Home office still big for Louis Shanks
By Tom Edmonds -- Furniture Today, June 28, 2004
Austin, Texas — While its modular collections don't sell as well as they did five years ago, home office is still a better-than-average category for Louis Shanks of Texas.
With category sales tracking ahead of overall growth, Mike Forwood, vice president and buyer, said he's glad that the high-end chain didn't cut the department's floor space as so many other retailers did during the early years of this decade.
"We have as much space as we've ever had devoted to home office, and it's performing well," Forwood said.
Sources consider Louis Shanks to be a leading home office performer among high-end merchants. The five-store chain — serving the Austin, Houston and San Antonio markets — is winning with a SOHO approach that stresses style and prestige as much as function and electronics. With stores whose total display space stretches from 35,000 square feet to 130,000 square feet, Shanks has home office departments that vary greatly; the smallest is 2,500 square feet, and the largest is 7,500 square feet.
While the Texas economy has slumped some since the turn of the decade, the new-housing boom has continued unabated. That's good for new furniture of all types, but it's been a particular boon for home office, Forwood said, because of the design of new homes.
"When you look at a lot of the new architectural lines, the home office has a lot more up-front visibility than it used to," he said. "Now it's right there as you enter the house, and people are creating more of a library type of effect."
As a result, Shanks is selling more of the fancy writing desks and executive office pieces developed by Hekman, Hooker, Sligh and Stanley.
Forwood said those companies have done an excellent job of blending classic styling with the modern requirements of the electronic age.
"They're very aware of how it has to function," he said.
But home office at Shanks frequently is a larger sale than just the front library/executive office.
"Some homes are taking two to three desks because people want to use computers in several locations around the house," Forwood said. "And then in the kids room and the family room, people are looking for furniture that has both computer, entertainment and game capability."
Some of these sales can be quite complicated, and salespeople have to solve something of a jigsaw puzzle, matching space limitations with the consumer's equipment.
"Most of the customers coming in are pretty savvy about what they need," he said. "We try to get them to tell us about all the components and then we'll find the cabinet that fits their needs."
The staff also looks to find the right chair to match the desk. With an assortment supplied by Hancock & Moore and Bradington-Young, the sale can grow by $800 to $1,500 when a chair is tacked on, Forwood said.
And for the most part, the home office sale is not a margin-challenged exercise, Forwood said. "I haven't seen as much imported home office product in the market as I've seen in case goods, and that does help us maintain better margins. It's a good department for us."
