December 2021 – Take a Seat with Tritter Feefer

Finding the Joy (1.5 minute read)

Early this year, we began a quarterly conversation we titled “Take a Seat with Tritter Feefer,” a way to connect and converse about our shared industry. We discovered you, too, felt the pain of increased material costs and supply chain snarls. We also learned that you all were seeking ways to serve your clientele without compromising on quality.

And like you, the Tritter Feefer family learned to find the joy in our new circumstances. This Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) recommended designers utilize local talent, something Tritter Feefer has done since our beginning. Our success is built on American artisans who create our furnishings by hand in the United States. We also ramped up our customization program, where we build what our designers envision – from design to size to finish. Seeing your dreams come to life has been one of our biggest joys in 2021. Thank you for including Tritter Feefer in your success this year and supporting our business while we support yours.

Looking ahead, we are taking a proactive, positive approach to our changing business. We are marching into 2022 with a full heart and full of ideas. In this spirit, Redland Cotton shared a lovely piece with Five Reasons You Should Buy Made in the USA that spoke to us.

Like Redland, we have our reasons to purchase American products:

1 – Our business, likes yours, expands to provide more jobs! We estimate we have created 250,000 hours of manpower (and womanpower!) through sourcing, designing, creating, delivering, and selling in 2021.

2 – Tritter Feefer artisans are so proud (and rightly so!) of their craft, an American art. Supporting our small business keeps a valuable artform thriving in rural Georgia.

3 – We are family-owned and operated and representing one of the last few American furniture manufacturers which are now few and far in between.

Whatever your reasons may have been to choose Tritter Feefer in 2021, we hope your support continues in 2022. We thank you a million times over.

Have a blessed holiday with your loved ones in a space that brings you peace and joy.

All the best,
ML, Bill, Rik and the entire Tritter Feefer family
Tritter Feefer – Bespoke in the U.S.A.

September 2021 – Take a Seat with Tritter Feefer

Friends conversing with friends about industry trends (1.5-minute read)

This is Tritter Feefer’s third quarterly conversation with you, our industry friends. In our first conversation (March), we invited you to pull up a chair (hopefully one of ours), grab a cup of coffee or glass or wine, and join a dialogue about changes sweeping our industry. We’ve discussed supply chain woes in the spring and the labor shortage earlier this summer.

However, this quarter, we are really interested to hear how you are pivoting to the new normal. First, let’s take a pulse check:

What is the current standard time it takes to get ordered items?

A – 12 weeks

B – 20 weeks

C – At least half year

D – I don’t expect anything in less than a year now.

(Send in your answer – this is our unofficial TF poll. Results will be shared!)

Frankly, we are still a little shell-shocked by what’s become the norm in waiting. We all know the “blame game” – the pandemic, climate change and the supply of wood, especially with a 50% price increase this year alone. But how are you adapting? Our strategy is transparency. We are creating and delivering as quickly as we can without diminishing our commitment to quality. That includes craftmanship as well as sourcing products true to our brand and values while being serious about keeping our delivery promises. It can get tricky balancing all the plates; perhaps better to keep the plates stored (may we suggest the beautiful Pearson Buffet!) than juggling them in the air.

But it’s fall – the most precious family time of the year to gather around the table, something we took for granted until COVID and social distancing gave us the “lost year.” Maybe our industry is scrambling to deliver dream dining spaces in time for Thanksgiving or holiday season. However, as we at Tritter Feefer have been reminded of personally this year, the people around the table making the memories with us are what matter most.

Despite this, we are empathetic when delivery times fall prey to these excessively long lead times. How are you handling commitment and communication when you cannot control external factors? We would love to hear from you and see your one-question non-scientific survey results from above!

Looking forward to fall and the focus on gratitude it brings, which includes gratitude for you, your business, and our friendships.

Read more about lumber prices here: https://businessofhome.com/articles/vietnam-halts-furniture-production-wildfires-send-lumber-prices-back-up-and-more

All the best,

ML, Bill, Rik and the entire Tritter Feefer family

Tritter Feefer – Bespoke in the U.S.A.

June 2021 – Take a Seat with Tritter Feefer

Friends conversing with friends about industry trends (1.5-minute read)

In March we introduced you to a new quarterly conversation Tritter Feefer began with you, our industry friends. We’ve included the first one below, and we were surprised at how much it resonated with so many of you. We enjoyed hearing your thoughts, your predictions, your woes, and your upbeat philosophy on what is ahead.

This quarter we are watching the U.S. grapple with a labor shortage. The jobs exist, but where are the workers? The CNN Business article  “No, unemployment benefits aren’t the problem” discusses the myths and the making of this pandemic byproduct. “The pandemic economy is new and keeps evolving. That’s part of the reason economists got their forecasts so spectacularly wrong last month,” the reporter writes. Studies show the obvious: with so many people shopping more online, the clicks are diminishing the bricks, or physical stores.

What does that mean to our industry? What stood out to us were the words above: keeps evolving.

We should like that concept, right? Good design keeps evolving and iterating and changing, all for the better, we hope. By embracing the concept of change, we can think around it, plan for it, become our most creative because of it rather than fear and dread change. That’s the attitude we are taking at Tritter Feefer. We are seeing some of our designers’ best work come into our workshops.

And while the delivery dates are farther out than Tritter Feefer would have ever dreamed and even though we wish we could find and hire more staff and additional qualified artisans, we have decided to celebrate what we can, use our critical thinking and creativity for problem solving, and not make ourselves weary by worrying about what we cannot.

How are you handling some of these same challenges? How are you keeping your spirits up while your inventory is low and your delivery times are long? How can we collectively solve some of these issues together? We want to know what you think!

Wishing you sunny skies ahead,

ML, Bill, and the entire Tritter Feefer family

Tritter Feefer – Bespoke in the U.S.A.

April 2021 – Take a Seat with Tritter Feefer

Friends conversing with friends about industry trends (1.5-minute read)

Not too long ago Tritter Feefer emailed our clients to explain supply chain woes and the resulting volatility. Ironically, the same week we sent our note, we also received several others, similar in tone (frustrated but transparent) and content (we are all suffering).

As Bill and I pondered both the messages and what’s next in our industry, we felt like pulling our people together, pouring a big cup of coffee (or larger glass of wine!!), and sitting down to discuss this crazy phenomenon of massive demand with snarled supply chain backlogs. Then we read this Washington Post article in early March: You Might be Waiting Many Months for That New Couch. This non-industry article explored what we in the business have been facing for months. Written for the end-consumer audience, the article approached the issue from our clients’ perspective.

We wanted to share the article in hopes you might find it helpful to use with your own client base, to help explain the unprecedented situation our industry is facing. Remember over a decade ago when we had product but a major decline in demand? We don’t know about you, but our economics professors never covered this current situation!

So welcome to a new series from Tritter Feefer, one we hope will increase dialogue where we can help each other and learn a few things, too. We will publish “Take a Seat” quarterly and welcome ideas you might us to research and discuss. We will pass on tidbits like the Washington Post article or highlight something clever we’ve found for you, who are both our clients and our friends.

We are navigating this together, and we want to contribute to your success as much as we want to create our own. Please let us know what you think and if you shared this article with your own clients. Let’s chat about what we can do collectively while learning from each other.

Wishing you sunny skies ahead,

ML, Bill, and the entire Tritter Feefer family