A World Of Colour And Fabrics – Lets Chat With Amanda Tolhurst, Next Home Furnishings…

This home was Shortlisted for the 2014 Australian Interior Design Awards. Sheers custom made by Next Furnishing

With a background in furnishing fabrics, working at Spotlight stores as a buying controller, and as a creative director at a wholesaler that dealt with large retailers, with family ties to Warwick Fabrics, and working in her mother’s business whilst studying, Amanda Tolhurst has home furnishings in her blood. Taking over the family business, Next Home Furnishings, from her mother was only to be expected. Let’s chat with Amanda Tolhurst, Managing Director  of Next Home Furnishings….

 Could you please share with us the history of Next Home Furnishings?

 Next Furnishings started in 1986 at Ringwood Market clearing Warwick Fabrics. My mother and uncle were the original founders of the company. We officially opened the Camberwell store in 1988. My mother took over in 1988 and then I later bought the business from my mother.

  Amanda you are a second-generation owner. Your mother previously owned Next Furnishings for over 25 years. How have you seen retail change since your mother ran the business and now that you have taken it over?

  I think retail has changed a lot. People are a lot savvier. When mum first started, it was a clearing store for home furnishing fabrics. Since I’ve been here, we’ve started doing measure and quotes. Previously, we would send customers off to get products made elsewhere. Now we do custom-made or over-the-counter and measure and quotes. I think you have to diversify—think outside the box.  You need to keep forward thinking and changing; otherwise you’ll just get left behind.

 There used to be a lot of retailers who were clearing home furnishing fabrics. We seem to be the only ones now. We do clearing and an ongoing range. You cannot get quality fabrics and only buy one meter without having to go to an interior designer, feeling uncomfortable or intimidated that you need to buy more.

 Our customers like to wander through our store. They can spend hours here. They take sample books home and take cuttings to see if the fabrics match their interior. We don’t offer the interior design service, but I mostly go and do the measure and quote and I’m happy to give advice.

Good service is the key to keeping people coming back. I think that is what makes us different. If you have an offer and get people in the door, then it’s very important that you have good service, a friendly staff, and service without having to take number. The service is personalised. We’ve got all sorts of creative people on our staff who can make the fabrics come to life. They can give you advice on how to sew, how to cut, or how to upholster. We have upholstery schools coming here to buy fabrics, and the teachers come in as well. Warwick recommends us as their preferred supplier, and they send us customers. We also have people who just phone and order. We also have people who come and buy some fabric for no particular reason, even though they have loads of fabric in a cupboard at home.

How are you marketing your business?

Facebook, Pinterest, and a new website. We advertise in the domain almost all Saturdays, or in the home magazine most Saturdays. And that’s really about it at the moment. We do builders’ magazines or developer’s magazines. We have an e-newsletter that we do that goes out to our database with amazing results. The key for our newsletter is to only send it when there’s actually something worthwhile to share. We’ve tried the local papers, but that doesn’t work as well as the Domain and Home, which have a bigger capture. We get people from all over Victoria coming to our store.

What are some of the challenges you have faced, and how have you overcome them?

There have been many challenges as I’m sure everyone will tell you, there always is in business. It’s about where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, and how we wanted to do it. So that’s probably the biggest challenge. It’s been a long road getting the website up. We are on the home stretch and we have a bright future. It’s just a matter of thinking again a bit outside the box: how we can grow, who else we can capture, and how we can get to them—getting more customers in the door. I’m passionate about the business, and we know there’s a big gap in the market for this type of setup.

There are things to do, and we want to renovate internally and on the outside of the building. There’s a long term vision with a lot more growing that we can do, and a lot more diversifying; and still focus on what we’re really good at.

What do you think makes a successful retail business?

 Diversifying. You have to keep re-thinking and thinking outside the box, and how you can change things.  You can’t get lost in mundane things. Keep freshening up and changing, moving, promoting, and marketing yourself to the right target areas to bring the people in.

 Some retailers get stale and stuck. It’s easy to do because you can get weighed down with all the back office things. But you really have to keep moving and turning stocks. Even if there is a downturn, you just keep buying stuff and selling it. You can’t just stop. You have to keep going.

 When there is a downturn, you have to be out there promoting yourself. You need to be consistently out there. It’s usually at the tenth ad in a row that people start noticing. At Next Furnishing we advertise and change the ads. We just change them slightly or we do a sale. The newsletter has been great, and we have a following on Facebook and Pinterest that is growing because it’s a visual thing. You need first to see your fabric work.

 I think you need to see, feel, and touch the fabrics. It’s a very tactile thing. People come in and look at the library. They love to see a fabric and then visualize it as a curtain or as a cushion or as a blind. So the Pinterest page is a fantastic place to direct people for ideas for things like upholstered bed heads, which are big at the moment, or big outdoor cushions.

James Dunlop fabrics in store.

Would drove this design in my lounge.

Shop front with outdoor theme. Bring back summer!!

New shopfront coming soon….

For more information on Next Furnishings go to http://www.nextfurnishings.com.au or phone 98892213.

Written by Penny Votzourakis and photos supplied by Next Home Furnishings.