What Goes Into a Range Presentation From the Catalog
See which catalog fields can supply the products, finishes, imagery, pricing, availability and branding in a furniture range presentation.
A good range presentation has the same bones whether it's a dealer deck in Chicago or a range presentation in Leeds: here is the collection, here is what it comes in, here are the pieces, here is what they cost you and when you can have them. What changes when the deck is built from the catalog is not the bones. It's where each slide's content comes from. The structure below follows Furniture Connect's own presentation example [2]; what your deck contains depends on what you ask for and what your catalog holds.
The collection slide
The range in a lifestyle setting, with the name and a line of introduction. The image comes from the lifestyle imagery attached to the products in the catalog; if you've generated room shots per fabric, the slide can show the range in the finish this account stocks rather than the one the photographer happened to shoot. The introduction is wording, and wording is yours to set or change for the audience.
Finish options
A slide or two can show the fabrics and finishes the range comes in. The slide draws on the finish and fabric information held against the selected products, plus any swatch imagery. A newly built deck can therefore use the current product information rather than carrying forward last season's finish grid. Review the slide before export to confirm that the selection is right.
The individual pieces
One slide or one panel per product: name, cut-out image, dimensions and available variants. Variant axes and custom attributes are held in the catalog [1], and the slide draws on that product information and imagery [2]. Review the chosen image and variant details rather than assuming the right option was selected automatically.
Package pricing and availability
Tables. Which price appears depends on the price field you request: trade, retail, RRP, promotional or a custom price attribute you've added, such as a dealer price. Availability can only reflect information that is present in the catalog or supplied with the request. For example, a pack can show package pricing and availability tables for an outdoor seating range [2]. Check the output for missing values before export.
Branding
Logo, colors, fonts, cover image, footer line, contacts, terms. These come from the branding you set once with the agent, either by importing from your website or by attaching your brand guidelines, and they're editable in Settings [3]. Presentations draw colors, fonts and logo from these settings [2]. Which of them appear on a given slide depends on the layout. The point is that the record of what "yours" looks like is in the system, not only in a template file on one rep's laptop.
What the deck doesn't contain unless you add it
The story for this account. Why this range for this dealer, what's new since last time, what you'd lead with. The agent builds the structure and fills it from the record; the selling is wording, and wording is a change you ask for or make in the exported file [2].
Anything the catalog doesn't hold or you do not supply. If products have no lead-time value, the deck cannot reliably state one. If pricing lives in a separate spreadsheet, it will not appear from the product record by itself. A thin deck often points to a thin record; the fix is in the catalog or in the information supplied with the request.
The test
Open the last dealer deck a rep sent. For each slide, ask where the content came from. If the answer is "last season's deck" for the finishes, "a folder on the shared drive" for the images and "the rep's memory" for the prices, you've found the three places decks go wrong. For how the deck gets built, see how to build a dealer deck from Furniture Connect. For the whole picture, see selling from the catalog.
