Luxury

My lovely wife, Erika, has been laying her clothes on the bathroom floor for the last few weeks. No, she hasn’t gone insane, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

When we built our home eight years ago, we added a few “luxury” things, like a heated floor system in the master bath. We had some problems with the system initially, so we didn’t use it much until this year.

So, I got up this morning to 12 degree weather, snow and ice everywhere, and winds of 30mph. After taking a ridiculously hot shower – the kind that takes skin off, I hop out to slide into warm socks…and jeans…and shirt. There is very little in this world that is better than the feeling of being engulfed by warmth, especially on a morning like this one.

I felt bad having splurged on a heated floor and the electricity it consumes, until I remember that my lovely wife, Erika, has yet to turn on the heater this year! The wood stove is working overtime for sure. Tabby, our cat, really appreciates the heated floor too.

While it seems like an unnecessary cost, the actual cost of running the heated floor is about the same as leaving on a table lamp. This versus the cost of running a heating system in a house makes the heated floor seem like a good, not so luxurious, item to splurge on.

While many people consider our furniture a luxury, I never have. I consider it a good value. To me this means something that lasts, is appreciated often, and has more value for the purchaser than the cost of the item itself.

The Power of the Internet

The web is a funny thing. Some days I can't find what I want and I think all this online stuff is just a big waste of time. (I sound like Mark, don't I? No, this is Alison.)

But other days, I think it's great. (That's better.)

For those of you who don't know, Hardwood Artisans is also on Twitter. What's Twitter? It's like a blog, but everything has to be said in 140 characters or less. It's an interesting mode of communication because it requires you to be concise. Sometimes I feel like I'm back in 11th grade English with Mrs. Avery telling me to eliminate all flowery language. No adverbs! No infinitives! If you use "however" or "anyway" you will be shot!

Anyway, this week, I sent one of Tom Heath's Washington Post columns over to a guy named Ben McConnell, who wrote "Creating Customer Evangelists". He then sent it out to all the people who read him as a great example of marketing coverage by mainstream media, giving me credit. If you're a rock music fan, this is like being acknowledged by Mick Jagger or Eric Clapton. Wow.

Next, Mark was trying to design a piece of furniture for a customer that involves round legs. Since we don't usually do round legs, we were going to have to buy them from someone who does, but we couldn't find an appropriate supplier. Luckily, I happened to have met someone on Twitter a few weeks ago who does hand-turned wooden furniture legs: Within just a couple of hours, I had a drawing, I had a price and they told me they could mail them out today if I wanted them that fast. Wow again.

Just when my faith is lagging, something like this happens and all is right with the world again.

P.S. You can follow us on Twitter @furnituregirl.

VIDA and the lifetime value of a customer

It's not often that I run across a company that I would love to work for. In fact, it took me almost ten years of working various places before I found my spiritual home at Hardwood Artisans.

Today I read about VIDA, a fitness company with three locations in the DC metro area, none near me all the way out here in the suburbs. This is a company that gets it, probably because they have a CEO who gets it--he has a passion for working out. I can relate. I'm a bit of a workout fanatic myself. I love to play softball, have had personal trainers at various points and really, truly enjoy working out.

To be honest, I don't so much mind that my gym focuses on selling cheap memberships, locking people into long-term contracts and banking on the fact that most of them will work out for a month then never come back. It means that the gym isn't crowded (yes, the resolution crowd has already dispersed), but it's also not terribly honest. The gym knows they make more money when people don't come back.

But VIDA does the opposite. By basing optimal profit levels on a certain (lower) number of memberships sold and focusing on giving those members great experiences, they have created a tremendously loyal following of people who love to go there and increasingly put other aspects of their lives under VIDA's control (nutrition, laundry, spa services). It's called the "lifetime value of a customer" and it's something that not enough businesses focus on.

Even though the reporter focused on the business aspects of VIDA's model, there's a moral aspect as well. When you sell to someone who you know isn't coming back, you're not doing that person a service. When you sell a membership (or a product) to someone with the express purpose of making sure that they love it so much that they absolutely have to come back, you're adding something to that person's life.

We do the same. When a customer who has come to us before comes back, not only are we able to provide increasingly good service, we're developing a real, human relationship. And what's great about working here is that I can sit around all day thinking about how to offer better service instead of how to make more money. That's good for everyone.

Now, off to the gym!