The power of a new ViewMaster

Creating a beautiful website with a custom CMS.

In 2009, newly-appointed Universal president Jeff Scheffer made it clear his website had to be one of the strongest components in his marketing toolbox. To make that happen we questioned everything, from how assets were created to how they were described. We knew we wanted the following: flexibility to associate any product with any grouping, visuals that were clean and sophisticated, content that was easily distributed to various partners (i.e., retailers and ecommerce sites), stories that connected our audience with the products and so on.

We started to investigate the best Content Management System (CMS) platform, but soon discovered that while we liked the benefits of some, there was not one that fit our needs perfectly. After a deep breath, we knew we had to create our own. I give so much credit to Jeff to be willing to take the risk to let us build it. He made a business decision which to this day still pays dividends.

Soon, ViewMaster (a pet project name that stuck) was off and running. We used bootstrap programming language with twelve responsive columns. We made, in the words of Bob Ross, happy little accidents along our path to perfecting the system, but soon we hit a groove. It was a host of processes put in place that made it all work. We eventually tied it to Universal’s internal system that shares the content such as inventory and descriptions to various third party sales tools.

Since launching the Universal website using bootstrap and ViewMaster, we have made multiple changes to the look and feel of the site to remain fashion-forward, but the backend has always stayed the same. Now, we also leverage ViewMaster for other clients with heavy SKU counts and similar needs.

As a result, Universal Furniture has a robust backend system that allows their website to keep up with an ever-changing home furnishings landscape.

Leveraged Creative:
• Strategic planning
• Executive creative direction
• Account supervision
• Art direction
• Copywriting
• Graphic design
• Photography
• Videography
• Programming

Universal Furniture designs, manufactures, markets and delivers home furnishings that are good, affordable and smartly designed to retailers and interior designers.