Furniture Express opens first leather and bedding shop
By Tom Edmonds -- Furniture Today, November 23, 2003
Royal Oak, Mich. — Furniture Express, a fast-growing chain of promotional and midpriced stores, has opened the first in a series of new leather upholstery and bedding shops here.
A second unit of The Mattress & Leather Place will open in Troy, Mich., within a month, and the company intends to have as many as six operating by the end of 2005 as it looks to build its Detroit-area market share.
The Royal Oak store has about 6,000 square feet of display space. About a third is dedicated to bedding from Spring Air and the rest is for leather upholstery vignettes, including tables.
"It's a tough market in metro Detroit," said Rick Schwartz, Furniture Express vice president of sales. "We can't just sit back and expect it to come to us. We have to go out and do it. We thought this would be a good way to push for growth since these are our two hottest departments."
With smaller footprints than the Furniture Express stores, which typically are about 30,000 square feet, the shops allow the company to fill in suburban towns where it may not have the larger stores, said Schwartz, who is in charge of the expansion. He said the stores are designed in a clean, contemporary style that emphasizes fashion awareness and easy shopping.
The bedding program in the shops, which will parallel the offerings in the Furniture Express stores, features queen sets starting at $298 and moving up through the Spring Air line, topping out with a 200-square-foot Nature's Rest latex foam gallery where a queen set reaches a $5,000 price point. The bedding also includes several adjustable frames, with price points of about $1,800.
Leather vendors include El Ran, Klaussner and Primo, with sofa prices from $698 to $1,898. Tables are provided by Magnussen Home and Klaussner Case Goods.
Furniture Express, founded by Bob Berman in 1993, will have 12 Michigan stores once the Troy unit opens — 10 in the Detroit market and one each in Flint and Lansing. The company, which Schwartz said is ending 2003 "about even" with its 2002 sales of some $30 million, specializes in room packages in its larger stores.
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