Who would have thought that the “Bridgerton” trend impacts furniture retail? Bridgerton is a hit TV show streaming on Netflix with 63 million households tuning in. It sparked what designers call a “Regencycore” trend, focusing on the elegance and opulence of the United Kingdom’s Regency era. Regencycore is all about 19th-century period pieces and shoppers want to know how to recreate these looks. “What does that have to do with my business?” you might ask. Keep reading to find out how this Bridgerton design trend impacts furniture sales. This can get you loyal customers and small tweaks can improve your bottom line.
The Regencycore trend was recently picked up by one of the top five home and garden sites, The Spruce. 44 million readers are now excited to bring the visual aesthetic of the show to their homes. And that is not a small audience. Other sites, such as HGTV.com, also educated millions of their readers on how to recreate this style trend.
Bridgerton Design Trend Still Going Strong
The amount of searches has decreased since the initial hype in December, however, there is still significant interest. In many states the term ranks well over 60 on Google Trends, indicating high search volume. Of course, it makes sense to break this down by your surrounding ZIP codes (or wherever your customers live). Run a ZIP code export from your POS and your website to analyze past orders.
A breakout search term on Google Trends is “Bridgerton Season 2”, now that a second season has been confirmed. This is a great SEO opportunity to rank for it. Make sure to include keywords surrounding “Bridgerton” in your blog articles, on your website, and in social posts. If you run Facebook Ads, you can limit your audience to raving fans of the show. As a result, engagement with your posts will be high.
Which Furniture Items Qualify for The Bridgerton Trend?
The beautiful thing about style trends is that they are subjective. It is up to you to curate the assortment, allowing you to pick brands and collections that make sense. Here are a few examples of items out of managed brand catalogs available on Wondersign today:
Don’t Forget Matching Accent Items For Higher AOV
Accents are always a great way of reinforcing a style. And while these items are inexpensive for the shopper, when sold consistently, they make a difference to your bottom line. The average order value (AOV) – commonly called “average ticket size” – benefits greatly from added accent pieces.
Use collections to visually explore a group of items. This also allows you to show additional designer-recommended products. The ‘collection’ feature in the Wondersign kiosk app automatically adds hot spots to all available items. As a result, it is easier for shoppers to “add all” to the cart.
The addition of one accent piece to every other transaction can translate to an incremental $500 in profit every week. This is assuming 100 guests per week, a close rate of 25%, and $40 in margin per accent item.
When done consistently, our calculation example would result in $26,000 of additional gross profit each year. And this is just by adding an $80 accent item to every other purchase.
Build A Custom “Bridgerton Trend” Furniture Category or Collection
On e-commerce platforms such as Shopify or BigCommerce, you can create collections to group items. Use a banner or landing page to funnel shoppers into your “Regencycore” collection page. Our Direct Sync to Shopify and BigCommerce makes it easy to feed all your catalogs seamlessly to your e-commerce site. And from there, you can assign them to smart collections. Ask us about our Direct Sync products to fully automate your omnichannel merchandising.
On your in-store kiosks and tablets you can use our custom category function to group “Regencycore” items. The custom category can be shown on the home screen with its own category tile, if desired, simply by adjusting the appearance of the attractor screen.
Even if ‘Bridgerton’ is not trending in your area, you can apply the same strategy to other pop culture phenomena. Use tools such as Google Trends or the Google Keyword Planner to determine what is generating buzz in your area. Social posts and blog articles that pick up popular topics will generate targeted traffic. As a result your furniture sales – when aligned with these trends – will follow.