Furniture Brands to open two outlet stores
Units will be in Washington area
Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, July 16, 2009
ST. LOUIS — Furniture Brands International is opening two Furniture Brands Outlet stores in the greater Washington, D.C., market this summer.The company, which owns Thomasville, Broyhill, Lane, Henredon, Drexel Heritage and other names, will open the showrooms, former Linens 'n Things stores, in Rockville, Md., and Vienna, Va. The showrooms, each about 50,000 square feet, are expected to open the last week of July and the first week of August, respectively.
The stores will be leased and run by Retail Strategy and Innovation (RSI), a new Houston-based firm formed by Jeff Yellen, president of liquidator Great American Furniture Services, and Amir Mireskandari, who leads rug importer Miresco Investments.
Yellen said the new company is independent of Great American and Miresco, with separate employees. RSI is designed to assist companies like Furniture Brands with management, staffing and operating of stores, he said.
In D.C., Furniture Brands will use the showrooms to sell discontinued and closeout goods in a controlled way, said company spokesman John Hastings.
"It's a way to really protect the brands by selling in a setting and manner that are more appropriate for the brands," he said, rather than selling off goods through a deep discounter.
"We get more control over the pricing than you would if you turned to a third party and more control over how the brands are used in advertising. It helps protect the investment we've made in brand image," he added.
Neither Hastings nor Yellen would disclose the investment in the stores or projected sales.
Hastings said the Washington area was chosen partly because it is close to FBI product warehouses and because of attractive lease terms on the properties.
Asked about possible distribution concerns, Hastings said the outlet stores should not be a problem with Furniture Brands dealers because the outlets will sell discontinued goods and other items that are different from the goods regular dealers sell.
"Everything in the two stores will be product that was offered to and declined by our dealers," he said. Furniture Brands also won't be blowing the goods out at low prices just to get rid of them, he added.
Hastings said the stores are the company's first multi-brand dedicated outlets and that there are no current plans for additional outlet stores in other markets.
Some Furniture Brands companies, including Lane, Broyhill and Thomasville, have operated their own brand-specific outlets, but they are being phased out, he said.
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These guys amir and jeff are real geniuses, they have a store on Rockville Pike, which is one of the most travelled roads in the western hemisphere and their "favorable lease" did not include a sign lighted or not on this road. These stores hired RSI to liquidate all of the Drexel and Lane and Broyhill, and boy did we! I sold a Drexel sofa for $550 and since I refused my Manager John Martens sold two nice Drexel arm chairs for $150. Then the two other genius sales people I was working with wondered why Furniture Brands wouldnt send us any more Drexel or Broyhill or Lane or Thomasville. Then the buyer bought super low grade Homeline and Vaughn Basset and wanted us to sell it for twice as much. They are truly masterful retail brains. On top of that not ONE SINGLE PIECE of furniture at the Rockville location is undamaged due to the fact that at any given moment they only have a maximum of 2 people working in the stockroom.
Chris Pennington - 2010-25-1 11:59:02 EST -
Yes, FBN management proves that they either know nothing about how the retailers work and react to new competition or just couldn't give a $hit about the market. The companies are the laughing stock of an industry that is in full melt daown.
charles Farley - 2009-17-7 12:28:23 EDT -
Double the misery, double the stupidity, double the penchant for all the wrong decisions by ScozzaWrigley. Are the board of directors of FBI totally asleep and irresponsible? The Chinese are just waiting to buy this increasingly screwed up mess for half pennies on the dollar to gain direct market access. We now have a herd of cadaver companies that it would take a miracle to bring back from the dead. FBI is now outsourcing its garbage collection. But it will not make any difference because it is producing utterly irrelevant merchandise to replace utterly irrelevant merchandise. It is no longer a furniture company. It is a scheme for a few executives to make a lot of money unsystematically destroying the bones of long dead former entrepreneurial corporations. It would be very edifying if men like Tom Finch, Henry Wilson, Ed Broyhill and Mr. Lane could return from the dead and post their comments on this mess here on Furniture Today. I imagine the commentary would be very scathing.
Robert Mark - 2009-16-7 12:50:08 EDT -
Yet another example of why the furniture industry should NOT hire outside of itself. Mr. Chewing Gum has made so many mistakes and here is another one! I double he check on the reputation or credit of Great American Furniture Services! I could of course rant about the numbers of awesome unemployed people with years of furniture experience who could run such an operation. Instead – he goes to Great American??? As a result of Mr. Chewing Gum, I have sold all my stock FBI stock!!!!!
Bad FBI!! - 2009-16-7 11:30:58 EDT -
"Hastings said the outlet stores should not be a problem with Furniture Brands dealers because the outlets will sell discontinued goods and other items that are different from the goods regular dealers sell."
Kudos to FBI for coming up with an alternative to Big Lots. Of course Broyhill has a CURRENT sofa in Sam's Club right now. What are you thinking?
I have plenty of discontinued FBI products on my floor. With style lifespans AND turnover at an all time low, that is unavoidable. I challenge FBI to offer to buy back any discontinued products from the Washington area retailers close to these Outlets. That is also the right thing to do.
Retailer - 2009-16-7 10:00:11 EDT
FBI to open two outlet stores
07/19/2009Lever joins Retail Strategy
08/16/2009Kloss sells 11 stores to Furniture Brands
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