More than ever, Amazon wants your home furnishings business. Actually, not yours personally: What they really want is your store’s home furnishings business.
After 20 years of a slow but steady roll-out from its original roots selling books into other media, consumer electronics, housewares, apparel and now more luxury goods, the online giant is turning its attention to the home furnishings business.
And as Amazon controls between 40-50% of all online e-commerce sales (depending on who you ask and what you are counting) any initiative it takes has to be viewed as a serious threat to existing retailers in that merchandising space.
Consider the moves Amazon has made in just the past 12 months to make its major push into home products, including lighting and decorative accessories:
Launching Private Label Home Brands
It was only a year ago this month that it signaled its intentions to become a major force in home when Amazon launched two full-scale private label brands with hundreds of products each, including lighting. Rivet, a mid-century modern collection, and Stone & Barn, a country modern look, each have extensive offerings, free shipping and if not quite two-day delivery in all cases, expedited service as part of the Amazon credo.
Both have multiple lighting offerings, in both portable and hard-wired options. Prices range from $49.99 pendants to $59.99 table/desk lamps to $169.99 for a five-globe pendant chandelier.
These two brands were joined by two more over the past month with the debut of the Ravenna Home and Now House by Jonathan Adler programs, the latter marking the first time Amazon has turned to an outsider designer name for a home collection. As such, it clearly is targeted, well, Target, with this strategy.Ravenna is being positioned as “classic style” at a “great value” while the Adler program adapts that designer’s signature whimsical mid-century aesthetic. Ravenna also includes both portable and hard-wired products at slightly lower price points than the first two brands. The Adler program doesn’t seem to include lighting, focusing instead on decorative accents, rugs and occasional furniture, though lighting would certainly be a logical line extension.
Introducing Mattress Offerings
Perhaps the newest home introductions from Amazon come in the mattress sector, where the company introduced both an opening-price-point product under the AmazonBasics label and a more upscale offering as part of the Rivet line, the latter positioned to go up against segment leader Casper.
For Amazon the furnishings push is a logical move. As it continues to push up against market share ceilings in other categories it needs to continually look for new areas of business. And as Wayfair tries to establish itself as the “Amazon of home,” it cannot allow that to happen if it wants to retain its dominating position in e-commerce.
For home furnishings producers and retailers, the Amazon onslaught is a game-changer. Suppliers have a new place to take their products, albeit with the danger of alienating existing conventional retailers. And for retailers, lighting showrooms and others in the business of selling home furnishings, there is a new big dog to deal with…one with seemingly unlimited financial resources and a long-game strategy.
The battle is just really beginning.
