Growing an Upholstery Business

June 13th, 2010 by buzz

The most important thing in any business is to find and serve a customer…at at profit
paraphrased from Peter Drucker.

As a long time small business owner, there are three essential aspects of your business you must get right.

  • 1. How to get customers…or your sales/marketing system
  • 2. How to perform the work for your customers…or your fulfillment system
  • 3. How to get paid…or your accounting/ financial system

    • We are of the opinion that all these systems are essential but the most important system is a sales marketing system.

    A business can fail many ways but generally a lack of new profitable customers is the cause of failure. It causes you to run out of money. Without customers, you have nothing but some skills, inventory and machines that have the potential to bring you money and a profit.

    Any small business owner should know how many new customers they need each month, their average cost of acquiring a new customer, what revenue they expect from an “average” new customer.

    Obviously, we are marketing professionals who believe that getting customers is the most important thing to get right in your upholstery business.

    Ok here is some free yet valuable advice for an upholstery shop owner. Do everything and any thing to get great customers. Do more of those things which give you great and highly profitable customers.
    Start with a list of potential customers and their exact needs.
    People with fine old furniture, restaurant owners, boat owners, owners of convertibles and old cars, theatre owners, hotels, business owners, doctors offices, and more.

    List everything you can imagine to get new customers.

  • 1. Advertising: the pennysaver, your local “Reader”, beautiful homes and gardens, architectural digest, etc
  • 2. Direct mail
  • 3. Display ads: billboards, bus stop benches, radio and tv etc
  • 4. Web based marketing- buy pay per click ads
  • 5. Others and Etc

    • Take your marketing budget and invest it across everything and run your campaign for 3-6 months. Monitor your performance of your campaign.

    Select a series on messages which will engage and connect with your audience. Test 3-4 messages and run your advertising to find which message brings you more of the best customers. Test your messages across all media and figure out which media and which message works best.

    After testing this for 1 or 2 years, you will be at a starting point to developing an effective lead generating system for your upholstery business. You will know what media works best, what message draws you the best customers. You will know the expected cost of bringing new customers. You will be able to have a marketing system which draws new customers who want you to upholster their sofas, refinish their tables and aren’t just shopping for the cheapest furniture care service in the area.

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