Wickes opens first store of the future
Package-oriented approach borrows from Rooms To Go
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, September 8, 2003
Downers Grove, Ill. — Wickes Furniture has opened its store of the future here, and its future looks a lot like Rooms To Go.
While the 35,000-square-foot store in the Finley Square shopping center isn't the first to carry a Rooms To Go-inspired line of merchandise or convert to RTG's room-package pricing format, it's the first to do it in a Rooms To Go-like box.
Designed by Gerald Benatar, Rooms To Go's vice president of design, the latest Wickes uses neoclassical architectural elements inside and out, similar to that of its Top 100 co-parent. (RTG and Boca Raton, Fla.-based Sun Capital Partners teamed up last year to acquire Wheeling, Ill.-based Wickes.)
Compared to the old Wickes, the new unit is more contemporary in feel, as is the merchandise mix.
"This is the first new store of the all-new Wickes Furniture," said Howard Slavin, named Wickes president and chief executive officer earlier this year. By the end of the store's grand opening weekend, Slavin was predicting the store — Wickes' smallest — will be the biggest-volume unit in the 34-store chain, with annual sales of $20 million to $25 million.
Rooms To Go-like elements include warm brick walls and columns dividing vignettes, and a dark hardwood main aisle leading to a central rotunda bordered by fluted metal columns.
Large windows across the front of the store and partly down the sides let in natural light — enhancing the presentation and making a big difference, Slavin said.
The store is the first of at least eight that Wickes plans to open in the next two years, primarily in its largest markets, Chicago and Los Angeles. There will be a mix of relocations and new stores, though replacing the older, larger Wickes boxes is a priority, Slavin said. Already in the works for next summer are a Naperville, Ill., relocation and a new store in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
In Downers Grove, the new store actually replaces a Wickes store in nearby Willowbrook that closed over a year ago. It is the chain's 13th unit in the Chicago market.
Slavin said the store should do about twice the sales of Willowbrook. The Rooms To Go-like approach has been working elsewhere and the new look should only help, he said. Since the transition, same-store sales have been up in double digits and there has been "a dramatic increase in our average ticket," Slavin said, though he would not be specific.
Wickes' sales should approach last year's $365 million, he said, even without the five former Dallas stores that were doing a little more than $50 million. Those stores were closed late last year after the RTG/Sun acquisition.
The chain had completed most of its merchandising changes by April, working through old inventory and moving in new goods. Slavin estimated that 65% to 70% of the assortment now overlaps with Rooms To Go.
Wickes culled its assortment by about 40%, dropping whole categories such as recliners and home office and some prominent lines, including La-Z-Boy (once a $10 million retail business), Berkline and BenchCraft, while tightly editing its core bedroom, living room and dining room presentations.
Special orders, which had accounted for as much as 35% to 40% of some stores' business, no longer exist.
Another key change was the move to a room-packaging strategy, presenting all its groups as packages. And the Wickes slogan — "Great value by the piece. Greater value by the room." — sounds like RTG's "Buy the piece, save a little. Buy the room, save a lot."
Wickes also took cues from Room To Go on accessorization — detailing its vignettes with bold wall art, flowers and other accents — and integrated RTG's aggressive deferred-payment financing program. For the grand openings, Wickes promoted no payment, no down payment and no interest (without accrual) until February 2005.
