Sam's Furniture: Pioneering Online Furniture Retail & Innovation

Why they won

Sam’s Furniture was a finalist for the Innovation Awards.

For bringing online furniture shopping and buying into the 21st century.

Business stats

• Who submitted (and is quoted below): Seth Weisblatt, CEO
• Year founded: 1946
• Headquartered: Fort Worth, Texas
• Ecommerce vertical: Home & Garden
• Website
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Pinterest

Business outcomes of the innovation

• 2X conversion rates
• Local award for best online furniture purchasing process
• ⅓ operating costs as previous platform

What they do

Sam’s Furniture & Appliances is a family owned and operated business. Since 1946, the Weisblatt family has focused on offering fair prices and top-notch customer service to our Fort Worth area families.

While times have changed, our dedication continues to be providing you with a wide selection of brand name, brand-new merchandise with competitive prices and terrific service.

When you buy from Sam’s, you can be confident that you are getting a great deal and we will be here to help you if you need us.

Most of our customers say they came in as strangers and left as part of the family!

The challenge behind the innovation

The platform that we were on before had what was very unique to the furniture industry and was a good solution, but it hadn’t evolved to the new way a customer wants to work with a furniture store.

It was a great online catalog, but it didn’t have a lot of ability for customers to synchronize with our software, nor did it integrate all the different aspects of our transactions.

We were looking for something that was a more robust and open-based platform that would enable us to use the tools available to the market to grow our business –– not be stifled by a static catalog.

How they make it work

We did a few things to make this work:

1. We integrated a catalog on BigCommerce that included nearly 9,000 SKUs, over 50,000 images and two pricing methods to provide a customer the chance to pay a “cash price” or an “in-house financing” payment option.
2. We have also integrated the BigCommerce site with our point of sale software using the API systems available on each side for a robust omni channel experience.
3. We also launched 3 delivery methods: pick-up in store, our professional delivery or a drop ship option for available products. All in a 60-day time frame!

BigCommerce was essential in getting the above launch.

The platform’s incredible APIs allowed for my product developers to access the APIs while the UX team could complete the design and site development simultaneously.

Using the network of existing BigCommerce partners was a huge help with their speed to jump into the challenge and get the site to launch so quickly.

I love how powerful the platform is and how it lends itself to development and customizations while still fitting into a supported system.

Final word

The impact to our business was almost immediate!

• The week of our site launch, we saw online checkout conversions double!
• We have experienced a higher conversion rate since and many customers rave about all the options and features we are showing.
• We also competed in — and won — a Furniture Store of the Year recognition by our local media, largely based on the new platform.
• The costs of operating the website are a third (yes, 1/3!) of our previous platform so we are coming out way ahead on the platform change.

We are extremely excited for the future of our business and having BigCommerce as a partner!