Accessorize To Move The Merchandise

January 31, 2007  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Accessories on February 2007 Retailers like Robb & Stucky and Ethan Allen have become synonymous with fine merchandising, beautiful displays and deftly selected accessories.

Yet, merchandising experts say there is also a lot to learn from lower-end and mid-level furniture stores that have successfully jumped into the accessories category in recent years. They want to reclaim accessory sales from lifestyle retailers and discounters like Target and Costco that are emphasizing sharply priced designs for the home.

Enter one of the five Jerome’s stores in San Diego, for example, and you’ll be surrounded by richly accessorized vignettes in which the rugs, the lamps and even the bed coverings are all for sale. “When you go into a clothing store to buy a suit, you’re almost always going to come out with a tie, a belt and some socks, too,” says Jerome’s President Ann Navarra. “That’s the type of thing we’re trying to do with our accessories. The primary reason is to make the furniture look that much better, but, in the bargain, you can increase the size of sales tickets, too.”

In Denver, accessories now account for about 7 percent of sales at American Furniture Warehouse, or double the percentage of a few years ago. “The reason our stores look so nice is because of all the accessories,” said Jake Jabs, CEO of the 11-store chain. “We’re also telling our sales people to really push the accessories because customers might think their new furniture looks pretty sparse when they get it home, especially if it’s a living room group.”

Shopping Every Few Months
Versus Twice A Decade

Ashley President and CEO Todd Wanek says his company’s focus on accessories for Ashley dealers and HomeStores is aimed a bringing in customers much more frequently. He said the effort began six years ago. “The average consumer shops for home accessories four times a year, but they typically shop for furniture only once every five to seven years. You have to find ways to get the customer into the store and get them excited about the fashion items and help them discover the furniture, so they’ll buy that, too,” he said.

Ashley’s approach is evident in the sales circulars of its network of HomeStores. In December, the ads featured $19 chenille blankets, $149 area rugs and a $69 pair of lamps. “I think our industry was the primary shopping destination for those types of products 20 or 30 years ago, but now people think of different types of stores for those items,” he said, naming lifestyle stores and Linens ‘n Things as examples.

There are no industrywide figures on accessory sales, but experts say accessories have typically accounted for about 3 percent of total sales in furniture stores—and reach far higher at retailers like Ethan Allen that have long had a strong emphasis on the category.

Frustration Rising As Other Channels Capture Sales

Many retailers have long been frustrated when “customers come into a furniture store to buy case goods, but then walk down the street to buy accessories at Crate & Barrel,” said Steve Crowder, president and CEO of Decorize, which provides sets of accessories to match furniture collections at retailers like Rooms To Go and manufacturers like Broyhill. “You’re seeing more and more (retailers) trying to jump into the accessories category and for some of them it will be too late. It’s just a huge learning curve, and they’re going to have to teach their sales people to sell accessories versus case goods. Some of them will get it, but some will miss the opportunity.”

Crowder believes small retailers, in particular, have difficulty selling accessories because they don’t have inventory control systems capable of tracking the sales of hundreds of accessory items, making it difficult to accurately reorder fast-moving products and clear out slow-movers.

Martin Roberts, president of Grid2, a store design and display firm, said he frequently sees furniture stores that are struggling with the accessories category. Their showrooms are typically overcrowded with accessories and displays are cluttered with items that are ill-suited to the collections they’re supposed to complement. “It’s difficult to do well” in the accessories category, Roberts said. “The ones who do it well are able to create displays that change with the seasons throughout the year.”

Accessories are so important that retailers like HOM Furniture in Minneapolis and Costco Home’s stores in Washington and Arizona have dedicated store-within-a-store displays to the category.

Expectations Increasing

Designer Connie Post, whose firm specializes in store displays and merchandising, says shoppers have higher expectations after years of exposure to displays they see in catalogs and stores of lifestyle chains like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel. “Gone are the days when you could just line the furniture up as a commodity,” Post said. “What consumers really want are solutions to (design) problems. Lifestyle retailers have done a great job of creating whole-room vignettes and that’s the kind of approach shoppers want to see.”

One factor that’s making it easier for retailers to deliver richer displays is that importers are offering buyers a huge variety of products at ever-lower price points. “They are providing good accessory designs at really affordable prices. The lines have blurred to the point that (lower-end) retailers can create really great looks,” Post said.

In the past, the tendency of some retailers has been to dress up lower-priced furniture with high-priced accessories. That created mismatches in which a $300 lamp was displayed on a $299 table. Today, the emphasis is on seeking out a $79 lamp that is a perfect complement to the $299 table.

Is This For Sale?

Because shoppers have become accustomed to seeing high-priced props in store displays, many are not comfortable buying items like wall art in a traditional furniture store. “The shoppers don’t like taking accessories off a dining table, because they think it’s a prop,” Wanek said. “It’s a challenge for the industry: How do we create a clean display so the shopper is comfortable taking the product out of the store? We have to figure out ways to display these items better.”

Earlier this year, Ashley introduced a set of boxed tabletop accessories that included vases, a dish and bowls in a single package. Ashley is also having success with bed-in-a-bag packages, including sets that were recently advertised for $199, which is less than comparable sets generally sell for in major department stores.

Navarra said Jerome’s has also had a lot of success with top-of-the-bed packages, and adds that the pillow-and-comforter sets also help sell bedrooms. “The better dressed the beds are, the better they sell. I think (top-of-the-bed packages) are becoming more and more popular with our customers because, like so many things that are made offshore now, the styling and the quality is so much better than it was even two or three years ago.”

Better Pricing

Jabs said accessories in American Furniture Warehouse stores are priced below virtually all local competitors. After noticing local decorators and designers buying accessory items, American Furniture Warehouse began offering a 5 percent discount to design professionals. He said more than 1,000 designers and decorators have signed up for the program.

To simplify the accessories category, major manufacturers have started to sell matched sets of products to make buying easier and reduce the need for retailers to investigate all of the hundreds of accessories showrooms in High Point in Las Vegas.

Broyhill Furniture introduced a program called Broyhill Home Collections that give dealers access to more than 1,200 products on the company’s Web site. All of the products were designed especially for Broyhill collections over the past two years, said Deborah Blackburn, director of the manufacturer’s Home Solutions Program. In the past, Broyhill, like most manufacturers, steered retailers to preferred accessories vendors, but developed a new approach to enable retailers to order via the Web and receive orders within a few days.

A Big Commitment

Merchandising experts say many retailers hesitate to jump into the accessories category because adding hundreds—if not thousands—of SKUs is a daunting commitment. Many have experimented in the past, and have gotten caught with inventory that didn’t move. “You can buy a lot of dogs that just sit there,” Wanek said, adding that stores have to invest in skilled designers who can manage the category. “It’s a big investment out the outset, but as I look at opportunities, this is a major opportunity for all retailers in home furnishings. We have to figure out how to get back some the business we’ve given to other retail channels.”