Home Reserve selling RTA sofas on Web site
By Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, August 22, 2005
Fort Wayne, Ind. — Ready-to-assemble upholstery lines have come and gone, but a company here called Home Reserve hopes it's found the secret to success.
They say it's in the box — actually, three UPS-able boxes that contain strong, full-sized RTA sofas, not scaled-down versions. The sofas, along with a short line of chairs, loveseats and ottomans, for now are sold only through the company's Web site, www.homereserve.com.
Blaine Wieland, president of the five-year-old company, said other RTA upholstery efforts may have fallen short because pieces were smaller in order to ship easily. Home Reserve devoted three-and-a-half years to research and development before starting production 18 months ago in its computerized Fort Wayne factory.
The aim, Wieland said, was to develop a sofa that met strict packaging requirements but was big and strong.
"We had an R&D lab and worked with UPS, designing the frame to fit UPS box sizes," he said. "It took four patents because we had to keep inventing different ways to (make it work). You get (a sofa) in a very small box and then, when you put it together, it has to be tremendously rigid. It's got to hold thousands of pounds."
A Home Reserve sofa ships in three boxes weighing 56, 44 and 40 pounds each, well under the UPS penalty weight of 70 pounds per box. After a customer hits the "buy" button on the Web site, the product is manufactured and delivered within six days.
The company targets 18- to 35-year-olds, apartment dwellers, first-time homeowners, college students, and parents with small kids and small budgets.
Until recently, when it added a square box arm, Home Reserve offered only one sofa style — a roll-arm in a selection of 84 fabrics, including several microfibers. Its Simplicity Classic Sofa in a chenille cover sells for $289, while models in microfiber sell for $329. A loveseat is $229, a chair $159, and an ottoman $74. Shipping is additional, with a sofa shipped anywhere in the United States for $47.
"We never intended to be a style leader or a fabric leader or anything," said Wieland. "Our whole thing is logistics and choice. We're not doing anything with design. We just look at what's really popular and then we make it really inexpensive, add our features and make it available on the Internet."
The goal, he said, is to continue growing the Internet business and possibly sell through retailers. "We're working with our first retail stores," Wieland said. "Our (market) is more likely to be small stores and specialty ready-to-assemble stores."
A Home Reserve sofa is much like a conventional sofa, measuring 86-inches wide, 33-inches high and 33.5-inches deep. The cover is pre-sewn and is pulled tightly over the frame for a tailored look. There are no springs, just 1.3 density foam, reduced from 1.5 because customers found the latter too hard. There's storage under the cushions.
Frames are certified to meet requirements developed by Purdue University. The product can endure 200-pound weights dropped 125,000 times on the seat, and 75 pounds applied to the arms 125,000 times, both equivalent to 60 years of average use. Frames also passed a test in which 100 pounds was pressed to a sofa back 250,000 times, simulating 120 years of average use. Products have a five-year warranty.
The Web site offers a range of services, and shows how to put the furniture together — a job the site says can be done in two to three hours for a sofa, using only a screwdriver; a chair takes 60 to 90 minutes. If a customer orders a cover that doesn't work in a room, they can exchange it, paying only the postage on returns. New, extra covers for seasonal changes cost $140.
The site has a question-and-answer section, pictures of fabrics and how they look on the product, and comments from customers. Less than 1% of the product has been returned, the company said.
Home Reserve owners aren't newbies in the furniture industry, having owned a college and hospital furniture company that eventually was sold to Sauder.
