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Disclaimer: Wood You Furniture values all thoughtful opinions, both positive comments and constructive criticism, each can be used to improve our company! However, think before you post, this is a public forum, your views and comments are yours. Others may disagree and challenge your thought process; this leads to a healthy dialogue and is encouraged here.

Comments may be edited for clarity, to keep out questionable matters or topics. Some comments may never be posted if off topic, uses hateful or obscene language. Wood You Furniture reserves the right to delete or edit comments, as seen fit, at any time after initial posting.

The comments and suggestions here are just that personal opinions and perceptions of which valuable insights can be gathered . . . so come often and get involved!

Merry Christmas!

Well the time is here again! My bride loves Christmas and all that it encompasses. Often I am so busy running around to different towns and in the stores that I do not take the time to enjoy the atmosphere. I was determined to allow myself time to get into the spirit this year and enjoy the season.

As Christmas day is only a few days away I want to let you all know how grateful I am to have the opportunity to reach out and interact with you all. From dealers to employees and especially our customers. I have enjoyed hearing from the true heart beat of this company! From all our dealers and employees may I say, have a wonderful Christmas day and a great start to a new year.

With all the choices you have in the furniture world we all appreciate you doing business with Wood You Furniture. I would enjoy hearing what it is about Christmas and the Holiday Season you enjoy the best.

For me it is sitting around watching the pure joy in my children's eyes as they experience Christmas morning and secondly it is the little extra time I get to spend with my extended family.

Merry Christmas all, enjoy each day with your loved ones and friends. Here at Wood You we all look forward to serving you in the near future!

Regards,

Brett Blankenship and the whole Wood You crew

Comments (3)

Your website doesn't work-
When you click on prodcuts nothing comes up-
I was looking for a large farm table-
major turn- off

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Response to Elizabeth:

Elizabeth,
I am sorry you are having problems with this site. I just went through and checked every table shown on our site and was easily able to open them by clicking on the item. I was also able to then click on that picture for a larger picture so I am a bit lost as to how to help.

The only thing I can think is you were looking at the top pictures of each page . . . if you continue to scroll down you will see all the items you can click on for further info. Please let me know if this is what you were doing and I will look into it further - As for now the site is running as it should and i also had a few others check it to ensure it was not just me and there were no problems, sorry for the frustration.

If it persists I hope you contact me so I can look further into it. For now I can not get the issues you dealt with to come up.

Sincerely,
Brett Blankenship

I too enjoy watching the kids Christmas morning!

I love your stores and have enjoyed getting a glimpse inside Wood You through this blog.

Merry Christmas Wood You!

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Response to JW:

JW,
Thank you, we appreciate you as well! I personally have enjoyed watching this blog develop, which could not have been possible without you and all the other posters participation.

Brett B

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yvComment v.1.21.1

What You Love About Wood You!

As I have been uploading a multitude of pictures and changing the text for our new website look. It got me thinking about what I love about this company in particular and this industry as a whole. So I stopped and am writing this post thinking there maybe others that enjoy our product as much as I do.

heart_s_wood-1 "For me personally, as an employee, I love the diversity in styles, real wood species and custom colors I can offer customers without sacrificing great value!"..~ Brett B.

So what is it for you, what got you hooked on Wood You Furniture? I will enjoy reading your answers . . . whether a customer, dealer or an employee we all would love to share in your reasoning. Your answers do not have to be lengthy for us to enjoy them. Just a word or two on how you'd explain your reason for supporting your local Wood You Furniture. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Comments (11)

In the last post you posted, you said you were opening a new store in Jacksonville. Can you tell me when and where? Will there be a grand opening sale? Any details would be great! Thanks

Mary,
Yes we are open on San Jose Blvd just south of Loretta Rd. We look forward to earning your business!

Regards,
Brett Blankenship

I recently purchased bookshelves and a desk from Wood You. Though I had never heard of parawood, I liked the look of the furniture. I brought it home and attempted to stain it. Unfortunately, it looked absolutely horrible. There is such inconsistency in the wood that the shelving looks different from one side to the other. I tried multiple stains and gels, but have had no success. It is a shame, but I ended up having to paint all of the furniture. I will definitely never purchase parawood again.

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Response to Leslie:

I hate hearing your disappointment in the Parawood, we have been a supplier of that wood for many years and typically achieve the customer's desired look. I have a couple of questions if you don't mind . . . what name brand of stain did you use? Was it one that you purchased at your local Wood You store or from a home improvement store? Were you trying to get a really dark color on it?

I would enjoy discussing this matter with you further . . . if you like feel free to contact me via my email bbwoodyou@bellsouth.net to look into possible solutions. Thank you for taking the time to share with us about your disappointment in the way your stain turned out and would appreciate an opportunity to assist you in rectifying that.

Thank you for your time in this matter!

Regards,
Brett B.

I for one am a customer with your company because of the real wood. I hate the particleboard that is offered to me by furniture stores. You guys have real wood and that is my big draw to Wood You

LOL . . . who knows brother, how you been? Just shoot me an email next time, have a good one.
Brett

I have been buying from Wood You since I moved into my first apartment out of college - my Dad turned me onto your stores. My Dad and Mom's whole house is from your store. I love the whole finishing process, my Dad and I used to do it throughout my time in their house.

I have not been on your site in a bit. I see you have a blog now, very nice! Well put me down as a hard core real wood lover!!

Real wood, music to my ears, I just love it and I envy all the people that have purchased from Wood You.

I am in Canada and all I can do is watch and be amazed at these lovely furniture. I will visit the store on my next visit to Trinidad and who knows I might be able to take a little Wood You with me. Keep up the good work.

We recently bought our first home and were looking for affordable furniture for it. We've checked out furniture at a few other stores, but could never find the anything that was both the right style and color.

We checked out Wood You . . . (comments edited) . . . just out of curiosity this weekend. We were very amazed at the great prices and friendly service. We purchased our furniture completely hassle free and it was delivered to our home in less than two hours of the purchase. We plan to come back very soon!

I enjoy the custom color aspect. My son and I spend quality time together staining/painting. BTW, my son is now 7 and has been finishing for 2 years.
Of course after doing some comparison shopping, I also like the fact it's all real wood.

Rob
Altamonte Springs Fl

I stopped by your site to show my wife a desk I am interested in and see you guys had this blog, I like it!

My mom got me hooked on Wood You, in Orlando, while I was there getting my master's degree. Then I moved on the west coast of FL near Tampa and continue to buy from you guys. I love your real wood products and I like saving money! You have me as a customer for a long time!!

pain in the butt to navigate!!!!

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Response to Sandy:

Sandy,

Are you using the manufacturers buttons at the bottom of each page on woodyou.com? . . . not the ones on the left but at the bottom of most individual pages? They will take you directly to the subcategory, of that page, for all manufacturers.
- - - > Except Archbold - their PDF file does not support that. Ultimately WhiteWood's website will not be a PDF file making their site easier to navigate.

The ones on the left take you to each manufacturers home page, not specific subcategories. Also there are 2 manufacturers (Lawko and Norris) who's pages are not up yet.

I do realize how nice it is to have all items available on our main site. Just is more efficient and accurate to allow the manufacturers to maintain the majority of the skews.

email me if you would like to discuss this further at bbwoodyou@bellsouth.net, I appreciate your input!

Sincerely,
Brett B.

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Ridiculous Sales Tactics

I spend at least one afternoon a week shopping typical finished furniture stores, as a customer, in a variety of towns I travel through. It always amazes me what type of sales people I run into and the "pitch" they present. Every time I have an episode with a "typical" salesperson I think of our Wood You customers and what they have to endure in this industry's maze of confusion and downright comical interactions. I often use these scenarios as personal motivation in maintaining our company's ideology and as teaching points with our employees as how we do not want to be perceived.

"I Can Sell Ice To An Eskimo!"

used-car-salesman

So I thought I'd turn it over to you the reader and see if you have had a recent shopping experience with a salesperson (furniture or any other retail store) that would either make us all chuckle or shake our head in dismay. So let us hear from you! I personally will be turning my employees onto this post as a reminder as to why we work so hard to treat our customers the way we do!

No wonder first time customers come into our stores, a bit timid, waiting to be pounced with over used cliches and weak sales tactics . . . then over the next few minutes they recognize the difference in Wood You Furniture's focus and intention with you the customer. I have been blessed to get to know the majority of individuals within our company. Although not perfect, I sure am proud to be associated with this company and it's ideology of education over sales and sincere customer assistance over high pressure sales.

So if you have ever run into this gentleman in the blog above let us hear about it. I look forward to hearing your story as well as sharing a few I have run into over time!

**I will not be posting the actual company's name from your post.

Comments (7)

Back in the 90's I finished a lot of new furnture and loved your ckear finishes. Are they still available and have you changed them? I use a scroll saw in my hobbies and would love to egt some of your easy to use atains and finishes. I live close to Hickory Nc and don't see any stores close enough to drive to. Can you help me out?

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Response to Ron O:

Ron O,

That company is no longer in business. The owners retired and closed down their plant . . . they had serviced our industry for decades and were a great resource for Wood You Furniture specifically and retailers across the country in general. Today we offer a product from General Finishes and they have both a gel topcoat and a liquid topcoat that is very similar in application and results.

Feel free to do a search of general finishes and you will find there should be a store near you that carries this brand. If you are having no luck feel free to email me at bbwoodyou@bellsouth.com and I will be glad to assist you further!

Regards,
Breet B.

As we work with our customers we hear "horror" stories about the way they are treated in other stores and how welcoming it is to come to our, Wood You store in New Port Richey. That makes us feel like we are responding to our customers as people, not "profit persons". It is the way we were taught when we first joined Wood You and it is the only real way to treat people. All the effort we put into learning the Wood You Way translates into happy, repeat customers. If you want to be treated with kind, friendly, knowlegable people who are interested in helping educate you about unfinished furniture visit one of our stores. We would love to meet you.

I know some customers love the idea of browsing a stores website and finding individual products, however, with the diversity within individual Wood You store inventories that doesn’t always work. There is nothing more difficult than having to explain to a customer the piece of furniture they just printed off the woodyou.com site are not available at their local store, not because anything is wrong with it that store just doesn’t carry that particular manufacture. I agree with your blog something needs to change.

The interactivity of the blog, I feel, truly bring a needed cohesiveness to the Wood You experience. Also, a prime component to the Wood You experience is the diversity of products in individual stores. In theory all Wood You stores could carry the same items and become the cookie cutter store of most major chains today, but we’re not. Each store although with the same exemplary customer service, is very much diverse in items and configuration. Some carry and sell more of one manufacturer than others. That local diversity allows for a customer on vacation to experience a fresh Wood You no matter which locations they visit.

My idea is play up the fact that Wood You stores in different locations, while they have the same standards in quality and customer service they are different. Woodyou.com should focus on sending customers to the individual sites to experience the local as well as the far away store. Imagine a customer from Opelika going to a game in Gainesville and making time to stop in a Wood You. Woodyou.com as the home site should encourage this by pointing out the diversity but sending customers to individual store sites to see the products that particular store carries.

The way to do this is take the list of manufacturers and create a page of popular items and new or featured items from each one and link those to the respective store sites that carry that manufacturer. Also, on each page, of course, a link to that manufacturer’s website is needed. Therefore each individual store will have pictures of products from the manufacturers they carry. Also companies like Lawko and Thoratex can have visual representation on the website instead of just in store.

Finally the thing that makes all this work is with the point of contact at woodyou.com. The central point of contact at woodyou.com is what brings the individual stores together as one cohesive family of quality and high standards of customer services. While it’s great to be able to contact a local store with questions, it’s even more vital this day and age to have a central place for customers to basically praise on even vent about their experience at individual Wood You stores, and the blog is it. This is the best way to easily find a reliable review of Wood You stores, and a quick central poll of how customers felt about there experience in their local Wood You.

I've been with Wood You for 4 years.

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Response to Ronald:

Ronald,
Well said sir. I think you will find that the website changes we are in the process of making will directly deal with many of the observations you have made. Nice to hear from you . . . don't be a stranger to the blog!

Regards,
Brett Blankenship

It's entertaining to go shopping with my husband. We of course welcome a friendly introduction and an offer of help. When we feel the eyes of the person on us, following just behind us, or inappropriately trying to insert themselves in our conversation, however,I love to see the variety of ways that salespeople handle themselves upon my husband politely but pointedly turning to them and saying "If you expect me to buy ANYTHING from you, you'd do best to move along. I know your name, and will call you if I need further help, but if you continue this nonsense I will walk out the door." Thankfully, we have never had to do this at Wood You. We have been so appreciative of the polite professional help and great products they offer. That's a big reason why we keep coming back!

The salesperson my wife and I just dealt with today spent all his time talking with my daughter, who by the way is not paying for the purchase.

I actually had to remind this guy of that and after that comment he all but disappeared, unbelievable!!

Well my most recent run in was not a person as you have pictured on here but more of the young slick guy with the silver tongue. We literally did not get four steps in the door and he was marching towards us. The scene never improved and he never did quite down enough about himself and his life to help us find what we really wanted. He literally followed us the whole time yet was really never involved in our conversation - strange.
I thought the funniest moment was as we finally decided to get out, he handed each of us his card. He told us to make sure and let them (the other salespeople) know that we were now in his family and to back off when we come back. Just the way he said it made me feel creepy. He really believed he had done a great job with us, very sad!

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Response to Shannon:

Shannon,
Great job in explaining that, I had a good visual and have experienced moments very similar! I am guessing you did not buy from him or the company? I call it "noise". There are those who obviously think that by making "noise" you can make sales. Focused conversations do not have to be constant chatter. Thanks for sharing about your experience . . .

Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

A furniture salesman my daughter almost bought a bed from -
She couldn't decide if a king size would fit in her little apartment bedroom or not-
He told her it would because ALL apartment bedrooms are the same size!!

*story initally posted on busymom.net

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Website Changes Coming

Wood You Furniture will be making some major changes on our website over the next couple of weeks.

underconstruction

Please don't let our construction frustrate you . . . We will be done soon!

With our manufacturers adjusting their product lines on a frequent basis, we will be spending less time on displaying every individual item we carry, on our home site. Our goal is to have an improved and up to date representation of what is available through Wood You Distributors by linking directly to our manufacturers.

Our site's focus will shift more on spotlighting different individual items and new additions, in each category, from our manufacturers. For all the specific items available at Wood You Furniture, we will be adding links (on our site) to the majority of our manufacturers.

You will be seeing the website changes over the next couple of weeks as we work towards completing this task. We hope you find the changes useful in our continued endeavor to bring you the most user friendly way to display the largest variety of ready to finish products in the industry.

If you have any suggestions or comments either as a customer, employee or dealer please let us know and we will see if they can be worked into the new look either now or in the near future.

Comments (5)

Congratulations to Art. He's officially been promoted to store supervisor of our Melbourne store.
Keep up the great job Art!!

Rob
Store Supervisor
Altamonte Springs

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Response to Rob:

Rob,
Yes that's true, and he has truly earned that title. What a great guy he is, not to mention how intently focused he is on the overall fun experience customers get when they step into his store. Good family man and a wonderful Wood You Furniture employee!

Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

Thanks for a good laugh! I work in IT for a Fortune 500 company and at times feel as your image shows. Was just browsing your blog and got a kick out of that image on your most recent post :) Thanks for the chuckle!!

I wanted to share with you what a pleasant experience I recently had at you West Melbourne location. I asked the two young men their names, because I was just so impressed. Arthur and Phillip were informative, friendly and charming. A very nice change from your competitors down the road that bombard you before you can get both feet in the store. It was very refreshing. Keep up the good work. Bravo & God Bless.
Beth

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Response to Beth:

Beth,
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with Wood You of Melbourne. Those guys work hard to create such an atmosphere. We are blessed to have Art as our supervisor there, he truly wants the customer to have a wonderful experience in his store. Thanks again for taking the time to share and please tell your friends about us . . . your word of mouth is very special to us!

Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

I see you are changing your website. I always liked being able to come on and look at individual items on your site. I'm not as crazy about bouncing around your provider's sites, just my opinion.

My wife and I visited the Wood You at 704 W. SR 436 just prior to closing on Monday, 19 October 2009. We were immediately impressed by the professionalism, friendliness, and courtesy extended by Rob and Rob. I as an Army veteran was extremely impressed when Rob the manager discovered that I was a veteran and immediately extended his hand to thank me for my service. This is extremely rare these days. ALL MILITARY VETERANS must support Wood You as they are truly military friendly. Rob the assistant is a six year Army veteran and Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran. GOD Bless Rob and Rob, they are great men!

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Response to Mr. Nogle:

Mr. Nogle,

WOW . . . I know the guys at Altamonte Springs will love to hear such kind words. Thank you so much for your service to this great country, you mean the world to us all! We may be changing our website a bit but never our desire to have all our customers see us in the light you have. Thank you for your time and more importantly for the sacrifices you and your family have made to protect us all. God Bless!

Sincerely,
Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

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Customers' Pictures Wanted

Wood You Furniture Wants Your Pictures!

With 30 plus years and locations throughout the southeastern United States Wood You Furniture has had the pleasure of filling hundreds of thousands of homes with quality real wood furniture. We often never get to see the end result of our customers choices once they are finished in their own custom color and put in their final place.

Well we are looking for our past customers to send us pictures to display. We are in the process of revamping our website and will have the ability to display lifestyle pictures . . . we would like those to be from our customers. So grab your digital cameras take pictures of your rooms and email them to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

This picture of our Liberty line is from the Morris family of Altamonte Springs, FL

Comments (4)

Thank You all for the pictures . . . keep them coming! After we are done with the website changes we will be using them. Stay Tuned!

Thanks,
Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

I like the second picture on your post. Very sharp!

I've been looking forward to this blog!!

Rob
Altamonte Springs
Manager

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Response to Rob:

Rob,
Me too, I hope we get a lot of stores and customers involved in this, it could be a lot of fun . . . load me up brother!

Regards,
Brett Blankenship
Wood You Distributors

Store owners and managers of Wood You Furniture stores feel free to send in your personal pictures as well to share on our website!

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Merry Christmas!

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What You Love About Wood You!

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Ridiculous Sales Tactics

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Website Changes Coming

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Customers' Pictures Wanted

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