Full room groupings have been around awhile
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, March 14, 2005
Our industry has a history of taking the merchandising concept du jour and running it out until it covers all regions and price points. Some of you no doubt remember the explosion of warehouse showrooms in the 1960s and 1970s. It started with Levitz and soon we had Mangurian's, Gold Key, Crossroads, Wickes and many others, some still with us.
A trade publication in the early '70s that focused on home furnishings and was a daily (but I won't say which one) predicted 90% of all furniture would be sold in warehouse showrooms by 1980. (No, it wasn't quoting me.)
Since then, we have seen the industry almost universally adopt vignette displays, manufacturers' branded in-store galleries, no-no-no advertising, fresh-baked cookies, adding rugs to the mix, and offering at least two price points of Louis Philippe in every bedroom department. Somehow, animated, talking animals like at Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlors never got into every furniture store.
These days, the movement to offer full room groupings, a la Rooms To Go, has reached every nook and cranny of our industry at retail. And I know of at least six store managements that say they created the room package concept. Are they all correct?
I get to read interesting things, and in the December Polk County (Florida) Historical Quarterly there's a piece on the 100th anniversary of Badcock Furniture. It's a fun company history, and on page 11 is a copy of a print ad from the 1930s, we believe. It offers a seven-piece sofabed group for $149, a five-piece dinette for $47 and a 10-piece bedroom group for $178. If you buy all three rooms for $378 (the ad says "compare at $399"), Badcock offered a free 16-piece set of dishes. Such a deal!
In the 1960s, Philip Levy Stores, once part of the Reliable Stores chain, offered a $699 three-room deal in the local Sunday paper. I remember it because it always ran in the comics.
My wife and I, while in graduate school, bought a two-room package from Sears, and paid for it using a never-ending book of coupons. The pine bedroom happened to come from a Lea Inds. factory near my hometown, but the exposed-wood jackknife sofabed, two chairs and three tables came from sources unknown.
Our basset hound loved to chew on those exposed wood arms and he, single pawed, ruined the upholstery in about 18 months.
Are you selling room groupings? If not, let me know. Someone, somewhere might be doing well without selling the whole room.
You might get an award.
