When Matt Pisani, the newly named vice president of sales for Telescope Casual, married into the Telescope family, he says he was the only person who didn’t think he’d end up working for the company.
Before joining the casual industry, Pisani worked as a mortgage lender for several years and started at Telescope as the assistant contract sales manager. After three or four years, he got into the retail side of the business, where he thrived.
“You get a lot more personal relationships on the retail side by getting to know dealers and through the International Casual Furnishings Association,” Pisani says.
More than 10 years later, he’s not only still with Telescope, but he has worked his way up to an executive level and is an expert in sales and outdoor living.
He says that day to day his job won’t be much different. The biggest difference will be his involvement in higher-level responsibilities, like helping with designer line offerings and making sure the annual sales forecast and three- to five-year growth plans are staying on track.
“We have such a tenured customer service team here, and I was able to bring on another sales associate internally here who does an amazing job day to day,” Pisani says. “So much of sales can be just customer service, and we have such a good customer service team that it gives me some freedom to work on some of these longer-term projects. It enables us to be proactive versus reactive, which is the goal of any sales business.”
Pisani says Telescope has been having a good year, though they are not immune to challenges the rest of the industry is facing — notably, a drop in special orders.
“The year’s early buy was just shy of 20% greater than it was the year prior, but that tends to be about 30% of your retail volume, while the remaining 70% is anytime during the year and what we call special order,” he says. “That was a good indicator to try to pinpoint where things are at from an economic standpoint or anything that can cause people some hesitancy to purchase. There seems to be cautious optimism around retail sales.”
He says the state of Florida can be a good barometer because their season starts much earlier. And while it’s primarily outdoor, they’ve had a “wonderful season and we’re starting to see that carry through the start of the rest of the U.S.,” Pisani adds.
As for the state of the industry, Pisani says Covid changed many people’s buying habits, particularly when it comes to stocking inventory.
But cash flow is an important topic for retailers,” Pisani explains. “Having cash tied up in warehouses made retailers see what effect that can have on their business. We’re seeing our specialty retailers become more reliant on seasonal special orders because that’s how they can compete with the big-box stores. It affects what they can do with their cash flow when it’s tied up in a warehouse. There are a certain amount of customers who want that immediate gratification, but a lot of them go to a specialty retailer because they want the personal relationship. They want to meet with someone and talk with someone and flip through colors and fabric swatches. It’s becoming more and more of a special-order industry.”
However, Pisani feels that there needs to be a fine line because of manufacturers’ product schedules. Manufacturers need a certain amount of stock to be able to manufacture 12 months out of the year, keep their employee count, train their salespeople and keep everyone busy.
“It’s an interesting dynamic currently between retailers and most manufacturers right now,” he says. “Keeping a certain amount of work through our factories in the off-season is what makes us as successful as we can be in the spring.”
The strict seasonality of the industry has changed, according to Pisani. It used to be that the on season was March to August, and then “special orders would totally dry up,” Pisani says.
“I’ll bring it back to real estate a little bit,” he says. “There’s now such a focus on the outdoor space today. But it used to be secondary or even tertiary to the design of your home. People are making the outdoors their domain more so than they used to. The seasonality has decreased, but I live in the Northeast, so I can never say that we’re going to get to a point where it’s totally nonseasonal.”
With goods proudly made in the U.S., the manufacturer has no worries about tariffs, Pisani says. Instead, it is looking forward to being able to provide products without price increases during this time, and Pisani says he looks forward to helping make things easier for retailers during these tough times.
