OCEAN CITY – Casual Designs has provided the Delmarva area with quality furniture for over 50 years, and, as the small business has grown, it has transitioned to utilizing modern day technology to provide customers the best experience.
Owner Dick Ludlam was born on 3rd Street in Ocean City and was raised in the resort for most of his life. After graduating from high school, Ludlam joined the Army, and upon his return was married and worked as a salesman in a furniture store for several years.
In 1961 Ludlam opened his own furniture store, Furniture House, on Main Street in Berlin. As the area became more commercially developed, he made the decision to move his business out onto the highway where it currently stands today.
“Everybody thought I was crazy in those days because I was leaving the Town of Berlin and going out to the lonely highway, but it was one of my best moves,” Ludlam said.
When Casual Designs was built on Route 50 in 1965, it remained Furniture House until Ludlam changed the name in the early 1970s. Since then, the location has doubled in size.
“When I started off, it was a different world than it is now. The economy was quite different. Ocean City was growing commercially,” Ludlam said.
Over the years, Casual Design locations could also be found at the Gold Coast Mall in Ocean City and in Bethany Beach to meet the high demand as the area hit a commercial boom with the construction of condominium buildings. Currently there are two locations — on Route 50 in Berlin and on Route 54 in Selbyville, Del.
“In the beginning, the business was geared more toward people who were living here and then it became so commercial the business … really changed in what kind of furniture we would look for,” Ludlam explained.
According to Ludlam, the customers are the boss when it comes to what type of furniture makes it to the show room floor.
“We want to fill the wants and needs of the customers. That is the important part,” Ludlam said. “We search for quality and value. I feel to run a successful business you have to be more customer oriented … I look forward to building relationships with customers.”
That is where technology comes in, Delaware Manager Chris Coates explained. When iPads and other tablets were introduced, all Casual Designers were equipped with the technology to build a stronger foundation with customers whether it was by being able to have a live conversation with a customer that lives out of the area over Skype or by being able to visualize a variety of furniture scenarios with a touch of the screen.
“We have always been full service in furniture retail, but he [Ludlam] has beaten it into my head for a long time now that customers and technology is the future, and if you ignore it, soon enough you will be ignored as a business,” Coates said. “I feel a lot of people that have been in business as long as he has are stuck in their ways, but he has always wanted to reinvent the wheel to adapt, and realizes the importance in growth and in technology.”
Serving a resort area, many of Casual Designs customers live in the Baltimore, Washington D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania.
“We want to give our designers the infrastructure with technology to make it a personal experience. Each designer makes a relationship with their customer in one way or another whether it is with technology or customers coming into the store,” Coates said. “GoPro is our next step.”
Ludlam and his grandsons, Coates and Pat Hooks, strap GoPro cameras on their chest while attending furniture markets, such as earlier this fall in High Point, N.C., which is one of the largest international furniture markets.
“There are certain technologies that may only be available to Fortune 500 companies where they are enormously expensive but that doesn’t mean as a small business you ignore technology, or try to make it work for your business, and that is what we are constantly doing,” Coates said.
Casual Designs looks at using GoPro cameras while attending furniture markets as a way to create ethos among their customers. Additionally, Coates said the footage builds website content where customers can see their options beyond the show rooms walls.
“We are not just looking in catalogs for you. We save the customer’s time by touching it, feeling it and looking for the best quality and value we can find as experts,” Coates said. “By creating these two-minute videos, we can constantly refresh our website to create interest and ultimately have customers come into the store. It gets them excited about what we can do for them.”
In the past, Casual Designs has had Google conduct virtual tours of the store and have the content posted on its website to showcase that season’s furniture but every few months the virtual tour becomes outdated.
“This is a way for us to every so often make it less stagnant. Eventually we will change the Google tour to a GoPro tour where you will be able to see what it is like in our store on a monthly basis instead of a yearly basis,” Coates said.
To learn more, visit Casual Designs website at www.casualdesignsfurniture.com.