We live in a digital world. You can like it or you can hate it, but it’s an undeniable fact that the world is connected by waves that transmit messages and data from one device to the next. Whatever your opinions may be on that fact, it also can’t be denied that this does have it’s uses and benefits. Anyone who used zoom over the last two years to stay in touch or was able to order quarantine essentials delivered to their door will doubtlessly sing the praises of technology – and so they should. These are amazing and much needed resources in challenging times. However, just because we can order almost about anything with a flick of our wrists, no questions asked, doesn’t always mean that we should. In this highly digital world, is there still room for visual, in person, shopping?
If you ask Original Home Furniture on Woodlawn Road in Guelph, they will give you an emphatic yes, and it seems like many of the companies that they carry, which are all moving to in-store “design” studios, also agree.
One of the first of these companies to finish installing these studios within Original Home Furniture’s store is also a newer and exciting partner for them: Canadel, Canada’s largest manufacturer of solid wood dining sets. Canadel’s new business model is to invest in stores with the space and commitment to house their 2.0 Dining Gallery – which Original Home Furniture can claim to be one of the first in Ontario to get. This gallery consists of two mandatory parts: a wall of wood, glass and fabric samples that you can both view in store and sign out to test at home, and a digital designer, which is a giant computer program made to allow you to customize just about anything, producing an instant visual for you.
At Original Home Furniture, they took this premise one step further, investing in the physical as well by ordering as many different styles as possible to have on the floor, for their customers to see, touch and feel. As anyone who has ordered something online can attest – sometimes the picture just doesn’t cut it, even if it is a high-end digital rendering. This way, their customers can see and feel all of the different woods, fabrics, table legs, chair backs and surface spaces, giving them a real-life frame of reference from which they can then turn to the fabric wall and design station to start selecting colours, woods and patterns to make their piece unique to them.
While Canadel is the first company that has finished the complete installation of their design station, it is the long-term goal to ensure that the store provides their customers with the best that they can by focusing on top Canadian and North American companies, ensuring that they are offering as much as they can within those proven, reliable establishments. Narrowing their focus in this way allows Original Home Furniture to build the relationships with these companies that will give them the flexibility and reliability to get their customers the best service in return.
While La-Z-Boy has always been a company that has operated in this manner, Original Home Furniture expects to have a similar custom studio completely in place for Palliser come December/January, earning them another set of bragging rights as this time they’ll be one of the first in Canada to have a complete finished studio. Among their other brands, such as Decor-Rest (Canada’s largest upholstery company) and a newcomer to the store, Amisco (covering more modern dining in stools, metal and glass), Original Home Furniture has always been proud to support Durham Furniture as well, a solid wood furniture company based in Durham region.
In fact, Durham Furniture, combined with bedding and mattresses, are the last piece of the Original Home Furniture puzzle. It’s their goal, through the coming year, to expand even here, so that they can have a similar expansive showroom for Durham Furniture, bedding and mattresses as well.
Despite how we started, we all know that “digital” is not going away, and in fact there is even still more room for it in the Original Home Furniture experience. Knowing that they often service people up to two hours away, they have created a popular virtual store tour, which you can take for yourself by following the provided QR Code.
Since putting up this tour, they have had many customers come in telling them that they know exactly where they’re going, as they’ve already done the tour online; it gives people the opportunity to have that visual experience, to see if there might be something for them, without having to commit to the journey. Original Home Furniture intends to make this a regular feature, updating it regularly to reflect their constantly changing stock and product.
WRITTEN BY: JILLIAN KENT | PHOTOGRAPHY: CORY BRUYEA
