Home entertainment sparks 'wide' interest
By Alfred Dockery -- Furniture Today, April 24, 2005
High Point — Home entertainment furniture sparked "wide" interest this market as retailers shopped for goods to accommodate the changing shapes and sizes of televisions.
As rectangular flat-panel TVs of various technologies replace squarish tube TVs, opportunity and excitement continued to ripple through the category.
Among the products making a strong showing here were consoles and console-hutch combinations with movable back panels to accommodate plasma, DLP and LCD TVs. Home entertainment walls remained popular in a variety of styles, footprints and heights, with somewhat less emphasis on armoires this market.
In open-architecture units, Stanley's Europa Entertainment Wall System loosely defined the space around the TV using tall, slender bookcases, a sleek freestanding console and a wall-mounted shelf.
Players in home entertainment showed an array of options to hide or soften the TV's presence when not in use.
In its No. 9732 plasma TV cabinet, Sligh uses a faux book panel that raises and lowers like a window. Hooker's Kimball Bridge wall unit has sliding leaded-glass doors that warm and soften the TV's outline. Riverside's Majorca home theater unit has folding doors that show a sunburst pattern when closed.
"The leadership that was provided by a couple of designers a decade ago, who decided that simple, open-architecture furniture was what was appropriate for electronics, is being challenged by the consumer," said Stephen Wahrhaftig, marketing vice president at Ameriwood. "Women in particular don't care for it. It's exactly the same story we find in storage. Women like closed storage. Men could care less. Men buy electronics. So it's the same old story."
Preferences for open and closable designs also seem to vary by demographics, with baby boomers opting for closable units and Gen-X and Gen-Y more comfortable with open.
"Open looks are gaining importance in home entertainment pieces," said Hank Long, senior vice president of merchandising at Hooker Furniture. "This is a hip look with younger consumers who want to show off their electronic equipment, but they want a warm furniture look and not a stainless steel stand."
Hooker showed an updated version of an étagère room divider that can be used for displaying collectibles, or can accommodate most 42-inch and some 50-inch TVs with the removal of some of its shelves and partitions.
The Consumer Electronics Assn. projects that Americans will buy 36 million new TVs this year, spending $8 billion more than last year.
Furniture companies, meanwhile, are becoming more interested in technology trends. Several mentioned at market joining CEA, attending the big consumer electronics trade show and routinely reviewing databases of TV specs.
"People are starting to see HDTV, and I think the reaction is going to be just like it was back in the '60s when color TV came on board," said Kelly Cain, vice president and product manager for Stanley Collections. "Once you saw a color TV, you didn't want to go back and watch a black-and-white TV."
It's clear that TVs are shifting to the 16 by 9 format and thus getting wider. What isn't known yet is which technology, width and furniture types will be the big winners.
This is leading to retailer and consumer confusion, and requiring furniture makers to build enough flexibility into pieces to handle TVs from 40 up to 60 or even 70 inches wide.
"TVs currently use five different technologies (CRT, plasma, projection, LCD and DLP)," said Shelley Mendenhall, product designer with Sauder. "All come in different sizes and weights. No one knows which will become the most popular. Components are also changing dimensions. Everything is changing."
Many of the new units here had large slide-out media drawers to store videotapes, DVDs and CDs. Wire management has lost its "as long as it doesn't cost anything" status to become an almost unspoken requirement.
Other niceties in entertainment furniture here included accent lighting, touch lighting, parabolic soundboards, and doors finished on both sides and designed to pivot to conceal either the TV or curio shelves/media storage. Concave and corner wall units rounded out the offerings at many resources.
Aspen Furniture had a drop-front Gamers drawer in some of its consoles, which have jacks for use with videogames and camcorders.
Other companies reporting strong action in home entertainment included Bassett, Bush Inds. and Martin Furniture.
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Home entertainment sparks 'wide' interest
Apr 17, 2005 -
Home entertainment sparks 'wide' interest
May 1, 2005
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