s of the look and feel of the concept store will be introduced to, “around 30 stores over the next 12 months”. The key challenge for the Moore Park concept store was getting the core product range in place without overcrowding the small 550sqm store footprint. By comparison, the average FF store footprint ranges from 1200sqm to 3000sqm. “We’ve tried this in the larger format – we got such good results from those stores that we said, ‘how can we adapt that to a smaller format?’,” Singh said. “All we’ve done here is show the concept in a new format. We want to prove that we can actually make the concept work; that’s really important for us. It’s not just about rolling it out; it’s about making sure we get the concept right.” While noting that the new store concept in a smaller store is an exciting initiative, Singh rejected speculation that FF may move to small format stores across its store network. She also said that the reconfigured store has already improved fortunes for the Moore Park store. “It had been a really good trader for us over the years, [but] we’d seen a bit of a sales slide in the last couple of years,” she said. “When we relaunched the store a couple of weeks ago – if those numbers continue, we really expect great things out of this store over the coming years.” Going conceptual Fantastic Furniture national visual merchandising manager, Craig Evans, was tasked with implementing the new concepts at Moore Park. Evans aimed to showcase the core range and bestsellers while also accentuating on trend styling, which has been a renewed focus of the FF range over the last 12 months. “We’re used to having lots of space and duplication; in this store [it’s] one product, one space,” Evans said. “We’ve used different elements such as lighting, racking, and different textures. Traditionally at Moore Park, customers haven’t been able to see our full range. We wanted to show customers that we have a wide range. “We’ve used track lights and downlights, [which] creates more of a theatre-like atmosphere. We’ve tried to do things very different to how we’ve traditionally done it, so we’ve used rugs on the walls in our racking, LED lighting strips inside the racking, and it really helps our products pop.” Singh added that the newly designed service hubs and point of sale ‘pods’ were designed remove barriers between customers and staff (now equipped with iPads) and to encourage increased interaction. This is one element in particular that Singh said could work well in a large format store. “They can be individually placed around a store, which is brilliant because that whole ‘service desk one point’ is not really what customers want. In a big store, they don’t want to have to walk all the way back to that service desk. So to have a service centre is a smart way to look after your customers as customers are moving around and actually participating in their transaction.” New online initiatives bear fruit Singh used the launch of the Moore Park concept store to provide an update on FF’s recent online initiatives, which has seen the recent introduction of an e-commerce function and live chat help for customers. While not revealing exact figures, Singh said that in the first month of the FF website being transactional the results have been, “very positive”. “Without giving too much away, it’ll be the sales of one of our smaller stores in no time at all,” she said. Likewise, the live chat facility, which is manned by staff in FF’s head office in Chullora, Sydney from 0800 to 2200 Monday to Friday and 0900 to 1700 on Saturdays, has been a hit. Within these hours, when consumers engage on the website, within 60-75 seconds staff are responding to their queries. “We’re really surprised at how many customers are actually using the facility,” Singh said. “We knew that they would, but we didn’t expect the take up rate to be quite as strong as it is. If they’ve got questions they just ask straight away and the team are responding.” While the brand has had a presence in southeast Queensland for 15 years, the opening of the Townsville store marked FF’s arrival in far north Queensland. While unwilling to reveal exact locations, Singh said there are plans to further establish the brand in FNQ, with “a few locations” to open in the next 12 months. This story first appeated in Inside Retail PREMIUM, issue 2050.  To subscribe, click here.