Confortluxe & TOFF meubelen
“Transparency in all our processes”
eMeubel streamlines internal organization of Confortluxe and TOFF Meubelen
Doing business in the furniture industry is becoming increasingly complex. Due to the immense choice in the range of products and the modern needs of the end consumer, it is essential for wholesaler Confortluxe and retail store TOFF Meubelen to be able to fall back on an ERP program that meets all their current needs. Danick Bruneel (TOFF Meubelen) and Lieven Decoene (Confortluxe) have seen their internal organization become a lot simpler since the integration of eMeubel. “eMeubel will allow us to work even more efficiently in the future thanks to meticulous data analyses.”
Confortluxe is the brainchild of André Ollevier, the West Flemish businessman who passed away in the spring of 2021. Under his leadership, the company quickly grew into a widely respected wholesaler in the furniture industry. The Confortluxe-Telifra group is also prominent in the retail sector with furniture stores such as Crack Meubelen (Ypres), TOFF Meubelen and Nikelly (Dottignies), each one a flourishing business founded by André Ollevier. The group also has its own furniture production segment with Lievens NV (Tielt) and Wholesaler Europe (Wervik).
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Price lists
Danick Bruneel has been managing director of TOFF Meubelen for over thirty years. In 2009 he took the first steps in the professionalization of the administration. “At the time we already had accounting software, but we urgently needed software that would also allow us to easily monitor our purchases and sales. Initially, we went looking for software to help us create price lists. Due to the increasing number of manufacturers we worked with, it had become impossible to do this manually.”
When Filip Naert came to present eMeubel, Danick Bruneel quickly recognized the various advantages. “The software did much more than we thought we needed. Suddenly it was much easier to track orders, check prices and monitor sales statistics. We soon realized the benefits this could lead to. It meant a major change for our organization, which would catapult us from the Middle Ages to the 21st century.”
The success of TOFF Meubelen’s organizational leap spread like wildfire in the group. Before long, sister companies Crack, Nikelly and Lambermont (an acquired furniture store in Bertrix) also started using eMeubel as an ERP package.
Regular updates
In 2021, eMeubel has become indispensable for the business processes of TOFF Meubelen. “First of all, it is an ERP program that is very well marketed. The program has grown to be the undisputed market leader in the Belgian furniture, interior and sleeping comfort sector. The developers are constantly getting feedback on potential improvements and very regularly release new updates. As a result, the ERP program is continuously adapted to the continuously changing needs of the market.”
This way, eMeubel also responds to the increasingly strict requirements of the end consumer. “About 10 years ago we realized 80 to 90% of our turnover with 10 to 15% of our products”, explains Danick Bruneel. “Due to the enormous expansion of the product range, there is no longer a single furniture ensemble that can be sold in large volumes. The consumer can also choose specific options for each item. Moreover, more and more end consumers dare to change their order after it has already been placed. eMeubel offers the possibility to quickly make such adjustments and to update the stock management accordingly. As a result, every piece of furniture remains easily traceable.”
Wholesale
Because of the excellent performance of eMeubel, the wholesaler ConfortLuxe also decided to start working with the software five years ago. “We knew that the ERP was perfectly adapted to the current market needs and that continuity was guaranteed”, explains Lieven Decoene, CEO of Confortluxe. “Our main concern was whether a program written from a retail perspective could be relevant and functional for a wholesaler as well.”
Those concerns turned out to be short-lived in practice. “It was especially important to be able to use the right prices for every customer”, continues Lieven Decoene. “As a wholesaler, we have customers in different countries, which means there are always different cost structures and margins that you have to deal with. Now that all those parameters and price features have been intelligently incorporated into eMeubel, the program takes a lot of work off our hands. Moreover, we now enjoy numerous economies of scale: because our stores and wholesalers run on the same program, everyone works the same way, which leads to a logical and efficient flow.”
Digital catalog
The eCat software also offers a high added value. “We can use this to build and maintain a digital catalog ourselves. This offers enormous flexibility to meet the wishes of the consumer, who can completely adapt a piece of furniture to their taste via the configurator. eCat takes this into account perfectly and translates this into extremely correct and well-organized stock management.”
Lieven Decoene sees numerous possibilities to get more out of eMeubel. “We can learn a lot from data analyses: which piece of furniture sells best? What are the current trends? Which items do we have the most of in stock? How can we steer sales so that we see those stock products smoothly go over the proverbial counter? Such insights can be a major step forward in optimizing margins and adjusting inventory.”
In the meantime, Lieven is satisfied to see that approximately 22% of B2B customers submit and follow up orders themselves using a helpful web application. “That reduces the number of intermediaries and the chance of errors when passing on an order. We hope that the number professional customers who opt for this approach will double in the future, giving the automation of orders an extra dimension.”
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