Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
September 23,
2008 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in Markets on September 2008
The International Home Furnishings Center will offer members of the International Home Furnishings Representatives Association special services during the upcoming Fall High Point Market.
The weekend prior to Market, IHFC will host free full hot breakfasts for IHFRA sales reps on Saturday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 19, 7-9:30 a.m., in the High Point Room on the 11th floor of the Green Wing of IHFC. No reservations are required for this free breakfast.
IHFC also has made as many as 200 free parking spaces in the Green Drive parking lot available to IHFRA members the weekend prior to Fall Market. IHFC cautions that because a late truck or two might show up, not everyone with a hangtag on his or her car is guaranteed a space. Spaces will be available on a first come, first served basis. The Green Drive lot is IHFC’s truck staging area and is located across from the High Point Post Office.
IHFRA members are eligible to win one of these free parking spaces by providing their name, mailing address and telephone number by e-mailing ihfra@ihfra.org ihfra@ihfra.org or faxing the IHFRA Office at (336) 464-2125.
IHFRA members will be eligible to become IHFC Club members through their active membership in IHFRA. The IHFC Club is located on the 11th floor of the Green Wing of IHFC. The IHFC Club is a members-only dining experience and will be open to members Monday, Oct. 20 through Friday, Oct. 24. Because of this special promotion to IHFRA members, IHFC Club membership dues are being waived for the Fall 2008 Market. Interested IHFRA members may contact the IHFRA Office for membership information and further details.
June 30,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on July 2008
I
T’S A FURNITURE STORE FATHER’S DREAM. Not only does the son want to go into the family business, the son actually has a rare talent for the family business, and ranks as a top-producing designer year after year.
Twenty-five years ago, that wunderkind was Bob Schoenfeld, and the parent was Ken Schoenfeld, owner of four successful Drexel Heritage stores in Washington state, where the Schoenfeld family had owned a furniture store, almost continuously, since 1865. More than a century later, Bob—who had grown up changing light bulbs and designing vignettes in his father’s stores—was proud to be the fifth generation of Schoenfeld’s in home furnishings. It was the mid 1980s, business was good, and Bob was happily managing one of his father’s stores south of Seattle.
Then Ken surprised Bob. He told his son that he was ready to retire and that the stores would be sold. Bob would be cut loose. Ken added that this would be the best thing that could happen to Bob.
“Really?” Bob remembers thinking.
Ken and Bob Schoenfeld can laugh today about how the family business suddenly became someone else’s business—perhaps because Bob now heartily agrees that his father actually did him a favor by selling.
“I wanted to do my own thing,” Bob said.
And Schoenfeld Interiors is about as “own thing” as it gets. President Bob Schoenfeld—who recently expanded from one location to two—jokes that his stores are actually a “design center with a furniture store attached,” with the center taking up triple the floor space typically allotted to design. “Most people would say I’m crazy because that’s showroom space,” he said.
ABOUT 65 PERCENT OF SALES ARE ASSOCIATED with design projects. Schoenfeld’s special-orders nearly everything, because Bob Schoenfeld believes that every customer has different tastes and needs.
“It’s a rare thing that’s bought the same way twice, even if it’s just the firmness of the cushion that changes,” he said. So the stores carry practically no inventory in their tiny—6,000-square-foot—warehouse. This can come as a surprise to a customer who comes in, falls for a sofa, and wants to take it home. The answer is always a polite but firm “no.”
“If we let you have this today,” Schoenfeld tells his customer, “then it’s not available to any other client for the next 10 weeks.” The vignettes, until Bob Schoenfeld is ready to change them, are there to stay. They are his masterpieces. When he walks into his store, he will notice if the pillow on the chair in the farthest corner of the room is out of place.
Schoenfeld caters, then, to the patient and the committed.
“When people order from us they can’t cancel us. It’s a slower process,” he said.
Schoenfeld has to have it that way. The thrill for him is knowing that customers received an extraordinarily high level of personalized service. “I like that clients enjoy their rooms,” he said. “It’s a rare thing that I get a phone call saying ‘I hate this furniture. Come and do something about it.’ Our designs have been so well-planned, they just work.”
Also different about Schoenfeld’s is the designers themselves. Bob Schoenfeld gets them right out of design school, and typically, they know next to nothing about home furnishings. That, Schoenfeld said, he can teach. He wants creativity, a willingness to learn, and a strong desire to work one-on-one with customers in their own homes.
“When I opened my own company, I wanted it to be a home for interior designers,” he said. “But it usually takes months of training until they’re ready to work with customers.”
THIS OFFBEAT FORMULA HAS WORKED FOR 13
years, since Bob Schoenfeld first leased 10,000 square feet in tony Bellevue, just east of Seattle. Growth, even in this rough economy, is steady. “I grew last year and I don’t expect sales to decline this year, though I have seen a slowdown in traffic,” he said.
But even he admits that it’s unusual these days to hear of a furniture retailer expanding. That’s just what he did this spring.
In June, Schoenfeld Interiors opened its second store in Pioneer Square, a historic downtown Seattle dining and shopping district bustling with tourist and locals. The concept at the new 10,000-square-foot showroom is the same as the flagship store’s: highly personalized design service. The furniture is basically the same—modern and transitional mid- to high-end pieces. But the Seattle store, gutted and built in six months for $500,000, has a more urban, loft-like feel. Schoenfeld describes the Bellevue store as more “spa-like”—with warm tones and sisal floor coverings throughout. Schoenfeld plans to hire five more designers for the new store, bringing the total design staff to 15.
And as he refrains from hiring designers with furniture experience, neither did Schoenfeld turn to a furniture expert when he picked an interior designer for the new location. Betty Blount, of Seattle’s Zena Design Group, had never done a furniture store before. But Schoenfeld liked her aesthetic, and thought she had a sense of where he wanted to take the downtown location. She also didn’t seem to mind that Schoenfeld would be her co-designer. For example, he recalled, “I laid out where the walls would go and where the furniture would go. She designed the cabinets and the reception desk.”
The new store raised some eyebrows. For one—who is opening up a new store these days? “I’ve got to be the only one in the country,” Schoenfeld quipped. But his atypical growth in this economy isn’t simply the product of a solid, unique business model. Seattle’s economy isn’t suffering as much as many parts of the country, he added. saying, “I’d like to take all the credit, but I can’t.”
FOR THOSE FAMILIAR WITH THE FURNITURE landscape in Seattle, the new Schoenfeld’s raised more eyebrows because it opened just blocks away from Masins Furniture, a high-end store owned by Schoenfeld’s cousins that has been a fixture in Pioneer Square since shortly after the end of World War II (and was recently profiled in
Home Furnishings Business, June 2008.) Masins and Schoenfeld’s cater to a similar crowd.
“They have the same approach,” Schoenfeld said of Masins’s dedication to customer service. “We’re in friendly competition and they do a beautiful job.”
Masins and Schoenfeld Interiors are distinguished from one another by their merchandise—Masins sells at somewhat higher price points, said Schoenfeld. And where Masins is more mainstream traditional, and works with vendors such as Stickley and Baker, Schoenfeld’s is more classic contemporary and seeks out smaller West Coast factories, such as John Charles of Los Angeles and Bermanfalk of Vancouver.
Schoenfeld, even before the Pioneer Square location opened, already competed with Masins in Bellevue, where the Masin family opened up their second location in 1981. Schoenfeld picked Pioneer Square for his second location, he said, because he had always dreamed of doing business in the city’s most historic shopping and entertainment district, and the opportunity to lease there might never present itself again.
“I wanted to be downtown. I always did. And this building is owned by someone who is close to me. It was an opportunity and I took it because it wasn’t going to come up again,” Schoenfeld said.
Besides, Schoenfeld doesn’t consider furniture stores to be his most direct competition. “It’s small design firms,” he said.
Schoenfeld has no plans for further expansion. He can’t, he said, because he is so immersed in the look and feel of his business.
“Five stores would kill it. You would lose that design firm feel,” he said. “I have to be on top of things all the time. If the environment isn’t crisp and perfect, I’m not happy. And right now, I enjoy my business.”
But he wouldn’t be having a good time, he said, if he had stayed in his father’s business or someone else’s.
The opportunity had presented itself. The current owner of his father’s stores, the Greenbaum family—another venerable name in Washington state home furnishings—offered him a job when they bought out his father.
Bob Schoenfeld said he had always liked the Greenbaums but felt it would be awkward to work in a business that used to belong to his family. And working in the one store that his father didn’t sell to the Greenbaums, but to a partner, didn’t fulfill Bob Schoenfeld either. “My father told me not to reinvent the wheel. But my first week, that’s just what I tried to do,” he said.
And that’s when the son figured out that though he might keep the family name and stay in the family business, he needed to build his own business, one that would be uniquely his. Today, he looks around his stores and likes what he sees.
“This is not a spreadsheet-oriented company,” he said. “I guess I’ve carved out my own little niche.”
June 30,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on July 2008
“Know thyself” said the Oracle; “To thine own self be true,” said Shakespeare; and “Leadership comes from within,” said Warren Bennis. “But how do we find the truth?” we ask.
Well, Peter Drucker, management guru par excellence, has at least shown us what to look for. In 1999, Drucker published an article called “Managing Yourself” in the
Harvard Business Review that gave us his ideas on using self-knowledge to take charge of your career and being your own CEO.
Start by identifying your strengths. Don’t obsess with your weaknesses. You can build on strengths, but not on weaknesses. Remember, “It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.”
Know how you perform, how you get things done. Whether you are a listener or a reader, for example, can have a big impact on your performance. Curiously, he advises, “Do not try to change yourself. You are unlikely to succeed. Work to improve the way you perform.”
Armed with this self-awareness, you then must determine where you belong. This is the old “What do you want to be when you grow up?” inquiry, and very few people know the answer until they are well beyond their mid-twenties. According to Drucker, “successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person—hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre—into an outstanding performer.”
Drucker does not offer much in the way of how we can perform this self-examination, but this is where
StrengthsFinder 2.0 comes to the rescue. Written by Tom Rath of the Gallup Organization, this little book shows us how. Currently the No. 1 best-selling business book in the
Wall Street Journal poll, its predecessor,
Now, Discover Your Strengths, was also a huge best-seller worldwide. The new improved version promises to expand the audience further.
In spite of my skepticism of self-help books, I must admit I am impressed with this one. Part of the appeal is that it is more than a book, or I should say it is a “cyber book.” Inside, there is a sealed password that gives you access to the Gallup Web site. There, you are guided through an extensive questionnaire that takes about 35 minutes.
The questions will remind you of those used by Myers-Briggs and other personality profile tests based on activity preferences. Your responses are then compared to the database developed by Gallup and, presto, you are presented with a Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide. This report claims to provide you with a close look at the nuances that make you unique. It includes a Top 5 list, not of your strengths, but of areas or themes “where you have the greatest potential to develop strengths.”
Gallup claims its database includes surveys of more than 10 million people in the last decade on the subject of worker productivity. This has helped the firm identify 34 of these themes.
In addition to highlighting your top five themes, the assessment gives 10 Ideas for Action to go with each theme. These are designed to help develop strengths within the themes. And that’s not all. You also get three tips on how to work with others who have similar themes. My own feedback seemed to be largely accurate, yet contained enough surprises to make me think. It all sounds great, but this is why books like this drive me crazy. Let’s see … five themes, each with 13 to-do entries, adds up to 65 new items to add to an already full list of Things To Do Today For Sure. And that doesn’t count the items left over from yesterday’s list. Where does one find the time to find the strength to develop one’s strengths?
Nevertheless, the Drucker article is a gem and the Rath book is well worth reading.
Put them both on your To Do list.
June 30,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Bedding on July 2008
Recession, reschmession. Leggett & Platt is betting there are shoppers of means out there who will be willing to pay up to $50,000 for its new Starry Night™ bed.
They may be onto something. When it was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, attendees lined up to see the new product. Its second public appearance at Las Vegas Market a few weeks later met with equally rapturous response.
So what makes a bed a hit at both electronics and furniture shows—and more importantly, what makes a bed worth fifty grand? Read on.
Sleep-In Theater
Starry Night’s™ sexiest feature for the electronics crowd was most likely its high-end audio-visual offerings. The headboard contains an LCD video projector, and the four corners of the bed have four surround sound speakers (boasting eight-inch subwoofers) that work with the video operation to create a home theater you can sleep in.
The headboard can store multiple DVDs and CDs to enable you to access your favorite movies or songs, but the built-in hard drive holds 1.5 terabytes (in laymen’s terms: a lot) of information—about 400,000 songs or up to 2,000 hours of video—so you may not need to load any media at all. The unit also has an iPod dock/charger and offers Digital Video Recorder capability.
The bed’s electronics capabilities don’t end there, however. According to Leggett & Platt Group Vice President of Sales/Marketing Bedding Mark Quinn, who demonstrated the product at Las Vegas Market, Starry Night™ is designed for telecommuters who’d prefer to work from bed over a home office setup. That’s why it’s equipped with Internet connectivity and wireless RF via Microsoft’s Media Center system.
Rating Your Performance
The prospect of having your bedtime performance rated may not seem appealing, but in this case it may be good for you. Starry Night™ is one smart bed. While you sleep, it monitors how much you toss and turn, and when you wake up in the morning, a screen hung on your wall shows how well you slept. It compares these findings to a 30-day baseline measure and offers tips for improving sleep quality.
The bed also uses a vibration detection system (developed for the U.S. military) to sense snoring and adjust sleep position to help alleviate it.
It’s All About Control
In keeping with its “never need to leave your bed” high concept, Starry Night offers unprecedented control capabilities—not just for the bed, but also for other aspects of your home. Using its wireless remote, you can program the bed to interact with your lights, and also control your thermostat and security system.
The bed also offers a choice of three “modes” to suit your bedtime plans:
•
Read mode, which raises the bed’s head to a position suitable for reading while turning on the lamp, turning off the TV and lowering the ceiling lights.
•
Relax mode, which programs the bed to give a welcome massage, lower the lights and room temperature, and play soothing music at the end of a stressful day.
•
Romance mode, which—ahem—creates an “atmosphere of intimacy” (Leggett & Platt’s words, not mine) by dimming the lights, drawing the curtains and calling up some romantic music (Barry White, anyone?)
Oh Yeah, It’s a Bed Too
Let’s not forget that besides being a theater, office and health monitoring system, Starry Night™ is also a top-of-the-line bed. Its Joey™ Coil innerspring system uses pocketed coil-within-coil to maximize comfort. The exterior coils respond to body movements, while the interior coils are pressure-sensitive and adjust firmness based on the weight of the sleepers.
By nature, Starry Night™, which should be in stores in early 2009, is not for everyone. Even in its no-frills form, it will cost $20,000 (customizable based on features—like a new car—up to $50,000 for the full-throttle model). But for the well-heeled customer looking for a bed that screams “luxury” and “privilege”, this product could be a big hit at retail, especially considering its rapturous reception at the recent trade shows. For further information on Starry Night™, go to starrynightbed.com
June 30,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Case Goods on July 2008
Ed Grund’s been around the block and around the world in the furniture industry. After leaving Levitz Furniture and taking some time off, he went to China to launch a joint retail effort between Chinese manufacturing powerhouse Markor and Ethan Allen. After wrapping that up, Grund teamed with Markor to start A.R.T. Furniture in 2003. The company’s seen steady growth and has been building its service infrastructure stateside to complement a mixed-container program out of China. Grund took time during a June visit to A.R.T.’s Hight Point showroom to discuss A.R.T.’s business and some of the challenges facing furniture industry players both in the United States and in Asian source countries.
A.R.T. Furniture’s source plant is one of China’s largest furniture manufacturers, Markor. What’s your take on the current environment in China for furniture manufacturing?
There’s no question that furniture manufacturing is in a state of flux in China, particularly Southern China. Hundreds of manufacturers have gone out of business, with the owners just closing the doors. The stronger ones, and Markor is one, with the capital structure in place, will keep going.
Raw material costs, wages, increases in energy and fuel prices are all challenges. I think all manufacturers, (in China) not just Markor, are looking to make inroads into higher-price product. A lot of the opening price points have moved to other countries, which are not without their own challenges.
Vietnam, for example, was faced with no infrastructure or deep-water port, and that’s been coupled with 25-percent inflation and workers striking for more money.
We think our arrangement with Markor is a good one because of the quality and finishing capability they have, and the fact they’re going to be in business.
With rising costs for overseas production and transportation costs, along with the logistical issues of importing, some retailers stateside are taking a closer look at domestic producers. How is A.R.T. reacting to that?
I think you’ll find retailers that always look to domestic suppliers, but to be honest, I’m not sure how a domestic resource can compete with the prices, even with cost increases, that a Far East manufacturer can provide. It’s probably more of a factor in the upholstery business.
Our plan is to make sure we’re servicing the retailers with a 150,000-square-foot warehouse in China capable of mixing five collections in one container. That significantly lowers the investment on the retailer’s part.
We just expanded our warehouse from 40,000 square feet to 90,000 square feet in Ontario, Calif., and we just opened a 35,000-square-foot warehouse in North Carolina managed for us by Zenith Logistics for servicing East Coast retailers.
We give retailers the flexibility to order small quantities in one container, and if they need product quickly, they can get it from our East Coast or West Coast warehouses. The thing we’re focused on is continuity of flow.
We’ve also revamped our sales organization. Bill Sibbick came on board and brought new representation. We’ve added reps because we want to service accounts at the level they expect.
A.R.T.’s been on a pretty strong growth track. Is there anything you can share on how you plan to maintain and build your market share in a difficult retail environment?
We’ve done several things. We have a good base of the top 100 furniture retailers, and we enjoy good business with Berkshire Hathaway Group, Art Van, City Furniture, Macy’s and some others.
We see an opportunity to continue doing business with those types of accounts, but we can grow with small to mid-range retailers through mixed containers and the warehouses. We’ve reached agreements that we think will be very important. One’s with FMG, the other with Furniture First. They represent those kinds of dealers, and we think there’s a real opportunity for us.
We also believe that brands, while still important in the furniture business, are becoming less significant and certainly command less customer loyalty than they did in the past. Consumers today are interested in value, style and quality, and I believe that’s the sequence in which they shop, not starting with a brand.
As a relatively young company—we’ll be five years old in July—our focus has been to provide complete collections of bedroom, dining and occasional with features and benefits tied to our construction and superior finishing that would be 30 percent below comparable branded merchandise.
We believe that retailers as well as consumers continue to realize the value in A.R.T. products, hence the reasons for our fairly rapid growth.
An example of what’s happening is, two weeks ago, I was visiting in Tennessee with Knoxville Wholesale Furniture. Tim Harris, the founder and president, is opening a second store, and he shared with us that A.R.T. is his most profitable line. As a result, he’s putting A.R.T. galleries into both locations, which will present 12 of our collections. To us, that’s a real testament to the success of our line.
You spent years on the retail side of the furniture industry. Could you talk about how you went from working in retail to A.R.T.? Also, what are your thoughts on the current situation at furniture stores and what retailers need to do to not only survive, but also flourish?
I was originally a trainee when I began my retail career in the ’70s when I was with J. Homestock, a warehouse furniture showroom division of R.H, Macy’s, which was eventually sold to Levitz.
I was in a number of retail businesses—department stores, apparel stores and specialty stores—before I rejoined the furniture industry with Levitz, where I became chairman. I brought Levitz out of bankruptcy the second time.
I took some time off, and accepted an assignment to open furniture stores in China through an agreement between Ethan Allen and Markor. It’s now approaching 30 stores.
I spent three years in China and had the opportunity to meet some acquaintances of Markor who are what we’d call venture capitalists here. After discussions over a one year period as my assignment in China was winding down, we talked about founding a business in the U.S. that would import product from China.
Along with Greg Beckman, I put together the business plan to found A.R.T., and we opened the company with five initial collections in a showroom in Market Square. We’ve continued to grow since then.
My retail background and familiarity with the challenges of running a furniture retail operation have really helped us focus at A.R.T. Our vice president of product development, John Isiallo, also has a retail background. As a result, we always focus on product and services we know will help a retailer be successful. We pride ourselves on the fact that our line is typically one of the most profitable our retailers carry.
As far as challenges, as the housing market has slumped and full prices have risen, furniture has sometimes become a deferred purchase. The strongest challenge is at the opening price points, as evidenced by the demise of companies like Wickes and Levitz.
Furniture retailers are challenged with eliminating unnecessary costs from their business while at the same time improving the value and uniqueness of the product they offer their customers. The retailers who will survive are the ones who have a clear mission and are close to their customers.
I believe, too, that the upper moderate and better price point retailers have a market that’s challenging, but viable.
Do you foresee A.R.T. entering any new categories in the near future. If so, which ones are of interest? If not, why?
We’ve looked for quite a while and continue to look at moving into the upholstery business. It’s not on the imminent horizon, but we do see it as an important opportunity for us at some point in the future.
Right now we’re concentrating on our case goods and want to do a better job in occasional and entertainment furniture. We feel now is just not the time to launch a new portion of A.R.T., but to concentrate on what we have and make it better.
A.R.T. has a strong presence in both High Point and Las Vegas? How do those respective Markets fit into the company’s business plan?
Both Markets are essential to the development of our business. As a young company, we feel we can’t afford not to be in front of any retailer who might potentially purchase the line.
Our founding was here in High Point in Market Square. Tom Mitchell and Chris Kennedy (of Merchandise Mart Properties) have been very helpful as we grew in Market Square and now in Plaza Suites. We recognize High Point as the place we founded the company and certainly as important to the furniture industry and a number of our retailers.
Yet at the same time, Las Vegas has provided a growth vehicle for our company. Or presence in Vegas gave us exposure to retailers who might not shop High Point, who are in that small to middle range I talked about earlier, so our business has grown significantly by being in Vegas.
And with our warehouse and corporate office in California, Vegas strategically makes a lot of sense for us. The challenge is to maintain two showrooms and the costs associated with that, but we feel we need to be where potential customers are.
What’s your favorite piece of furniture in A.R.T.’s line, and why?
I have a number of favorites, but one is unique. It’s a sofa table with a gate leg that flips over and provides versatility to the consumer, We use it in a number of our collections. It’s this kind of hidden function that John Isiallo tries to put into every collection that gives the A.R.T. line some uniqueness in the marketplace.
What’s the last book you read, and what did you learn from it?
I’m a voracious reader, so I always have something going. The thing is, I like to re-read a lot of books as well. For example, I’m on my fifth read-through of the Bible, and I always learn something else about life by that.
I’ve read Peter Drucker for years, even though he’s deceased now, and there’s a quote that always leaps out: “If you allow it to happen, then you are responsible.” That’s served me well for years and years.
I’m currently reading Clive Cussler. It’s easy reading, but what intrigues me about his main characters is the attention to detail in their planning.
You’ve spent a lot of time traveling between Asia and America. Any suggestions for others making that run on how to pass the hours on those long flights?
I’ve flown more than 5 million miles in my business career—I guess my longest flight was 18 hours. It’s important that you use that time to prepare for what you’ll do once you arrive, and use the return to recap what you accomplished.
I always try to sleep on long flights, not always successfully, to avoid jet lag both ways. I avoid eating too much and drink lots of fluids, but those are givens.
When you have time away from work, how do you like to spend it?
I certainly enjoy my family. My wife is a very special and understanding person—we’ve been married 39 years. I enjoy being with my daughter immensely. I also enjoy boating, antique cars and history. I’m always reading about what happened in the past and how we can learn from it.