Shanks likes temporary stores
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, January 18, 2010
AUSTIN, Texas —
Louis Shanks of Texas has made a nice business out of short-term business.
This month the Top 100 company opened its fourth temporary Louis Shanks Furniture Outlet here in a former 25,000-square-foot La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries store. Even without advertising, “people just flocked to the store as soon as the sign went up,” said Shanks President Mike Forwood.
Not that he's surprised. The Texas retailer has had great success with the temporary-store concept since Shanks first tried it in 2008, renting a vacated building at a busy intersection in Austin for a Henredon Estate Sale. The retailer sold about $750,000 in furniture in one weekend — everything from discontinued items to dropped and dented pieces.
The concept expanded from there to include more brands, but still with short-term leases of three to six months, which in this economic climate the retailer secures “for practically nothing,” Forwood said.
It's a traveling road show of sorts, roving to the Texas cities where Shanks has its permanent stores. After the Austin venture, the company moved to Houston for an outlet store that brought in crowds from January through Memorial Day of last year; San Antonio for an August-through-December period; and now back to Austin for 90 days.
The latest outlet's offering includes overstock and discontinued goods from suppliers such as Henredon, Ferguson Copeland, Artistica, Maitland-Smith, Sherrill and Hooker.
“It's been tremendous to cash flow,” Forwood said, adding that the previous outlet in San Antonio helped boost Shanks' sales 17.5% in that market for the period it was open.
The most recent outlets have been close to the permanent stores. Originally, Shanks wanted to keep some distance between the two to avoid cannibalism of sales, but instead it's finding that customers are comfortable cross-shopping and buying from both. In Austin, Shanks salespeople can literally walk customers back and forth between the two stores to build tickets.
“Essentially it gives us 25,000 square feet more showroom with no added expenses,” Forwood said.
The four-store Shanks (not including temporary stores) is No. 87 on Furniture/Today's Top 100 with estimated sales of $63.4 million in 2008. The company doesn't disclose sales figures, but Forwood said sales for the past calendar year were roughly flat with 2008.
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