Home decor has traditionally been a bricks-and-mortar sell. Buy a big sectional, and USPS isn’t going to want to deliver it.
But nowadays, it’s a market that is increasingly moving online. Some big furniture makers now sell online – in fact, online sales allow customers to customize their furniture, for instance if they want higher tables, or lower chairs, or wider seats.
I’m not suggesting that you sell furniture online. The initial investment in 100 wardrobes would be massive – and that’s before you thought about warehousing.
But Home Decor is still a great market for the FBA seller. For instance, you could sell wallpaper, small picture frames, organizers, throws, small rugs, lighting fixtures, sheets or quilts on Amazon. These are smaller products but they can actually change the look and feel of a room.
You could even sell what I’ll loosely describe as decor transformation products, such as stickers, transfers, new handles, and sets of new legs. Plenty of householders have furniture they like, but which needs an update – offer them the chance!
It’s more important in home decor than in some other product areas to build a brand. Make sure all your products work together or solve a similar problem. For instance, you could become an expert in door-hanging organizers, from pot lid racks to shoe racks. In this market, it helps to have a few key product drivers. You might choose sustainability, all-natural or homemade products, French country cottage style, organizers to Marie Kondo any apartment – it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you build a niche and that customers know exactly what you deliver.
Product photos are incredibly important in this category. Of course, your main photo needs to show your product clearly against a white background, but your other photos should show your product in use – in the kind of environment your buyers live in or want to live in. If you’re selling big, stark black and white canvases, you want to show them in industrial or Scandinavia-style interiors, not country cottages.
You might also want to show fine details, such as the texture of a rug, stitching, or decorative motifs.
In some product categories, exact dimensions aren’t that important – if you’re selling pencils, paper tissues, or toys, for instance. But in home decor, particularly with rugs, frames, and storage items, the measurements are very important indeed. Buyers need to know that a particular frame will fit the print they’ve bought, or if they can get the storage bin under their bed.
But above all, you don’t want to sell decor products as just another product. You need to get involved in experiential marketing – really getting them involved with the product. Your first step is to tell the story – why your product is better, greener, or more stylish than its competitors. You might want to talk about why you designed it, or why you sell single door handles because you lived in an apartment where one of the doors could only be opened from the outside…
Stress how your home decor products can change buyers’ homes. “Refresh your home!” or “Give your old furniture a new life!” or “Get on top of your clutter!” are good messages to send.
Build your brand carefully. If you’re design-led, a blog is great to show how your products fit with other design trends – how to ‘get the look’. If your products are more practically focused, TikTok content could include “Five ways to cope with too much paperwork” (ending perhaps with your signature trash can!) or “Do your house plants always die?”
You might even suggest ways of using a product. If you have a glass vase, you could show how to transform it into a lantern using fairy lights, how to make a tiny garden in the bottom, or how to pile it full of glass marbles or fill it with sea-glass for a fascinating sparkly effect.
Get all this right, and you’ll have customers coming back again and again. Get it wrong, and you could be stuck with inventory that won’t sell. So… that’s a good motivation to get things right, isn’t it!