Ethan+Allen

tip from the prof, in this specific case i would apply the concept of a moodboard, check it out online - lor Website: www.ethanallen.com
 * Company:** Ethan Allen
 * Company Stage:** Large, Established Specialty Furniture Retailer with about 300 stores primarily in the U.S. and worldwide
 * Topic:** Enhance Ethan Allen offering with Augmented Reality

media type="custom" key="9890429"  www.**ethanallen**.co >> [|Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc.] >> [|Furniture Brands International, Inc.] || St. Louis, MO >> [|La-Z-Boy Incorporated] || Monroe, MI >> IKEA also used as a baseline and to reference from class presentation >> >> **Ashley Furniture** >> Ashley uses nearly 200 keywords but doesn't list a description. Many of their keywords are spelling variations (incorrect) of furniture which is a good idea as these misspelled words would not normally appear on the page displayed to consumers. There are not really any other main pages to look at other than the main home page. >> >> **Furniture Brands** Uses a small number of keywords and the do use a description - but its only their name "Furniture Brands" - a waste! >> >> **La-Z-Boy** >> Uses a good mix of variations on their brand name and they also use a description. >> >> **IKEA** >> Uses seven key words in their meta data but where they have a lost opportunity is that their home page title, meta data keywords and meta data description are all exactly the same.v >> >> **Ethan Allen** falls into a similar trap as IKEA and treats the meta description as keywords instead of a natural description. We can see by the source code that Ethan Allen has not touched the keywords since 2009 (2+ years!) >> >> **Current:** >> code < meta name = "DESCRIPTION" content = "ethanallen.com, decorating ideas, home decor, furniture, modern furniture, casual furniture" / > code >> code < meta name = "KEYWORDS" content = "ethan allen global, inc., ethan allen retail, inc., ethan allen home furnishings, interiors, ethan allen new web site," / > code >> code < meta name = "DESCRIPTION" content = "Ethan Allen Design Center - your source for home decorating ideas with casual, modern furniture." / > code >> code < meta name = "KEYWORDS" content = "ethan allan, ethanallen, artwork, fabrics, furnitue, furntuire, furnitue, furnture " / > code >> Find possible portals and websites or blogs which would make sense to ask for a link >> Create an entry to wikipedia on facts >> Check alternative SE (eventually specialised ones as well as foreign language ones) > come up with a LT strategy for your offering to the market >> **PPC for your landing page and LT marketing idea** >> Design 1 Google Adwords campaign with title, text line 1 & 2 >> >> Design 1 facebook add with image, title and content text >> >> Competitors: Follow in specifics on their presence in YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Blogsphere, Flickr**Ashley** >> Ashley doesn't list any social presences on their home page and does not have an official corporate presence on Facebook or YouTube. Some individual stores are up there though. Ashley is very active on Twitter, however, with at least three accounts (main, shop, careers) and Flickr. No real presence on LinkedIn other than the automatic company page and only one store has a group. >> >> **Furniture Brands -** >> They have only Facebook listed on their homepage with three of their brands but no page for the corporation - looking for them on Facebook without the direct link proved very difficult. Nothing on Youtube, Twitter, or Flickr but they do more for their LinkedIn page than Ashley. >> >> **La-Z-Boy -** >> Lists Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube icons/sites on their home page and all three are very nicely done. Not listed but also nice are their LinkedIn business page and group for current staff and alumni. Didn't find anything on Flickr. >> >> **IKEA** >> Doesn't list any social networking sites on their homepage but has Facebook page, Twitter account and several LinkedIn groups and business listings as well as several Flickr accounts and YouTube channels. By far the most prolific on social networking - both in terms of fans/followers as well as number of official accounts for the company. >> >> What would be generic tags needed to promote your company >> What could you contribute to the blogsphere? > Crowdsourcing is not used to create technological or company advances. Ethan Allen could do their marketing through asking the public or past customers to come up with new ideas for furniture. This could be done through web forums (private or public depending on the case). An example would be asking a group of people to come up with "options" they would like for pieces of furniture. For example a chair has fabric, leather, leg, nail trip, among other options. The group could be asked to come up with more options as this is the nature of Ethan Allen's business (special order custom furniture). Another suggestion would be to crowdsource the design of a room. A select group of people could have access to a virtual room online through a software that allows the group of people to work together in designing a room with Ethan Allen Furniture. The room then could be changed weekly or daily and actually be shown in a retail design center. > As the entire company, Ethan Allen is on Facebook and on YouTube -and are the only two sites listed on the official homepage. It might make sense to also have the franchise have its own Facebook page in order to create a community of their customers.This will facilitate dialogue and conversation for the group and also give the company a new CRM tool to use to help market to their customers. > It would make sense to also be on: > Twitter (to share new product releases, sales, listen to customers) > Foursquare (currently Foursquare lists the business, but it has not been claimed yet and there is no mayor. Using Foursquare could encourage customers who never visited the store to give it a try and for customers who don't visit often to come back by using some unique offers or contests that requires people to visit the store. By adding tags and tips to the listing it would help in SEO. > Flickr - > > Ethan Allen is on LinkedIn as a company and a few franchises have their own listings but it may not make sense here to branch out. It would be good to add more information to the company listing for a more robust page helping with SEO and customer searches. There are no "Fans of" Ethan Allen groups on LinkedIn however, and this may make a lot of sense to get started. Evaluate the relevance of a mobile marketing strategy Come up with a Twitter business idea > **__Clients-__**The Net Generation concept is still up and coming within Ethan Allen. People born between 1982-1991 (Net Generation) are ages 20-29 and are not the ages of the majority customers at Ethan Allen. Majority of the consumers that shop at Ethan Allen are 40+ years old as Ethan Allen furniture is expensive relative to other furniture on the retail market. People who are 20-29 are struggling to find jobs let alone buy expensive furniture due the the late 2000's recession. The room planning at [|MicroD] does however incorporate learning that is NetGen in nature. One must know how to use a computer to create a room layout and select their furniture when using the room layout tool. As the economy rebounds the company will have to move to a augmented reality type of system for their customers because the people who are of the net-generation (20-29 years old today) will be wealthier and be able to afford Ethan Allen. It is vitial that Ethan Allen adapts to these peopel's learning style so that they do not miss out on a large portion of the market. > **__Operations-__**Some of the corporate and private stores do use an ERP style system to run their operations, some are still completely hand-written and paper based. Managers of the Net-Generation (like myself) prefer to use an integrated electronic system and learn the processes and operations of a company better that way as compared to learning operations based on a non-integrated paper system. As I (a net-gener) am a new manager at a privately owned Ethan Allen store that uses a paper system, I have noticed in particular that I my brain has much more trouble reading people's handwriting as compared to the older non-net generation employee's at the store. I would say this is due to my learning history of processing typed printed words and my lack of being exposed to the hand-written word throughout my education/life. > > Currently Ethan Allen offers a 2D room layout, artwork selector and fabric choices but currently all as separate tools. I found the 2D room layout helpful, if you like looking at blueprints, but it didn't actually help with how the room would really look all together. Idea is to put put all of these together into one 3D Augmented Reality system that can be viewed on the computer (not just the mobile phone as IKEA does). QR Codes could be placed in store and online next to the product/on the signage that allows for a user to scan the code to gain access to a computerized, augmented 3D model of the item that the can manipulate.
 * 1) **Webmarketing**
 * 2) **SEO** Compare meta data with main competitors
 * Suggested:**
 * 1) **Linking**
 * 1) **Long Tail**
 * 1) **Landing Page**
 * 1) **Web2Zero**
 * 2) **Web2.0 marketing**
 * 1) **Blogsphere**
 * 1) **Crowdsourcing**
 * 1) **Networking**
 * 1) **Net Generation**
 * 1) **Web3.0**

IKEA uses augmented reality to launch PS furniture collection Ethan Allen (furniture company) @http://www.ethanallen.com/ Long Tail Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. Competitors | Competitive analysis from Hoover's []
 * RESEARCH**

Ethan Allen **Crowdsourcing**

In the project of Crowdsorcing for Ethan Allen we will target to gather ideas of people with: 1. Using People Passion – Create a virtual room plan 2. Make them play – Compare 3. Come up with a group of architects in Facebook


 * 1. Using People's Passion **

In the website already exist a similar idea which allows you to create your own plan but it needs some step to realize that and it doesn’t make it easier for people to express their passion, so we can come with a virtual 3D room when u let to people to take any kind of furniture and create their own space. This will be integrated in the web making people use their fantasy on colors, style, materials but in an easy way, after they can save their work and send that to their mail to re came again. There the company will take part with an offer asking them why they chose that color or material. The company can congratulate for the project coming up with an offer connected to the project.


 * 2. Make them play-compare **

We will create a play that is nice fast and u can take a fast result from: The game name can be "chose your favorite" and it has to be like a little banner viewing 2 prod uct s: for example 2 chairs. There it comes click your favorite.



In the moment the client clicks the favorite stays and in the other comes another chair and it comes again a question:"and now which is your favorite? and they go on till the winner chair.  After that there it can come another product beds. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In the End u c <span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif;">an congratulate showing "here is the room with your favorite chair. <span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif;">How it will work? Except the Ethan site, it will be like a banner with 2 chair in the most visited sites of interior design, in some important local sites, in facebook, in mails when in all of them the banner is linked to the game. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From this it can help showing the company which will be the favorite product and which they will sell more.


 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">3. Ethan architects group - gathering discussion from professionals **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The company will create a Group of architects in Facebook which can share ideas about the old and the new products and specially to show the last chance offers.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This page will be an open competition between all the member. Here the company will ask a new idea about her new products. For example if it will lunch a new chair the company will put the style they want the chair with the needed condition and they have to send the project. <span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif;">What they will win? The wining architect will not be paid by money, but the product with have the Architect Name. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -10000px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 1px;"><object id="prezi_d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56" name="prezi_d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="550" height="400"><param name="movie" value="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf"/><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/><param name="flashvars" value="prezi_id=d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56&amp;lock_to_path=0&amp;color=ffffff&amp;autoplay=no&amp;autohide_ctrls=0"/><embed id="preziEmbed_d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56" name="preziEmbed_d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56" src="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="550" height="400" bgcolor="#ffffff" flashvars="prezi_id=d30487a374672b51e0e1ae912576f05d25e09b56&amp;lock_to_path=0&amp;color=ffffff&amp;autoplay=no&amp;autohide_ctrls=0">