National Home Furnishings Association Launches New Website
HIGH POINT, N.C. (May 13, 2002) – The National Home Furnishings Association (NHFA), the nation's largest organization devoted specifically to the needs and interests of home furnishings retailers, today announced the launch of its new Web site, www.nhfa.org. The Web site was designed and developed by Symetri, a leading e-business strategy, design and development company.
"Our previous site was 'obsolete'," said Sam Stitcher, vice president of operations, NHFA. "We essentially decided to start from scratch. The new Web site will allow us to better provide valuable information and assistance to member retailers, as well as serve as a recruitment tool for new members. Because of Symetri’s outstanding reputation as a solid business partner in the furniture industry, we were confident the site would achieve the objectives we set forth."
The new site features the association's first member area where members can login to get tailored information. Consumers can also search NHFA member retailers according to a consumer's location. Consumers can either link to the retailer's site or print information for future reference.
"This is yet another resource we wanted to supply our members," Stitcher said. "We had a lot of indirect consumer traffic and felt it would be extremely beneficial to direct that traffic to appropriate member organizations."
Symetri also developed tools to make the site more dynamic. NHFA can now easily update information such as member and retailer information, the polling survey and breaking news regularly.
"Building a dynamic site is important to all our clients," said Brad Mack, chief marketing officer, Symetri. "We consistently strive to provide counsel and direction that serves to achieve long-term goals for our clients."
Symetri is an e-business strategy, design and development company that offers a unique combination of user-experience design and highly skilled cross-functional teams to provide exceptional services and solutions to its clients.
The company's core disciplines include interaction design, application engineering, strategic consulting and information architecture. With offices in High Point, N.C. and Atlanta, Symetri was founded in April, 1999, and has grown aggressively through high client satisfaction. Symetri has been recognized by a leading business publication for two years running in its "Best Places to Work" competition, and one of its designs was recently chosen as "Site of the Week" by Communication Arts.
Symetri clients include Broyhill, Kimberly-Clark Health Care, Sealy, RF Micro Devices and Wachovia Banks to name a few.
National Home Furnishings Association (NHFA) is the nation's largest organization devoted specifically to the needs and interests of home furnishings retailers. NHFA's membership comprises 2,400 corporate entities representing 10,000 stores in all 50 states and several foreign countries.
NHFA's Mission and vision encompass the association's commitment to helping home furnishings retailers operate highly profitable businesses that provide an exceptional level of service to the consumers who buy their furniture.
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These include the rate at which new business, including the new contracts noted above, can be converted to the company, intense competitive pressures within the industry, the success of the strategic initiatives outlined above and other factors discussed from time to time in the reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update information contained in this release.
