As the year begins, we caught up with the busy Directors at Gallery Direct to find out more about their plans for 2024.
To kick things off, and following Gallery’s appearance in last month’s edition where they revealed their largest furniture launch to date, expanding by around 50%, what was the thinking behind the SS24 Collection?
“Let’s try something new was our aim for 2024,” commented Peter Delaney, Sales Director. “Focused on innovation and driven by our commitment to inspire fresh design-led styles, our team here at Gallery have expertly collated one of our boldest collections to date.
“The SS24 Furniture Collection features over 275 individually crafted products, including 20 new ranges and an exciting ‘readymade’ upholstery offering. The lines include living, dining and bedroom furniture, featuring a wonderful range of styles from contemporary to traditional and from chic to rustic.
“We’ve used some of the finest materials, including stunning stone, natural timber, gorgeous glass and metallic accents. The ‘readymade’ upholstery features sofas, armchairs, sofa beds, occasional chairs, dining chairs and bedsteads, offering an amazing selection of styles. We’re also launching a new range of wall décor and textiles & home décor to complement the furniture.”
Many of Gallery’s new furniture collections focus on greater depth of items to create families of products, offering a readymade solution and ease of shop. “Our clients can be confident to seamlessly recreate a look and deliver co-ordinating styles to their customers,” Peter continued.
“These can be seen in our new catalogue with our beautiful photography which demonstrates the effortless styles. We will continue to expand ranges going forward in to 2024, ensuring best sellers have a depth within the range.”
As Peter revealed, the collection incorporates 275 products – some feat! James Hudson, Commercial Director, explained just why now is the right time to launch such a milestone range of products and how a combination of factors played pivotal roles in the process.
“We love bringing new and fresh designs to market, but the only way to do this properly is to get into the factories and roll up our sleeves. One of the challenges of the Covid pandemic was developing new products whilst not being able to travel. Now this has lifted, we were able to spend a lot of time with our suppliers, developing this amazing selection of products.”
During 2023, Gallery made a strategic decision to have a ‘furniture first’ focus, which led to the creation of the extensive SS24 furniture collection. And it’s not just indoor furniture either, as James continued: “As well as continuing developing new indoor furniture, this year will see a design focus on outdoor with the all-important Gallery twist. The new Outdoor collection will be ready to preview in June, for launch in 2025, so watch this space.”
Switching the focus back to the current year, Peter added that continued investment is key when offering customers a variety of products, while also maintaining top service, an area of the business Gallery is renowned for. “We invested in the design and development of all these amazing new products, in terms of time and money with our development teams travelling extensively with our country managers for approximately 32 weeks last year, to ensure we had this stunning new collection ready to launch in January.
“But this alone wouldn’t give us the results we want. We’ve also invested in holding stock here in the UK ready for quick delivery to customers, with our Chesterfield distribution centre playing a major part in this, with its huge storage capacity and easy transport access around the country for our own dedicated delivery fleet. We even offer a direct home delivery service, and click and collect is available for our customers if required.
“Investment in our sector leading photography and website has also been important in making it easier for our customers to shop with us, with its real-time stock updates and 24/7 access to their online account, including order history, invoices, returns, credits, tracking and stock, from anywhere, the office, home or when travelling.”
As Peter mentioned, a lot of investment has gone into the design process, which, as Lizzie Sladen, Product Director, echoed, is fundamental when being ahead of the next trend. “We wanted to create a range of products with shape and texture, featuring organic materials from beautiful timbers to lovely stones and marbles.
“We’re confident all the new products will be successful, as we have offered not only a wide variety of styles to suit different tastes and interiors, but also a range of price brackets to suit different customer markets. Our textiles and accessories collections have been built to co-ordinate with our furniture, so customers can seamlessly incorporate additional items to recreate our looks and achieve authoritative style.”
With all the fresh and new products bursting onto the stage, the only thing left to do is actually get up close and personal. Gallery has put plenty of thought into this too. While being on show during the Spring Fair at Birmingham’s NEC, Gallery has also recently played host to an @Home event at its Chesterfield showroom.
This concept is something the team are exploring further, as Peter explains: “We will be promoting more @Home events as they give our customers time to view our products in a relaxed atmosphere where they can see the full scope of the Gallery offer. The expanse of our showroom allows customers to see all the size and shape options within our new collections, to allow them to select the best solution for their business needs.”
A final thought comes from James, who says the new collection fully endorses the Gallery ethos, right through its core. “Gallery Director’s love design-led products and, as a home furnishing business, our aim and our passion is to offer customers a wide range of lines developed in house. We hope this carries through all areas of our business and reflects our core values.”
