How to Write (and Tell!) the Story of Your Home Furnishings Brand

It doesn’t matter if you’re just launching into the market or are celebrating the company’s centennial—your brand has a story.

And what’s in it is important. Your brand story makes connections with end customers, helps you stand out in a crowded space and fuels your business online, to name just a few benefits. In your ecommerce business, this narrative helps your retail partners know what you’re all about. After all, the buyers you build partnerships with are ultimately the ambassadors for your product. The more you can tell them the story behind it and what makes you unique and special, the better they can sell it.

But as great of a story as yours might be, it doesn’t write itself. You’ll want to talk to the right people, ask and answer particular questions and make sure it’s documented and shared. Here’s how to do it.

First: Your brand story should be documented.

Your brand’s “story” isn’t just a word the marketing department throws around. Ultimately, it should be a set of documentation that can be shared both internally and externally.

Internally, this documentation should act as your “north star” for every department in your company. This aligns team members to your overall mission and what you’re about and gives them what they need to tell that story cohesively and consistently.

Externally, your documented story should be shared with key partners to help them understand the history and purpose of your brand and how it relates to your relationship. For example, sharing your brand story with a retail partner helps them understand how you fit into their overall business and maximize opportunities to drive sales. If sustainability is a key pillar in your brand story, buyers can use that to merchandise your product, highlight in marketing campaigns, or brainstorm new sales opportunities. Using the brand story in merchandising lets a customer get to know your brand at a deeper level, which can be key among a sea of product options on a retailer website.

• Tips for Writing Your Brand Story

• Document it.
• Create both an internal and external version document that summarizes your brand story for employees and partners alike.
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• Tell it far, wide and consistently.
• Use your documented brand story as the foundation for everything from your “about us” page on your website to your product descriptions.
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• Keep it simple.
• Your story doesn’t need to be dramatic or elaborate.
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• Be able to distill it down to an elevator pitch.
• Think of this as the what, how and why. Our company makes furniture for the city-apartment dweller at a price point that makes high design more accessible.
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• Consider how your story translates visually.
• From your logo to lifestyle imagery, the tenets of your brand should translate to visual assets as well.

To write it, you’ll need some help.

Creating your brand’s story is often a task of the marketing department, but they don’t work alone.

The company’s founder or CEO plays a huge role in crafting it, by providing the history, the vision and the overall narrative as to why your company exists. Other leadership or long-time team members may also have input on what should be considered for your brand story.

Lastly—and this is especially if you’re redefining your existing brand story—it’s important to hear the story customers are telling. You can do this first-hand by asking what they find unique about your brand or what problem your brand helps them solve. You can also look to other feedback loops like product reviews, social media and sales reports. Understanding where they shop for your product the most can tell you things about your customer that unveil how they view your brand.

Your brand story should answer several questions.

Your brand story doesn’t need to be overly glamorous. But it should have some substance. Look to answer these questions to craft a cohesive narrative

1. How did you get started? Perhaps your first project began as a passion project in a garage. Or, maybe your company founder was simply in the market for something they couldn’t find. It’s OK if it’s not a story made for Hollywood—but going back to the beginning lays the groundwork for how you came to be.
   
   
2. What keeps you going? Businesses evolve, so how you got here may not be the same story as where you are now. This part of the story should succinctly sum up what it is that you do.
   
   
3. What makes you unique? These are your brand pillars—the points that set your company apart from competitors. Maybe it’s a commitment to advanced technology, a design heritage, or a style or price point.
   
   
4. What problem do you solve? Successful businesses meet a need of their end customer. What’s yours? Think about what makes a customer shop for your category—and then what makes them choose your brand over another?
   
   
5. What are you not? It’s just as important to know what your brand is not, and considering it from this perspective can help provide some clarity as to what you are. It creates guardrails for the space in which your brand lives.
   
   
6. Who are your ideal customers? You may have heard these referred to as customer personas or profiles. By understanding who makes up the majority of your customer base, you can focus on developing marketing, product and strategy for the highest-value group.
   
   
7. If your brand was a person, what would they be like? This helps develop your brand’s “voice,” which is another way to showcase your style and even aesthetic. Being able to define your brand's voice and tone gives direction to marketing and product copy and helps unite all the tenets of your brand story into words.

Use your brand story everywhere.

This narrative is the foundation for everything your brand communicates, including:

• Your website
• Marketing: Both to the end customer and to retail partners
• Social media
• Product packaging
• Brand and product videos
• Product descriptions
• Catalog copy

By leveraging the pieces of your story for each of these channels, everything from your copy to imagery to collateral will speak uniquely to who your brand is.

Your brand has a story. Build it by answering key questions, documenting it thoroughly and referencing it often to help your brand build not just an identity, but an affinity with those who connect with it.