Picture this: it’s the height of the holiday season, and your showroom is packed with shoppers eager to buy. But while some are leaving happy, others are walking away empty-handed because what they came for is out of stock. Meanwhile, your warehouse is packed with dusty stock that just didn’t sell like you expected.
This is the reality for furniture and home decor stores: managing high-value, trend-driven inventory while keeping up with customer expectations and demand for personalized service. Staying competitive requires more than traditional tools—it demands a modern POS system built to meet these challenges head-on. But before we dive into solutions, let’s take a step back to understand why these challenges matter so much today.
Why does this matter?
The furniture and home decor industry is rapidly evolving, and so are customer expectations. Here’s what you’re up against:
- Stockouts are costly: 31% of customers head to a competitor [1] if they can’t find what they’re looking for, and it’s estimated that nearly ¼ of Amazon’s revenue is fueled by retail store out-of-stocks [2].
- Overstock is expensive: Excess inventory ties up capital, takes up valuable storage space and risks liquidation at steep discounts. And yet half of US retailers are stuck with excess stock [3]. In the same survey, 53% said there would be ‘dangerous ramifications’ for their business if they failed to sell excess stock.
- Customer expectations are changing: According to recent data [4], 50% of US consumers now shop for furniture both in-store and online, and 13% shop exclusively online. ~80% of customers are more likely to buy from retailers that offer a personalized experience [5], making seamless omnichannel shopping and customer data more important than ever.
- Margins are tighter than ever: Rising costs and increased competition are squeezing profitability across the industry. Between 2023-2024, major players like Noble House [6] and Badcock Home Furniture [7] were forced to close their doors, citing inflation and increased competition as key drivers.
With these industry challenges in mind, the case for modernizing your tools becomes crystal clear. Let’s look at how a robust POS system can help you tackle these challenges.
Smart inventory management
Inventory is the backbone of any retail operation, but for furniture and home decor stores, the stakes are higher. Products are high-value, space-intensive and trend-sensitive, requiring precise forecasting and control.
A modern POS system simplifies inventory management with tools and features like automated special orders, barcode scanners, service order management and reorder points that auto-populate purchase orders when stock levels dip below PAR.
With historical and comparative data, you can accurately forecast inventory needs and maintain the right balance between availability and overstock, which could reduce your inventory costs by ~10% [8].
And with a multi-location solution, you get full visibility across all your stores and sales channels. So, whether it’s preparing for the holiday rush or gauging the impact of an emerging trend, smart inventory management ensures you’re ready to meet demand efficiently.
An integrated tech stack for seamless workflows
The days of juggling disconnected systems are over. Furniture retailers need a unified tech stack that connects every part of their business, from procurement to sales to fulfillment. Using multiple disconnected tools not only increases costs—like subscription fees and labor costs—but also increases the time spent managing different areas of your business.
A flexible POS platform like Lightspeed integrates all your tools, from employee scheduling to accounting software, into a unified system, helping you save time on reconciliation, time tracking, scheduling and much more.
Take vendor management as an example. By integrating Lightspeed POS with NuORDER, you can browse product catalogs, place wholesale orders and manage vendor relationships seamlessly within the platform. This eliminates manual processes and ensures your supply chain is as seamless as your sales experience.
“[NuORDER] is absolutely revolutionary, with the ability to import all items from a [purchase order] PO into Lightspeed with nothing more than a click of a button. The import is rich, with pictures and descriptions. The only work that remains is to put it into categories. A massive time saver!” — Daniel Greenhalgh, Owner, Skinny Raven Sports
Better decisions through data and insights
Informed, data-backed decisions are key to staying ahead in the home furnishings industry. With a modern POS system, you gain access to real-time reporting and analytics that provide actionable insights into sales trends, customer behavior and operational efficiency.
Visual dashboards and customizable reports let you track everything from your best-selling items to top-performing sales staff to your most profitable sales channels. Armed with this data, you can make strategic decisions about inventory, scheduling, pricing and promotions to maximize profitability.
For example, using customer profiles and behavioral data, you can track customer purchase histories and preferences, allowing you to create more personalized shopping experiences and targeted promos that feel truly relevant to your customers.
And with the growing demand for personalization, understanding your customer is more important than ever, especially now that a new generation of consumers [9] —with a whole new set of desires and expectations—are entering the housing market (and quickly becoming your target market).
Learn more about retail POS insights.
Sell anywhere: Meeting your customers wherever they are
Today’s customers expect seamless shopping experiences across every channel—online, in-store and everything in between. To stay competitive, retailers need to bridge these worlds effortlessly.
A modern eCommerce solution that’s seamlessly connected to your retail POS allows you to bridge the gap between in-store and online experiences—from creating a stunning online store that reflects your brand to offering flexible fulfillment options like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), delivery, click-and-collect and more.
Whether a customer wants to browse a showroom before completing their purchase online—or vice versa—or order a custom piece for delivery, the right POS system helps to ensure the customer experience is smooth and convenient.
Bottom line
In today’s retail landscape, the demands on furniture and home decor stores are higher than ever. With a modern POS system like Lightspeed Retail at the core of your operations, you can streamline workflows, make better decisions backed by powerful data insights, and give your customers an experience worth coming back for. And in an industry where trends move fast and competition is fierce, that’s the edge you need to stay ahead.
Want to find out what Lightspeed can do for your furniture business? Talk to a POS expert today.
Sources
[1] https://www.scandit.com/blog/shelf-management-with-mobile-computer-vision/
[2] https://www.radial.com/insights/study-reveals-amazon-revenue-fueled-retail-out-stocks
[3] https://retailminded.com/half-of-us-merchants-are-stuck-with-excess-stock/
[6] https://www.retaildive.com/news/noble-house-bankruptcy-furniture-retail-supplier/694522/