Hooker Furniture Reorganizes Merchandising Teams

February 6, 2012  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on February 7, 2012 Industry supplier Hooker Furniture (NASDAQ: HOFT) has reorganized its wood furniture merchandising group into two teams with specialized product line responsibilities.

As part of the reorganization, four managers at the company have been promoted.

"One of the challenges of our broad product line, encompassing everything from niche categories to whole home collections, is the need for more focused merchandising efforts,€ said Alan Cole, president of Hooker Furniture. "The new team-based and product-specialized approach will clarify responsibilities both internally and externally and help us bring the highest value products to market in a timely manner."

Cole added that the structure will enhance product development agility and creative collaboration while providing clearer direction, more accountability and opportunities for individual and company growth.

Specializing in niche categories such as home office, home entertainment, youth furniture, accents and casual dining is a team headed by Hank Long, senior vice president of marketing, and Cindy Hall, who has been promoted to director of merchandising and product administration.

Hall, who reports to Long, has been with Hooker since 1990 and was most recently senior product manager. In addition to her product development responsibilities, Hall also oversees administration of Hooker€™s product development and merchandising processes.

Reporting to Hall will be merchandising administrator Diana Martin, whose role has been expanded to include coordinating the implementation of a Web-based product development system to improve speed to market and overall responsiveness.

Specializing in the product lines of Mélange, Envision, bedroom and dining room groups and limited distribution/proprietary products is a team headed by Keith Weisglass and Erica Wingo.

As part of the reorganization, Weisglass has been promoted to director of merchandising and major accounts and Wingo, who reports to Weisglass, has been promoted to senior product manager. Weisglass, previously an independent sales representative for Hooker, joined the management team in 2010 in major accounts sales and merchandising. Wingo joined Hooker in 2007 following her internship as a student at High Point University and most recently was a product manager at the company.

€œThese promotions are a recognition of the confidence we have in each of our merchants to take on more focused  responsibilities, and their ability to lead us to an even higher level in our product development,€  Cole said.

The development of major, whole home collections encompassing all wood and upholstery categories, such as Sanctuary, Abbott Place or Primrose Hill, will be assigned to individual merchants as appropriate.