By Patricia Flavin, Senior vice president of marketing

When we launched Bliss by Beaulieu 16 months ago, you could say the economic environment was less than ideal. And now you could say a few other things about the economy, but I doubt they would let me print it!

So when we started our new brand back then, we made it ready to take on a down market from the get-go. And according to our dealers, it’s proven up to the task. So how do we help them survive this economic recession? Here’s how:

We provide our dealers with a product that is designed to sell, even in tough times.

Bliss is more than great looking, well engineered and wonderfully luxurious carpet. It’s a selling system born to excite and inspire her (the floor covering dealer’s No. 1 customer) and make it easier for her to open the checkbook or whip out a credit card with our exclusive 1-2-Done! simplified shopping logic. We even reinvented the way carpet is displayed with our patent-pending merchandising design and free take-home carpet swatch samples.

Many of our dealers have reported a renewed interest in carpet simply on the strength of our brand’s product and merchandising— and that means more (and dare I say more profitable) sales for them.

We provide our dealers with the support that they especially want and need nowadays.

We want selling Bliss to be, well, “blissful” for our dealers. We start with product knowledge sessions that are fun and engaging. We provide them with a guide and other advice on making their store and marketing more female-friendly.

Our American Express Gift Card program rewards dealers with a $200 gift card for every 200 yards of carpet sold. And our Premium Bliss Reward Program provides dealers with the industry’s largest selection of prizes (over a million) they can select from an online catalog. Premium Bliss Rewards range from dream vacations to dream sports tickets and to dream merchandise.

We also know dealers need all the help they can get when it comes to effectively marketing and advertising. That’s why we make available one of the top retail advertising agencies to them to assist them with everything from ads, TV spots, direct mail and store promotions.

We even help with traffic-building promotions like the “Houseful of Bliss” Sweepstakes that we will be advertising nationwide in Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications this spring and summer.

And our consumer credit card “America’s Carpet Card” is available exclusively to Beaulieu of America dealers with a new, attractive 90-day, six-month and 12- month no payment offer for their customers.

But most importantly, we support our dealers by listening to their needs from customer support to finance to transportation. We’re all in this together. And together, we’ll all do more than survive—we’ll succeed!