Frontier Spirit

May 1, 2013  by in Retail Snapshot   

By Powell Slaughter

A focus on bringing a fashion and design orientation to middle price points and making shopping there a family tradition has meant steady growth of Montgomery’s Furniture.

The fifth-generation family business just opened its third and largest location, a 60,000-square-foot store in Watertown, S.D., which joins existing stores in Madison and Sioux Falls.

“We aren’t the biggest stores, the biggest operators in the market, so our approach is to keep that family way of doing business, that family atmosphere,” said Clark Sinclair , who owns Montgomery’s Furniture along with wife, Connie, son, Eric and daughter-in-law Neala.

“We’ve kept it different by spending a lot of time on displays and accessories at all our stores. We look for unique, fashionable fabrics and accessories. The bigger stores in our area concentrate on high-volume prices and looks, so we merchandise away from them. Our niche is to do the things they don’t want to do, which involves looking for something a little more on the fringe, a little younger. We try to stay a little more on trend.

“We constantly search for the kind of products that aren’t safe enough for the big boxes, so we give our customers a completely different experience.”

ACCESSIBLE FASHION, DESIGN SERVICES
Montgomery’s Watertown and Madison stores carry middle price points, while the Sioux Falls caters to a higher-end customer.

“A lot of our sales people are degreed interior designers with a lot of years of experience,” Sinclair noted. “We have a very stable staff that’s thoroughly qualified to go into the home and help consumers with complimentary design service.”

That’s for all three stores, not just the higher-end Sioux Falls location. It’s in-home design service at very accessible price points. Stability among the sales staff—indeed, all levels has been key—and Sinclair believes it’s because the company gives its sales/design staff the support they need to do their job.

“We feel we’re providing an opportunity for them to run their own business,” he said.

“They don’t have to clean the store or buy for the store, that’s all done for them. We give them a lot of latitude to do their job.”

More than half of Montgomery’s 85 employees are in supporting roles to the sales staff: “We have all the support people—cleaning, delivery, customer service,” Sinclair said. “In some stores, the sales staff has to clean up, handle customer service.
“We make our own draperies in-house, so the designers can work with those accents with customers in the store.”
The store’s Web site highlights its design service with designer profiles; and a room-planning tool is front-and-center on the home page.

126 YEARS AND COUNTING
The business dates back to 1888, when the Dakotas were still a territory.
“George Montgomery was a cabinet maker from back East who came out as far as the railroad went,” Sinclair said. “He stopped at the end of the line.”
Montgomery set up as an undertaker and furniture dealer. His son took over the business along with a son-in-law, the latter of whose children formed the third generation of management.
“The two sons were partners, and one of those sons was my father-in-law, so I am the fourth generation,” Sinclair said.
The other brother also had a son in the business, but the two brothers split up their partnership, which included two stores at the time.
“My father-in-law sold my wife and I the business in Madison 25 years ago,” Sinclair said. That was 10 years after he’d begun working at Montgomery’s.
Seventeen years ago, Montgomery’s opened a location in Sioux Falls, an hour south of Madison, which carries step-up price points.
“We had two small locations (in Madison), an old downtown location with three floors, kind of hard to work with; and a discount store on the edge of town,” he recalled. “We closed those and opened a new, 40,000-square-foot location 10 years ago.”
In February, Montgomery’s opened its largest store yet, 60,000 square feet in Watertown, an hour north of Madison. That location carries the same mid-price selection as in Madison.
“With Watertown, we’re well located along the state’s eastern border,” Sinclair said. “By the end of the year, we want to feel we’re running on all cylinders there. We bought for it last (High Point) Market, and we’ll fill any voids.”
Watertown has a lot of synergy with the Madison  store.
“We’re advertising and merchandising the stores the same for more efficiency,” Montgomery said.
With those two stores carrying similar product, Montgomery’s now has the volume to order containers for these locations.
“We’re also going to carry patio furniture in all three stores,” Sinclair said. “We’ve been buying patio furniture in containers for the first time this year, since it’s for all three stores.”

SOME THINGS CHANGE, SOME DON’T
In his 35 years at Montgomery’s Furniture, Sinclair’s management techniques have evolved as the business has grown.
He said it’s far different running a single store with four employees—including himself—to overseeing three locations with some 85 employees.
“I used to manage by my gut when we were small, but now it’s all statistics,” Sinclair said. “We have a monthly meeting just on metrics—floor covering issues, perfect deliveries, sales, inventory levels—with each store’s management team.
“We’re looking at how to measure lots of different things—we’re going to institute a better way to track traffic.”
Montgomery’s membership in a performance group through Impact Consulting Services has pushed that along.
“The performance group really helps with that because now we’re comparing with our peers,” Sinclair noted. “When we see we have one of the lowest fabric treatment sales levels, we can figure out how to improve on that.”
The stores are moving to iPads, integrating them into their systems so sales associates don’t have to go to a computer when helping customers on the floors.
“It’s part of providing the tools they need,” Sinclair said. “There’s a lot of training and effort that goes into the tech side of our business.”
Montgomery’s also is shifting resources into e-marketing initiatives.
“My son is new-generation, so he’s really involved with this,” Sinclair noted. “He was a rep with Rowe for five years, seeing retailers of all sizes. Eric also belongs to a local group of young members of family entrepreneurial businesses.”
Regarding promotion, he added that the business is fortunate to be located in a where television advertising is affordable.
“As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to do more—that’s our biggest vehicle,” Sinclair said. “We also do newspapers, and we like local glossy magazines, because of the quality of the image we can show. We’re getting more involved in e-marketing and a little bit of direct mail and radio.”
The selling tools, the design orientation and the good working environment serve a goal that’s never changed.
“Our customers just expect more out of us in terms of quality and service,” Sinclair said. “We want to be the place to go if you want something fashion forward.
“I know of customers who are third-generation since I’ve been doing this.  We depend on those people. There aren’t enough people in South Dakota that you can count on a lot of new people coming in.” HFB