RH Spending on Luxury Stores, Catalogs

May 14, 2014  by in Business Strategy, Furniture Retailing, Industry   

While most brick-and-mortar retailers are battening down against the advance of e-commerce competition—closing locations, scaling back costs—luxury furniture chain Restoration Hardware is doing quite the opposite.

Later this month, the company will debut 13 giant source books (encyclopedia-sized catalogs) for its 2014 products, but the 3,300 pages of distressed farm tables, patinaed wood headboards, and brass lamps will be nothing compared to the brand's storefront plans.

So far, the retailer has built five posh storefronts, or "galleries," in RH parlance. Unlike standard furnishings stores, these galleries have cafes, art installations, fountains, and wine bars. The Boston location, which opened last year, is a 40,000-square-foot museum of home décor, and is actually located in Boston's former New England Museum of Natural History. The company plans to open 60 to 70 more opulent galleries, including one in Greenwich, Conn.—which will debut this Friday inside a beautiful ancient post office building—and they plan to give the New York gallery in the Flatiron neighborhood a 21,448-square-foot expansion.

Read Entire Story Source: Racked