Monthly Issue
From Home Furnishing Business
April 10,
2018 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
Many of those cities and towns don’t have an Art Van store currently, but if CEO Kim Yost’s growth plan is carried out after he retires later this year, that will soon change. And in larger cities, it won’t be just one store. He wants enough stores to become the largest furniture and mattress retailer in that market.
“Our goal is to become number one in all the markets within that 600-mile radius,” he said.
The growth plan has gotten off to a flying start, as the retailer has grown from being present in 28 markets three years ago to 51 markets today. Much of the growth has come from opening new stores, but the acquisitions of Levin Furniture and Wolf Furniture last fall added the key markets of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. overnight.
Yost recently spoke with Larry Thomas, senior business editor of Home Furnishings Business, about the challenges of such a rapid expansion, the decision to keep the Levin and Wolf names, and Art Van’s expansion into several new product categories.
Home Furnishings Business: What are the major challenges faced by such a rapid expansion?
Kim Yost: One big challenge is finding the right locations. We’re looking for anywhere from 45,000 to 75,000 square feet. Rents have to be at certain targets to achieve our financial thresholds. We look at each city with the view of having enough stores to get to number one in market share. We will buy existing buildings, lease existing buildings or build from the ground up. But going forward, leases (will be the priority.) We’re looking at these Toys R Us stores, as an example, to see what’s available.
Another big challenge is building the team for growth. Art Van has several leadership and sales courses for our team to help that development. As you build the stores, you have to staff them with great talent. We’ve had the opportunity to send in some of the talent from our Michigan headquarters, but that can only take you so far. You’ve got to have great education, sales and leadership courses to transfer your skills and your culture to these markets. And that’s not easy.
The difficulty is transferring your culture from your base to new markets. Culture eats strategy for lunch. You’ve got to realize that each market will have a degree of uniqueness.
HFB: Why did you decide to keep the Levin and Wolf names instead of converting them to Art Van stores.
Yost: Both our new brands have 100 years in business in their respective markets. We conducted an extensive survey in all four markets (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.) and came to realize that, unaided, these two brands had equal awareness to what we had in Michigan with Art Van. This is huge. When you’ve been in business for 100 years, like Levin’s, and over 100 years like Wolf’s, you’ve got two- and three-generation purchasers. You don’t want to take that great brand equity and just disregard it.
We’re going to maintain as much of the brand’s strengths as we can, whether it’s people, unique products, services and culture. Our goal is not to assume that one size fits all. In this particular case, we call it the power of three. We believe that by taking the best from Levin’s and the best from Wolf’s – combined with the best from Art Van – and bringing their synergistic secret sauce, we can create this power of three, and maximize the performance of all three brands.
HFB: Going forward, what will be the mix of product exclusively designed for Art Van vs. manufacturer’s brands?
Yost: The majority of our product mix is targeted to be exclusively designed and produced by our current domestic and import providers. We like to work with our current providers and then work from their lines so that the majority of our assortments are exclusive. We can’t differentiate ourselves unless we have a high propensity of exclusively designed and produced merchandise for Art Van.
Here are three examples of private label programs that have been incredibly successful. The new Detroit Sofa line that we’ve developed as a private label is made domestically. We also have a private-label leather line called Roma. And we have an upholstery line that’s one of our strongest, called The Style Collection. That’s also made domestically by one of our current suppliers.
We also have found great success by partnering with national brands like La-Z-Boy and Natuzzi to represent the quality perception from our consumers. There are not a lot of furniture brands that have that great perception like La-Z-Boy and Natuzzi.
You have to have lots of secret sauce in your merchandise. You have to have a strong position of uniqueness. It gives you a really good position in the marketplace. If you’re in the middle of the road with your merchandise, you’ll get run over.
HFB: Is your e-commerce effort focused nationally or in local markets?
Yost: Although we can deliver white-glove to all 48 contiguous states, the vast majority of our online sales are where we have existing stores. We believe that’s driven by brand awareness, by having physical stores in high profile trade zones, by the concentration of our advertising, and by our ability to offer in-store pickup.
What we’re finding is that more and more online transactions are being consummated after the store visit. It’s a new phenomenon.
Let me give you an example. They come in. They look at a sofa. They narrow it down to two colors. And when they go home, they make a definite decision on one of those two colors, and they complete the sale online – as opposed to coming back to the store a second or third time.
HFB: Will Art Van’s product offerings expand to include non-durable categories?
Yost: In April, we are going to move down the path of changing our name from Art Van Furniture to Art Van Home. We are going to concentrate a big portion of our product growth and merchandising and marketing growth in a new division called Home.
We will be expanding our flooring galleries in all Art Van stores. We are in the early stages of doing window treatments. And we’re going to expand greatly the traditional home categories – lighting, wall art, tabletop, top of bed and gift. In addition, in our new Home division, we will be launching dinnerware, stemware and glassware relating to six style categories. Online, we will be looking to expand in all rooms and product categories that relate to the home, including storage for the garage, exercise and fitness equipment.
If you need it for your home, Art Van is going to carry it. It’s going to drive traffic – both online and in our stores -- and it’s going to raise the average ticket.
HFB: What was the thought process behind your decision to retire later this year?
Yost: The timing is right. The company is well positioned for growth with our partners at T.H. Lee and the power of three with our brands. The heavy lifting for this next stage of growth is behind us, and it could never be a better time to bring on a new leader with a new vision and new excitement for the next phase of growth. Change is good.
We feel incredibly confident that we’ve got terrific partners, we’ve got an amazing financial foothold, and we certainly have a strong plan for the future with our 600-mile radius and our goal to be number one in all the markets within that 600 miles.
July 19,
2017 by HFBusiness Staff in Industry
This month our focus is on those individuals who will ultimately lead each of their respective companies into the future. The importance of these individuals to their companies cannot be overstated. At a time when significant challenges are occurring not only in furniture retailing, but also in all retailing, the future is top of mind. Specifically, is brick and mortar retailing destined to disappear to be replaced by ecommerce?
Without a doubt, e-commerce, led by Wayfair to be followed by Amazon, has taken 15-20% of furniture/bedding sales. Will these juggernauts be stopped as the 1-800 distribution channel was stopped forty years ago? These are the discussions many multi-generational retailers are having as the next generation plans their careers.
The analysis is straightforward. Can a world-class web presence, supported by a national marketing campaign and a white-glove transportation/warehousing system, deliver a consumer experience more economically than the traditional brick and mortar stores? To date Wayfair has failed to do so as their losses mount even with increased revenue. However, this year Wayfair is implementing a national delivery system that will cover a substantial part of the nation’s households. Retailers who cope daily with executing the “last mile” are skeptical. Even third party delivery services that specialize in the furniture industry anticipate the challenge of execution on a national basis. What are the financial numbers? We will address this in the upcoming September issue on Internet Strategy.
What about our secret weapon? As important as our future leaders are, there is another group of individuals that cannot be replaced by a world class web presence. They are the retail sales associates. How important is the $1M writer to the retailer? How important are those long-tenured individuals who year after year consistently achieve that level of performance? They are expensive, but they are worth it. Industry statistics indicate that sales associates and their managers absorb 9.2% of every sales dollar. While this seems like a significant amount, the sales generated make the business run.
One of the key differences between average performance and top quartile performance is the percentage of repeat business. That is the percentage of sales in a quarter that is from consumers who purchased in the last eight quarters. For the retailers who exceed 25% for this statistic, total financial performance increases by 50-75%. These are the consumers who consider the retailer as their furniture store. The front line for creating that relationship is the retail sales associate.
While we recognize their importance to the long term future of brick and mortar furniture stores, the challenge today is attracting and keeping this talent. Minimum wage will not bring them through door, but a career that delivers $60-75K will. Moving them through the process is the challenge. Retailers, such as City Furniture, are making that initial investment by recruiting at some of the best colleges for entry level associates beginning with an internship and moving into a full-time position. An example of this importance is shown in the following. One retailer nominated one of his long term sales associates for the Forty Under 40. The only problem was that she was a bit over 40. From this retailer’s perspective he stated the following:
“We have a sales woman who is 71 years old, but is very young at heart. She’s spunky, acts like she’s under 40, and is an exceptional salesperson and an outstanding employee. She writes over $1 million in sales consistently year after year.”
We understand his perspective.
The overall point is that nothing can replace the knowledgeable, caring attention that only people can provide to a consumer when making a purchase that will impact their quality of daily life.
So I say to digital retailing – bring it on!!!
July 19,
2017 by HFBusiness Staff in Economic News, Industry
Although Healthcare spending still leads the way, durable goods, including Furniture and Home Furnishings products, have steadily increased their share of post-recession consumer dollars since 2009. This is despite the fact that last year for the first time Americans spent more money on health care than the total amount spent on living in and taking care of their homes -- $2.95 trillion versus $2.91 trillion. Housing expenditures grew 4 percent last year and include rents, mortgage payments, utilities, housing maintenance, all household and outdoor furnishings, tools and equipment but excludes cell phone, internet, cable, and telephone services. Meanwhile, spending for heathcare grew 5.6 percent and includes all out-of-pocket costs for health insurance, physicians, hospitals, outpatient facilities, nursing homes, etc. as well as prescription and non prescription drugs and medical equipment.
After a gradual post-recession recovery, consumer spending continues to grow an average of 3.8 percent a year since 2009. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Personal Expenditures Survey, Consumer Spending by U.S. Households totaled $12.76 trillion last year – increasing 3.9 percent from 2015. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the first quarter of this year slowed 2.7 percent to $13.11 trillion. This article picks up from Statistically Speaking’s August 2015 article Where are Consumer’s Spending Their Money.
Growth of Durable Goods
Between 2000 and 2009, consumer expenditures for services surged as durable goods lost ground during the Great Recession. However, since the recession’s end in 2009, spending for durable goods has seen the largest increase with nondurables declining as a percent of total consumption. Durable goods now comprise 67.8 percent of consumer expenditures (2017 Q1 Annualized) compared to 63.9 percent in 2009 (Table A).
As shown in Table B, both durable goods and nondurable goods lost tremendous ground from 2000 to 2009 as spending on services skyrocketed by 53.2 percent while consumer spending on housing and healthcare services steadily increased. On a positive note, in the years following the recession (2009 to 2017Q1), durable goods have surged growing 40.6 percent compared to 27.8 percent for nondurables and 33.7 percent for services.
Top Consumer Spending
With healthcare last year finally exceeding total housing expenditures, including furnishings and maintenance, the trend is on track to continue this year. Total combined housing and home furnishings expenditures lost 1 point share of all spending since 2009, mainly through declining utility expenses and slow to recover rents early in the recovery. Home furnishings products have generally held consumer spending share with the exception appliances and televisions. Meanwhile healthcare has increased its share 1.5 points in the same time period – up to 22.5 percent of total spending the first quarter of this year. Total consumer dollars spent on housing and furnishings trailed closely at 21.6 percent in 2017 Q1. Meanwhile Americans are eating out more, with corresponding spending on food consumed at home declining. Table C compares the share of consumer spending 2009 to 2017 Q1 by various goods and services. Itemized categories exceed three percent of spending.
Rents and mortgage payments make up 73 percent of consumer spending on housing, while the biggest chunk of healthcare was paid to hospitals (7.9%) and outpatient services (7.8%). Actual medical health insurance totaled 1.3 percent of consumer spending.
Housing and Household Expenditures
Since the end of the 2009 Recession, household insurance has surged as the fasted growing housing expense – up 67.8 percent but tapering off over last year (Table D). Both furniture and home Furnishings have maintained a steady upward trajectory – averaging 3.5 percent and 3.7 growth each year, but still lag slightly behind overall consumer spending growth of 3.8 percent. Televisions and appliances have been outpaced by other household spending. Household utilities have stabilized with little increase.
As Americans are staying put longer, household maintenance spending has grown 29.2 percent over the last five years. Last year, rents and mortgages saw a high growth of 4.7 percent as supply tightened in many areas. Consumer spending slowed during the first quarter of this year in all household spending categories, except televisions/video and audio. Figure 1 itemizes the growth of the housing and home furnishings expenditures five years, one year and 2017 Q1.
Furniture and Home Furnishings Products
In this first quarter of this year at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, Consumer spending on furniture alone totaled $109.7 billion dollars. Major appliances is the second largest home furnishings spending category at $41.4 billion. (Table E).
Although window coverings is the smallest of the home furnishings categories, it has experienced the largest post-recession surge in consumer spending increasing 42.1 percent. Table F visually depicts the indexed growth of spending on the major home furnishings categories post-recession. Carpets and other floor coverings have surged since 2015 with a total 32.2 percent growth since 2009. Both furniture and home furnishings accessories also experienced over 30 percent growth post-recession at 31.8 and 31.7 percent growth respectively.
Looking at the five year, one year and 2017 Q1 growth (Figure 2), all home furnishings categories except televisions and major appliances, exceeded 20 percent five-year growth. Spending on televisions has been depressed with only 2.4 percent five-year growth, although sales picked up the first quarter of this year. Major appliances has also underperformed growing 11.3 percent in five years. Growth last year was under 1 percent last year and continues to decline in the first quarter.
If curious about the spending categories with the largest increases, Table G shows the biggest winners and losers 2015 to 2016. Spectator sports are at the top of the winner’s list at 10.9 percent growth, followed closely by hairdressing salons and personal grooming Establishments at 9.4 percent. Gasoline and other energy goods are the biggest losers in consumer spending posting a 10.3 percent decline with second place going to securities commissions falling 5.2 percent.
July 19,
2017 by HFBusiness Staff in Bedding, Product
Phoenix-based Trendwood, now a major player in youth furniture, got its start in 1985 in an entirely different furniture category – waterbed furniture.
Capitalizing on the flotation frenzy of the 1970s and 1980s, the company did a brisk business making waterbed frames and headboards for waterbed specialty stores. The furniture was made of Ponderosa pine, a wood known for its strength and durability that could support the heavy bags of water that made up waterbed mattresses.
Scott Coor, Trendwood’s vice president of marketing, recalled that many in the waterbed business were convinced the frenzy would last forever, but by 1990, he said the company began to see indications the industry was peaking.
“What we did best was cut long pieces of pine, so when waterbed sales began to stall out, I started looking for other applications for that process, and we settled on bunk beds,” he said. “There were a ton of guys making little cheap bunk beds, and there were some real expensive ones out there, but nothing in between. So I thought if we could make a really strong, durable bed … we might have something.”
So, in 1992, Trendwood secured a small, temporary exhibit space at the now-defunct San Francisco furniture market to show its first three bunk beds – while still making its line of waterbed furniture.
Coor said it took a couple of years for Trendwood to establish credibility as a bunk bed producer – after all, the waterbed business had more than its share of questionable operators – but the program finally started humming.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Waterbed sales began a breathtaking decline in 1992, and by 1996, the once booming industry – not to mention Trendwood’s waterbed furniture business – had all but disappeared.
July 19,
2017 by HFBusiness Staff in Product, Youth, Juvenile Furniture
Parents and grandparents often recoil at the notion of spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on furniture that a child may outgrow in a few years.
They face a similar dilemma with clothes, shoes and toys, but at least those items can be passed along to a sibling, sold at a yard sale, or donated to charity. It’s not as easy to do that with a captain’s bed.
That makes youth furniture a much tougher sell at retail – so tough that some furniture retailers have abandoned the category.
But many youth furniture suppliers, for obvious reasons, think that’s the wrong approach. They say youth bedroom, just like master bedroom furniture for adults, is transitioning into an item business. That means retailers should focus on the items consumers want most – and de-emphasize the 20-sku collections that once were a staple of the category.
“Gone are the times when Mom and Dad went into the big box store and bought bed, dresser, mirror, nightstand and chest for the new little girl,” said Fran Scheller, vice president of merchandising and product development at full-line furniture resource Bernard’s. “That has definitely impacted the dollar volume of the youth business.”
But Scheller and other executives say the category is still quite vibrant – as long as manufacturers and retailers can deliver what the consumer really wants. That usually means a sturdy, safe bed and something that has lots of storage.
“If you look at the demographics there are still a lot of kids out there who need a place to sleep and a place to put their stuff,” said Scot Coor, vice president of marketing at Trendwood, a Phoenix-based youth furniture producer. “Most people want to buy something that’s a durable, safe product, but bottom line, they don’t want to spend a whole lot on it because they know the kid is going to outgrow it or tear it up.”
That’s why Coor and Scheller said their companies are now focusing on beds -- in many cases designing them with storage space that’s either under the bed or part of the headboard.
One of Bernard’s best-sellers, for example, is a design called a lounge bed that features a bookcase storage unit built onto one side of the bed. That allows it to be placed against a wall, which saves space in the center of the child’s room. Plus, it has storage drawers underneath the bed.
“People are still buying functional pieces that give them a variety of uses and lots of storage options,” Scheller said.
Don Essenberg, president of full-line resource Legacy Classic, said his company’s Legacy Classic Kids line is still experiencing growth, but acknowledged youth furniture is “a tough category” because products typically occupy a small footprint and separate, distinct section of a retail sales floor. That makes it essential for a retailer to promote the category heavily in order to be successful, he said.
“People who do the best with kids’ furniture are the ones who advertise it,” said Essenberg. “You have to let that mother whose out shopping for youth furniture know that you have it.”
“You had better be really good if you’re going to do youth, because the competition is fierce,” Scheller added. “It’s not like master bedroom, which is a fashion statement. It’s more like mattresses and recliners. It’s price driven and it’s need driven.”
Essenberg said his company’s line, which is at the upper end of the market, also is seeing less interest in purchases of multiple pieces, and said desk sales, in particular, have weakened.
“Desks aren’t an automatic. It’s not the essential SKU in the kids’ bedroom anymore,” he said. “It about sleep and storage now.”
Coor said Trendwood’s desk sales also have been sluggish, but said he has seen a slight uptick in sales of models that have a power supply and a charging station.
“For a desk in a kid’s room today, you better have a charging station. If you don’t, you’re selling an antique,” Essenberg quipped.
Research by Impact Consulting Services, parent company of Home Furnishings Business, showed that only 13.4% of consumers who recently purchased youth furniture were interested in adding a desk. But 26.5% of those surveyed were interested in buying a second bed – often a bunk bed or loft bed.
And interestingly, a majority of those surveyed were hoping their youth furniture would last a lot longer than the youth for whom it was purchased. Some 29.2% of respondents said they hoped to use the furniture in a spare bedroom some day, while another 36% said they hope the child can use it as an adult in their first apartment or at college.
In addition, the survey said 26.2% of respondents purchased their furniture for a child who was over age 13, while 17.9% bought it for a child age 10 to 13, and 17.6% bought for a child age 6 to 9. The highest percentage of purchases, however, were made for a child age 3 to 5, who was the recipient of 29.5% of the purchases.
Essenberg and Scheller said the majority of product from their companies are purchased for girls, which is not surprising because white remains the most popular youth furniture color.
“We still do well with the classic white girls’ groups in our line, whether they’re a little more transitional or the typical ornate Victorian look,” Essenberg said. “But the last couple of years, we’re also starting to do well with girls’ groups that are not in pure white. Some of the taupe and putty colors are doing well.”
Coor said Trendwood’s furniture is made of solid Ponderosa pine and has more of a unisex look, and noted that his company doesn’t keep track of whether the user is a boy or girl.
“Most of our product is developed around a youth’s need, be it a boy or a girl,” Coor said. “Neutral colors are not going out of style. They seem to be the most popular.”