Dear Stephen,
I’ve been in sales in the furnishings industry for more than a decade, calling primarily on architects, interior designers and decorators, and lately I can’t get through a sales meeting without hearing about AI. Designers can already find almost anything online, and AI is going to make finding, comparing, and visualizing furniture, rugs, textiles, tile, stone, carpet and lighting even easier.
This isn’t just a manufacturer’s-rep question. I hear the same concern from people at contract furniture dealers, residential showrooms, and throughout the interiors industry. If AI can help customers find a product, compare it, and narrow the specification before we ever walk through the door, what happens to the salesperson?
My company also participates in one of those large online sampling services where designers can order samples from many manufacturers and have everything delivered the next day. I understood why that was useful during the pandemic, but today we already make our own samples and employ salespeople whose job is to see the customer. Meanwhile, my customers still want to touch the textile, see the stone, feel the rug, compare the finishes, and sit in the chair. They still come to showrooms, attend industry events, and rarely seem offended when I offer to take them to lunch.
Is AI really going to replace salespeople?
Signed,
Still Needed?
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Dear Needed,
I’m probably more excited about AI than your question suggests, and I want to make that clear before anyone decides I’m the old furniture guy yelling at technology to get off my lawn. Franco Bianchi, CEO of Haworth, recently told Business of Home that Haworth is “very focused on AI” and sees it as “more of an opportunity than a risk.” I agree with him completely. I think AI is the future of the furniture and interiors industry, and any salesperson who decides not to learn how to use it is making a serious career mistake. I want AI researching the design firm before you walk in, finding the people who changed companies, helping identify projects, organizing accounts, preparing you for meetings, and making follow-up faster. If AI gives you two extra hours in the day, terrific—but the idea is to use those two hours to go see a customer, not sit at your desk admiring what AI just did for you.
And when I say salesperson, I mean everybody in our industry: the manufacturer’s rep calling on architects and designers, the contract dealer salesperson working the corporate account, the residential showroom salesperson calling on decorators, and the people selling rugs, textiles, tile and stone, carpet, lighting and furniture. Their businesses and sales cycles may be different, but eventually somebody has to trust them enough to buy something. AI is absolutely going to change the old idea that the salesperson controls product discovery, because designers no longer need you to tell them a chair, rug, textile, tile, or light fixture exists. They can find dozens of choices themselves, and AI is going to become extraordinarily good at helping them narrow those choices. If your entire value as a salesperson was knowing where the product was in the catalog, I’d be nervous.
Finding the chair and selling the chair, however, are still two different things. AI can compare 20 chairs, change the upholstery, put the winner beautifully into a rendering, and probably explain why it’s perfect for the project—and better than some of the product brochures I’ve seen. Eventually, somebody still has to sit in it. After more than 40 years around furniture, I remain reasonably confident that the human rear end is going to be involved in seating specifications for a little while longer. The same goes for rugs, textiles, carpet, tile and stone, because people still want to touch these products, see the real color, and understand what they look and feel like away from a computer screen. And when a custom sofa arrives wrong three days before installation, the decorator isn’t looking for a better search result; they want the salesperson who answers the telephone and knows how to fix it.
This is also why I question whether manufacturers should automatically be thrilled about outsourcing samples to
a huge third-party delivery service. It was a smart solution during the pandemic, when designers were working from home and reps could not get into offices, but established manufacturers already make their own samples, store their own samples, and employ salespeople whose job is to get those products specified. If I’m already paying to manufacture the sample and paying a salesperson to call on the designer, I think I’m entitled to ask why I should also be excited about paying somebody else to put my sample in a box with my competitors’ products—and eliminate one of the easiest reasons my salesperson has to see the customer. I completely understand why designers love the convenience, and I’m certainly not suggesting we make the customer’s life harder. I’m simply saying that convenience for the designer and good sales strategy for the manufacturer are not always exactly the same thing.
A good salesperson should understand that a sample request is often permission to walk through the door. Bring over the textile and ask what it’s for, and five minutes later you may discover it’s going into a 400-room hotel where the designer still needs carpet, lighting, furniture or wallcovering. The sample may be worth five dollars, but the conversation could be worth a fortune. That’s the difference between delivering something and selling something, and manufacturers should be careful not to become so efficient that they accidentally eliminate the conversation that produces the next piece of business. Technology should make the salesperson smarter and faster, but I don’t see any advantage in using technology to make a salesperson less visible to the customer they’re being paid to know.
We see this constantly at The Viscusi Group when manufacturers, dealers, and residential showrooms ask us to recruit salespeople. They’re not fighting over the person who memorized the most SKUs or knows how to forward the prettiest PDF. They want the salesperson whose customers return the call, let them into the office, tell them what’s coming next, and call when something goes wrong. That’s precisely why I think a great salesperson should be excited about AI: AI can give that person better information, better preparation, and more time to spend with the people who actually generate revenue. The salesperson who should
worry is the one who spends the day sending information customers can already find themselves and is delighted that somebody else now delivers the samples. AI may make that person extremely efficient—right up until management starts asking how much selling is actually taking place.
And clearly this industry has not given up on relationships, because manufacturers, dealers, and showrooms still spend serious money getting salespeople together with architects, designers and decorators. Somebody is buying the Hall of Fame ticket, somebody is buying the Color Invasion ticket, somebody is hosting the showroom event, and somebody is taking the customer to lunch. It is not AI, and it is certainly not the company that dropped your sample off at reception. I’m not suggesting that a designer specifies a million dollars of furniture because somebody bought lunch; that would be one hell of a Caesar salad. But an uninterrupted hour with a customer is valuable because people talk, and that is often when you hear what is going wrong, which client changed direction, what project is starting, and what the designer still cannot find. That information frequently exists long before there is anything online for AI to discover.
I started in this industry before email and happily embraced that, LinkedIn, social media, and every other technology that made it easier to recruit, communicate, and sell. I’m even more enthusiastic about AI because I think its impact will be much greater, and I intend to be on the side using it rather than complaining about it. AI is not the competition; the salesperson at your competitor who learns how to use AI better than you do is the competition. That salesperson will know more before the meeting and move faster afterward. So, the real question is no longer whether your customer can find the product without you—because of course they can. The question is whether they still want to see you after they find it. If the answer is yes, AI is probably going to make you a better salesperson; if the answer is no, AI may not be your biggest problem.
I believe AI is the future of this industry, and I intend to embrace it. Let it find the chair, research the designer, prepare you for the appointment, organize your day, and make you smarter before you walk through the door. What I do not believe is that any of that removes the need for the salesperson who has a genuine relationship with the customer and knows how to turn information into business. AI can do an astonishing number of things already, and it is only going to get better. But when it starts buying a client lunch, call me. So far, nobody has given artificial intelligence a corporate AmEx card.
Stephen Viscusi
Salespeople, designers, manufacturers, dealers, and showroom owners: where do you come down on this? As AI makes product discovery and sampling easier, does the salesperson become less important, or does the relationship become even more valuable? Tell me in the comments.
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Stephen Viscusi is the founder of The Viscusi Group, an executive search firm specializing in the furniture, furnishings and interiors industries. The Viscusi Group recruits executives and sales professionals for manufacturers, dealers and showrooms across furniture, flooring, rugs, textiles, lighting, kitchen and bath, tile and stone and other interior-product categories. Hires made through The Viscusi Group are guaranteed a one-year free replacement. Readers can send workplace questions to stephen@viscusigroup.com or call (212) 979-5700 ext. 101.
© Stephen Viscusi 2026