Bloomie's off to quick start at first Home Store in Vegas
By Carole Sloan -- Furniture Today, November 11, 2002
New York — The newly opened free-standing Bloomingdale's Home Store in Las Vegas "is exceeding plan nicely," according to Joe Laneve, Bloomie's senior vice president, home.
"It is gorgeous, doing very well and will be the blueprint for physical layouts in future home stores," he said.
Las Vegas marks a return to free-standing home stores for this Federated division, which had four such units in the 1970s in Jenkintown, Pa., Chestnut Hill, Mass., and Manhasset and Eastchester, N.Y. The company hasn't said how many of the new home stores it plans to open.
Another Federated division, Macy's West, also has a Home Store in Las Vegas.
"We are very different from them," Laneve said. "We are more upscale, and more private-label in our mix. This is a market that is very right for Bloomingdale's."
The store, which opened this month, has more space for home furnishings than any Bloomingdale's other than the flagship store in New York, Laneve said.
Among the top sellers in furniture are the store's exclusive Provence and Tradewinds collections and pieces from French manufacturer Grange that are part of the Provence statement. Provence was launched across the home furnishings division in all of the company's stores in September and is the fashion centerpiece in the Las Vegas store.
Two other Bloomingdale's Home Stores, both in the Chicago area, will open by next fall. A 130,000-square-foot Medina Temple store in Chicago will open in early February, and a 90,000-square-foot store now occupied by Saks Fifth Avenue in Oakbrook Center, west of the city, is scheduled to open next fall.
"We will use Medina and Las Vegas as the core for all our stores," Laneve said. "We've added new vendors and product lines across the store, and we are able to show more breadth of product....
"In the Medina store, every business will have its own floor. Furniture, rugs and bedding will be on the fourth floor," he said. "Oakbrook will have a similar layout to Las Vegas."
