk into any one of our stores, you instantly feel welcome,” Keith says. “Our staff members are lighthearted and personable, and they know furniture.”
They forgo the high-pressure sales approach and deliberately foster a fun environment; jokes and laughs are always present in conversations. It's second nature for them to go out of their way to do the unexpected for customers, even if it means personally delivering an accessory item to someone's home or helping a customer track down special fabric. “People will come back a fourth or fifth time because they know how helpful we were the last three times they bought something from us,” Keith adds.
As owners, Joan and Keith are adamant about working side by side with their employees daily, coming in early and staying late. “A team is so much stronger when its members see that their leaders are willing to work just as hard as they do,” Joan says. Customers appreciate seeing the owners in the store as well. The Shanks also place great value on training their sales staff, which includes holding clinics with manufacturers' representative when new merchandise arrives.
“Our salespeople are so familiar with the details of our merchandise that they can quickly assess what is going to work, or not work, for a customer. We sell to gain long-term customers, not customers who buy something once, are disappointed, and never come back,” Joan says.
She has recently noticed that customers are getting younger and younger, and is amazed that people in their 30s will come in and think nothing of spending $20,000 on their patios. “We know they appreciate the quality, value, and service that we are able to give them,” Joan adds, “and we hope to keep them coming back for many years to come.”
Joan and Keith are optimistic about the future of Southern Casual because nothing will ever change the fact that Floridians love spending time outdoors. “We can't panic about the state of the economy and cut products or service for the sake of a few extra dollars,” Keith says. “We won't sacrifice our customers' happiness for something that we know is temporary.”
PHPR May/June 2009
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