Jordan's takes it to the Imax
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, August 26, 2002
NATICK, Mass. — NATICK, Mass. — Jordan's Furniture took its "shoppertainment" philosophy to a new level last week as it opened a giant Imax 3D theater at its recently expanded store here.
Some 500 people — members of the press, the furniture industry and other friends of Jordan's — gathered for a four-film preview hosted by the four-store Boston-area chain's leaders, Barry and Eliot Tatelman, and investment guru Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the retailer's parent company.
"These fellows are the kings of excitement. I was at this store about three years ago, and it knocked me out," said Buffett. "Now, they've added this. No one is going to catch them."
The six-story, 262-seat AT&T Broadband Imax 3D Theater was three years in the making. The Tatelmans won't disclose an exact cost, but said the investment was in the millions of dollars. A partnership with AT&T Broadband as theater sponsor helped pay for it, but Jordan's wouldn't disclose the details of the deal.
"This is going to draw people from 100 miles away to experience something they can't experience anywhere else," said Jordan's President Eliot Tatelman.
"They're getting introduced to our store, whether they need something now or five years from now when they get married. We're making friends."
Theater guests walk through the 120,000-square-foot, Bourbon Street-themed showroom to get to the theater. Near the end of the store, they go up an escalator, where the walls are painted with crowds of people and lights flash to simulate the flash of cameras from adoring fans. On flat-screen monitors over the escalator, crowds of people on video scream for autographs.
At the top of the escalator, the Imax theater sits across from a new 6,000-square-foot Bose home theater store, with audio and video systems for sale along with entertainment centers and upholstery.
Jordan's is planning a 400-seat Imax for the 300,000-square-foot store and warehouse it expects to open in Boston's North Shore, possibly at the end of 2003. And if all goes well, Jordan's is considering opening other Imax theaters, including one at its Avon headquarters store that would replacing the Motion Odyssey Movie that opened more than 10 years ago.
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