Selling Relevance, Not Just Products
There’s something different about unscripted conversations. No prep. No polished answers. Just real-time thinking. And sometimes, that’s where the most honest insights show up.
In this Hot Takes episode of The Trend Report, I sat down with Larry Leete, General Manager of KiSP, to spin the wheel and react to a series of questions about innovation, marketing, design, and the future of how we sell in this industry.
What unfolded wasn’t just a set of answers. It was a reminder that many of the challenges we’re facing are not new. We’re just being forced to confront them more directly.
Larry believes that one of the biggest tensions in our industry today is how we balance innovation with distribution. It is easy to get excited about new products, new features, and new ideas. But without the right path to market, even the best innovation struggles to gain traction. He argues that it is not a choice between the two. It has to be both. Innovation without distribution lacks momentum, and distribution without innovation lacks meaning. That tension continues to define how brands grow.
At the same time, Larry shared a perspective that many people might quietly agree with but rarely say out loud. He believes that much of the marketing in our industry is designed to make us feel relevant rather than truly help the customer. When you step back and look at the volume of content being pushed out every day, it is easy to see why. There is a lot of noise. A lot of repetition. A lot of product-focused messaging that never really connects to the people we are trying to reach.
I found myself agreeing with him, especially when you look at how most brands show up digitally. We talk about features. We talk about finishes. We talk about ourselves. But we rarely tell stories that matter to the designer, the end user, or the decision maker. And because of that, the engagement we get often comes from inside the industry instead of from the people we are trying to influence.
That idea of perspective carried into another part of the conversation when Larry shared what he wishes designers better understood about furniture. He sees furniture too often being treated as an object instead of an opportunity. Something to place in a space rather than something that helps define it. He believes designers are trying to build environments that reflect culture, emotion, and identity, but the furniture itself sometimes gets reduced to a line item instead of being part of that larger story.
That’s where I think we, as an industry, have more work to do. Because we know that furniture is more than just product. It is tied to productivity. To ergonomics. To sustainability. To how people feel when they walk into a space. But if we are brought in at the end of the process, we lose the opportunity to shape those outcomes in a meaningful way.
The conversation took another interesting turn when we started talking about social media and what actually drives sales. Larry believes platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram still play an important role, especially depending on whether you are trying to communicate a message or create a visual connection. But he also acknowledged that social media is not necessarily where the sale happens. It is where awareness begins.
That distinction matters. Because too often we expect a post to drive a result it was never designed to deliver.
From my perspective, the bigger gap is not the platform. It is the strategy behind it. We talk about social media, but what we really need is a digital sales strategy. One that goes beyond static images and product posts and leans into storytelling, video, and human connection.
And that is where I think we are missing a massive opportunity. We are not showing how things are made. We are not showing the people behind the products. We are not telling the stories that make our industry interesting. Instead, we are waiting for someone else to do it for us.
One of the most striking examples we discussed was a video explaining why office chairs have five legs. Not created by a manufacturer. Not created by a brand in our industry. But by an independent creator who simply asked a question and went deep enough to answer it in a compelling way. Hundreds of thousands of views later, it is shaping how people think about something we design and sell every day.
That should make us pause. Because if we are not telling our own story, someone else will. And they may do it better. What I appreciated most about this conversation with Larry is that it did not try to solve everything. It simply surfaced the reality of where we are. An industry full of great products, strong relationships, and smart people that is still figuring out how to connect all of that in a way that truly resonates with the market.
What stuck with me after this conversation is how easy it is for us to confuse activity with impact. We are launching products. We are posting content. We are attending events. But are we actually connecting in a meaningful way with the people we are trying to serve?
Larry’s perspective made me think about relevance in a different way. Not as something we claim, but something we earn. And we earn it by understanding our customers better, telling better stories, and being willing to show up differently than we have in the past.
Because in a world full of noise, the brands that win will be the ones that say something that actually matters.