Lamp Manufacturer Mario Industries To Debut Virtual Online Sales Office In High Point

Furniture World Magazine

Mario Industries, Inc. the nation's oldest family-owned lamp manufacturer and a top five sales distributor and manufacturer for retail home furnishings announced that it will launch its virtual online sales office, a pioneering effort, during the High Point Market at the International Home Furnishing Center, October 20-26. Demonstrations will be continuously available throughout the week in showroom H420. According to Louis Scutellaro, President of Mario Industries, enabling interactive sales capabilities through the company's website is the ideal solution to improve response time and lower costs associated with sales travel. "With this new program, what would traditionally take days to accomplish can happen within hours. We're removing travel time and travel costs, and in doing so we can meet needs ten times faster and much more effectively than before." The addition of virtual customer service technology comes as part of a complete re-launch of the company's website, effective November 1, 2008. The new website and virtual sales office will include features such as: • 24/7 meeting requests and customer support - The new interactive site will allow interested buyers to request an online meeting twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by filling out an online request form and a toll-free number and unique password will be assigned to each request. Each online meeting can accommodate up to 25 participants and hosts will have the ability to share presentations, engage in one-on-one live chats, review client orders, and more. • Streaming video – Each meeting offers streaming video capability, allowing participants to visually see their sales host during presentation which will help enable dialogue and promote a higher degree of personalized service. • Live chat capability – While sales hosts will engage customers through phone conversations during online meetings and presentations, they will also be able to simultaneously initiate one-on-one discussions to respond to individual questions. • Document sharing – Through the website sales offices, hosts will be able to share catalogues and sales presentations, contracts and orders, and simplify the review process for custom orders through the efficient scheduling of meetings to share designs and revisions. • Flip-book catalogues for customer direct orders - Existing Mario customers will be able to order directly from the company's website through online catalogues in "flip-book" format. Clients will have the ability to browse collections from each of Mario Industries' five divisions: Mario Contract Lighting, Passport Furniture, Lampshades by Mario, Finial Showcase, and Reliance Lamps. Each catalogue will feature zoom-in capability and allow users to click through individual items to place their orders. Once an order is placed, users will be given unique password and login information to make future orders easier to place. With the launch of the new website and virtual sales capabilities, Scutellaro foresees the ability to broaden their sales outreach to markets across the country, which have been more difficult to travel to in the past. "As undependable as fuel costs have been, combined with the fact that certain markets are more remote than others, there are places we have never been able to service as much as we would like," says Scutellaro. "Now, our sales representatives will be able to put themselves anywhere at anytime and provide personalized service as though they are in the same room." For more information, visit www.marioindustries.com.