Company Overview
BatesManor Furniture Inc. was formed in the early 1900s by current president Charleton Bates’ great-grandfather. BatesManor Furniture is a manufacturer of high quality wood furniture, specializing in medium to high priced bedroom, living room and dining room pieces. Their furniture is sold through 1000 high-quality department stores and independent furniture subspecialty stores nationwide, but not all stores carry the company’s entire line of furniture. BatesManor is very selective in choosing retail outlets and will not sell to furniture chains and discount outlets. BatesManor’s sales force consists of ten full-time employees and two regional sales managers, contrary to most other furniture manufacturers, who use sales agents or representatives that carry a wide assortment of non-competing furniture lines.
BatesManor categorizes their promotional expenditures into four groups, sales expense and administration, cooperative advertising programs with retailers, trade promotion, and consumer advertising. Sales expense and administration include: salaries for sales personnel and sales managers, selling-expense reimbursements, fringe benefits and clerical/ office assistance. Commissions for sales representatives are not included in sales expense and administration, but are deducted from sales in the calculation of gross profit. Cooperative advertising typically includes newspaper advertising in the retailer’s city, in which allowances are matched by funds provided by retailers on a dollar-to-dollar basis. Trade promotion is directed toward retailers and includes various materials to assist salespeople in servicing new accounts, such as displays, for use in retail stores, point of purchase materials, catalogs, trade magazine advertisements, etc. Participation in tradeshows is also a part of trade promotion. BatesManor is currently represented at two