ELK GROVE, IL— When it reached last month’s High Point Market, LumiSource arrived bearing the fruits of a significant design investment, one that is giving the ready-to-assemble furniture and lighting vendor the ability to respond creatively to style and business trends in the marketplace.

LumiSource has been developing its design team over the course of several years. To bolster the program, five years ago it added an internship program. The company even has featured its design staff online after a website refresh.

Steve Lee, president of LumiSource, said the company developed its design staff as it recognized that style and quality had become increasingly important factors in mass market furniture. As the segment became more adept at design, and quicker to respond to style trends, consumer expectations became elevated, so investing in a workforce that could meet and even exceed those expectations became critical.

The main purpose of creating the LumiSource design team was “to add unique exclusive looks that set LumiSource apart from the competition,” Lee said. “Also, we wanted to speed up the new product development process. We can create drawings and final prototypes in house so that our vendors can duplicate those items quickly and accurately the first time.”

Lee said LumiSource identified and employed talented designers with a specific skill set so that they could be trained to “bring about a cohesive ‘Lumi’ look across the entire line.  This required some patience and guidance from the management team as well as providing the designers with all the latest hardware and software tools available to bring concepts to reality accurately and efficiently.”

Initiating and developing the design team required patience and dedication, Lee noted.

“It was a lot of trial and error,” he said. “We learned that we will never find the perfect candidate/designer, so we set about adapting our goals based on the different attributes the fabricators and designers bring to the table.”

However, the payoff was substantive, Lee said.

“We have become a much better supplier to our customers by coming up with products that fulfill their needs in terms of look, price point and speed to their shelves,” Lee said. “Obviously, we can deliver on expanding the amount of selections for a style trend that’s fresh and growing. Customers and end users are coming to us expecting to see the latest and newest products in industrial modern, contemporary modern or mid-century modern looks.”

Lee said that, as style trends have cycled, the LumiSource design team has taken an evolutionary approach to product development “mixed in with some brand new, revolutionary silhouettes.”

With its investment in product development, LumiSource can launch new products on a steady pace throughout each year. Then, the company can back up what it produces with marketing support from a full-function photo studio it operates. The in-house photo studio helps LumiSource build complete stories around its introductions, Lee said, by setting them in lifestyle-oriented and realistic room settings.

“It’s a lot of hard work, but the results speak for themselves,” he said.

In its most recent market launches and updates, LumiSource has been able to shift emphasis to trending rustic industrial looks while still advancing its core offerings in other popular styles, such as modern and mid-century modern. LumiSource showed off its design capabilities in its High Point showroom by presenting product ranges under signage mounted to highlight specific styles.

In terms of product segment, the company has recently placed emphasis on casual dining debuts as it responds to growth in the mass market. LumiSource offers casual dining products in fully coordinated sets but, at the market, also displayed tables with mix and match seating to demonstrate how its products could work in accordance with the recent trend toward eclectic but consistent style combinations

LumiSource also demonstrated how it can design for various circumstances and to create broader rooms looks. The company unveiled the Sedona collection, which features an industrial style in a dining table and chairs, a counter height table and stools, and a console table.