Activity heating up in entertainment
New electronics create opportunity for attractive, functional furniture
By Tom Edmonds -- Furniture Today, October 12, 2003
High Point — With a huge variety of televisions selling well in electronics stores, home entertainment cabinetry has been one of furniture's bright spots for several market cycles.
Consistent with industry tendencies, the entertainment bandwagon is already crowded, and it will certainly add a few more manufacturers at this High Point market.
Thus, retailers will have an abundance of choices as they attempt to select the television stands, entertainment centers and home theater walls that will sell best in their stores.
Because there are so many television styles on the market, the dimension and shape of entertainment furniture has evolved to accommodate wider, shorter and sometimes flatter video monitors. With plasma and other flat-screen televisions such as liquid-crystal displays, the solutions range from simple yet elegant consoles to elaborate pop-up cabinets and modified wall systems.
Since entertainment has been a strong performer at retail, the category is appealing to offshore factories that prefer to ship numerous containers direct.
"We think there's an opportunity there, a big one," said Jesse Brinkley, president of sales, marketing and product development for Harbor Home International and Prime Resources International, an importer that is bringing a dozen new entertainment groups to market.
The heavy involvement of the importers creates some value for retailers who want to offer large-scale walls at price points below $2,000.
"The whole intent is to give the scale and the quality that retailers and consumers want as well as a great price," said Brinkley, whose entertainment groups are designed to correlate with his company's imported leather upholstery.
Perfect harmony
Correlation is a merchandising concept that appears to be popping up in home entertainment more and more as factories seek to leverage their products into a room or whole-house program.
For instance, Flexsteel, the upholstery major, is adding entertainment wall systems to go with its upholstery and occasional tables. And Sligh Furniture is adding a new series of occasional tables to complement its entertainment program.
Following the same theme, Oakwood Interiors, which is best known as an oak bedroom resource, is adding entertainment to its best-selling Versailles collection. The French country pattern in oak will help Oakwood develop deeper relationships with its dealers, while also allowing the manufacturer to participate in a hot category, said Walter Huhan, vice president of sales.
Martin Furniture, building on its new alliance with Kathy Ireland Home, will introduce this market two home entertainment groups, Nottingham and Romantica, that are extensions of successful case goods patterns from KI Home by Standard Furniture.
"The ability to coordinate with designs that are already proven winners in the marketplace should be a big advantage for us," said Duane Utt, Martin's vice president of sales and marketing.
Wider, taller, better
While the cavities for televisions are getting wider and wider, reflecting the wide-screen standard for many new televisions, some entertainment centers are getting taller and taller. Less than the changing shape of televisions, this reflects the immense dimensions of many new homes.
"You see it all the time," said Kelly Cain, vice president and product manager for home entertainment at Stanley Collections. "These great rooms are truly massive, with towering ceilings, and sometimes you need a taller entertainment unit to keep it from getting dwarfed."
At 102-inches tall, Stanley's new home theater wall, part of the new Villa Antica traditional collection, is unlikely to be dwarfed, even in the largest great room.
Others such as Hooker and Sligh are offering entertainment centers that are taller than what was considered "conventional" just a few years ago. Manufacturers also have started finishing the tops of their entertainment units because many great rooms now have overlooking staircases and balconies.
The sexiest number in home entertainment electronics continues to be plasma and other flat-screen technologies. These flat-screen monitors, which themselves are impressive style statements, have triggered some new furniture forms. While the console has been around many years, the shallow mounting hutch, which shows off the thin profile of the monitor while hiding the wires, was developed expressly for flat screens, and these hutches are being offered with many new consoles at virtually all price points, from ready-to-assemble up to high-end assembled goods.
Discounters and other retailers of flat-pack furniture will have plenty to look at in High Point in the entertainment category. For RTA furniture factories, home entertainment may not be their biggest category, but it has been their most vigorous for a couple of years.
Majors up to bat
All the majors will have new entertainment series on display at market, but O'Sullivan Furniture has started a new brand expressly to accommodate high-end consumer electronics. The new brand, Home Architecture, will feature two collections. One, Plasmatics, has an adjustable stand for flat-screen display, and the other, Variant 1.0, offers several finish options on consoles and other display stands for flat screens.
Looking to occupy a niche slightly above the flat-pack specialists, Palliser is offering a new series of as many as nine entertainment centers and walls blending wood fronts with laminate cases. At prices ranging from $499 to $799, these lifestyle units are scaled more modestly than some, but they still have the required style and storage.
"We're at the midsize for entertainment groups, something that emphasizes the style and design of the electronics without getting too large or too expensive," said Don Loewen, product manager at Palliser.
Across the price and style spectrum, entertainment is the hot wood category, the one that every factory wants a piece of right now. With so much new product at the market, choosing will be the big challenge for buyers.
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