For over three generations Formby's furniture refinishers and wood maintenance products have been helping keep those special family heirlooms beautiful. The Formby's Company has always had one goal…to make it easy to bring out wood's natural beauty.

Web Objective: To create an on-line presence that will be user-friendly, promote the company and incorporate the Formby's products into the woodworking and refinishing process. The Formby's site must also be a resource for craftsmen and do-it-yourselfers, giving them reason to visit the site on a regular basis.

The Challenge: Because Formby's does not sell direct to the end users, the focus of the site must be to instruct users on refinishing and woodworking. Through the instruction, the Formby's products must be solidly incorporated into the process to the point that without the Formby's products there is no process.

The BLAZE inter. NET Solution: After meeting with the Formby's product Manager, Ms. Patricia Smith, several points became absolutely imperative. Firstly that the Formby's web site had to be of a quality equal to that of other divisions of Sherwin Williams such as Minwax. Secondly, the site was to be an instructional resource for craftsmen and do-it-yourselfers and not an e-commerce site because product moves through its distributors. Also, the site needed to attract return visits by its users.

The BLAZE inter.NET team then set to work. Quality was not an issue since all of the web sites created by BLAZE inter.NET, big or small, are of the highest quality. That much is a given. Our recommendation was to create a resource site and build within the site a strong sense of community. This was accomplished in two steps. First by creating easily updateable areas within the site to assure that content would remain fresh and ever-changing. An example of this is the Tips & Talk area of the web site. This area consists of Helpful Refinishing Tips, an updateable page of tips from woodworking guru, Bruce Johnson. These tips are updated by the Formby's staff without any programming knowledge necessary.

There are two examples of how BLAZE inter.NET has assisted Formby's build that sense of community within their site. First there is the Product Showcase. Another easily updateable area where craftsmen and do-it-yourselfers can submit finished woodworking projects that they have completed using Formby's products. Each month the staff at Formby's can choose a submitted project and have their customer's completed woodworking project proudly displayed as the Customer Success Story of the Month.

The second example is the Talk Board feature where visitors to the site can initiate a thread in a talk board and other users can then respond with their own helpful hints or answers to woodworking related questions posted by visitors. The users can also view responses posted by other visitors to the Talk Board.

It is features like these that will grow the community of visitors to the Formby's web site and successfully attract traffic to the site and build brand loyalty.

The Formby's web site is currently in review by their
corporate attorneys and will be up on the web
for your perusal in the very near future.