Selling Teak Furniture in Western Europe?

Selling Teak Furniture in Western EuropeAre there any major differences between selling furniture in different countries? When it comes down to teak furniture there are! We own a teak furniture company in Holland and sell b2c and b2b throughout Western Europe. Thanks to the internet and globalisation, the Schengen treaty and even the euro, it has become much easier to sell abroad nowadays. I am wondering what this industry is like in other countries and how businesses interact with their customers.




Different styles of furniture in different countries

First of all there is a difference in furniture styles between all the countries we sell to. For example, German consumers still desire conical legs for teak dining tables. In Holland there hasn’t been any demand for these types of legs for years…

Now you think this will be a major influence on sales and you can’t do costly research for all these separate countries. Unless you’ve got a major “research budget”.. We don’t have this so we just translated our teak furniture website into German. What happened?

In Germany there are people who like our kind of teak furniture! It may be different than what they are used to, but they love it! Especially the teak dining tables and cabinets made out of reclaimed teak wood are a runner. For Austria and Switzerland this is about the same, there is just one disadvantage compared to Germany: the delivery cost from Holland to these countries is quite expensive.

Holland – Belgium – Germany – Austria – Switzerland

As I’ve told I can only talk about our experiences and point of view. We mainly sold teak furniture to the countries mentioned above. All our customers like the following about our furniture;

  • Most of the time all our products are in stock
  • Furniture made out of reclaimed teak
  • Best quality
  • Low prices
  • We do what we say

Thanks to these aspects people sometimes drive almost 500km single way for a teak dining table.

Is this the same in for example England and the UK? If you are convinced you will find your desired dining table, would you drive from Newcastle to London?  Or even from Edinbourgh down to London?  What about the Irish, do they take the ferry across to buy quality furniture?

France

We don’t have any experience in the French part of Belgium and France its self. My brother translated a big part of our website 2 years ago but this wasn’t a big success. There is a difference in approach between the French and the Dutch or German speaking people, we just haven’t found out what the best way to communicate is yet! Maybe they just don’t like quality teak furniture ;).

My question for you

Now my question is, how do you sell teak furniture in the UK? Are there major differences with the ‘facts’ mentioned above? I’m very curious about your vision and opinion about this matter!

P.S. If you are looking for teak furniture as a consumer just have a look at sourenfurniture.com.

Because we believe the UK is in desperate need of a good and reliable teak wholesale, just check; teakfurniturewholesale.co.uk.

teak furnitureteak furniture

This is a guest post by sourenfurniture.com.

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