City Furniture Opens Eco-Friendly Ashley HomeStore

March 10, 2013  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on March 11, 2013

City Furniture has opened its eco-friendly Ashley Furniture HomeStore in Oakland Park, Fla., on Federal Highway's furniture row.

As regional licensee for the Ashley Furniture HomeStore brand, City Furniture operates 10 of those stores and 14 City Furniture showrooms in Southeast and Southwest Florida. The new showroom is located where the former Modernage store was located until 2007.

The new store created 30 jobs.

"South Florida is statistically the nation's most competitive furniture retail market, with the most brands vying for market share," said Keith Koenig, City Furniture president. "As housing dipped and competition increased, Modernage ceased operations. We purchased the site and waited until the timing was right." 

 The opening is part of City Furniture's long-term growth strategy and coincides with the recent up-tick in South Florida home sales and furniture demand, Koenig said. 

"We decided several years ago to get ahead of the curve, tying up high-value locations for future expansion," he said. "That approach is beginning to bear fruit. More homeowners are coming in to furnish both year-round and vacation homes.  Also, through our professional design services, we're doing more model home business than ever with homebuilders on Florida's east and west coasts, and are customizing furniture packages in wide-ranging styles for new, high-profile apartment towers."

Increasing the company's presence in east Fort Lauderdale is timely, with hundreds of new multi-family residences planned for downtown and local single-family home sales gaining momentum.   The Florida Realtors' January 2013 residential market sales activity report showed a year-over-year increase of 17.7 percent in the tri-county market area's single-family home sales.

City Furniture is building statewide sales with the recent launch of e-commerce on its Web site. 

"So many of our customers told us they were relocating to other parts of Florida and wanted to keep shopping with us," Koenig said.  "It's time to extend our reach." 

 To add convenience and choice, the firm is locating City Furniture and Ashley Furniture HomeStore showrooms on adjoining or nearby sites in each of its existing markets. 

"When today's shopper visits a furniture showroom, she wants surprising value, genuine respect for her time and needs, and fresh, inspiring choices," Koenig said. "The Ashley Furniture HomeStore adds a tremendous range of quality choices and styles to the stretch of Federal Highway we think of as 'Furniture Row', and our existing City Furniture store is less than a block south."

The new 25,000-square-foot Ashley Furniture HomeStore built by Miller Construction Co. is designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. It's City Furniture's third location built to those standards, and the first of Ashley Furniture HomeStore's more than 450 showrooms nationwide. 

"Our team's commitment to environmental stewardship runs deep," Koenig said, adding that City Furniture leads the industry nationally in operating stores built to meet LEED standards. 

The retailer's green Ashley Furniture HomeStore showrooms in Cutler Bay, Fla., and West Palm Beach, Fla., are scheduled for summer completion. 

"We hope to inspire other furniture retailers to move toward sustainability," Koenig said.