Rooms To Go growing
To open 16 new stores in 18 months
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, February 15, 2010
SEFFNER, Fla. —
With two new distribution centers in place and hints that the economic climate is improving, Rooms To Go plans to open 16 new stores over the next 18 months, its biggest growth push in at least three years.
Jeff Seaman, CEO of the 121-store Top 100 company, said the growth will boost its store count by about a dozen units.
The rest will be replacement stores, as the retailer converts some of its oldest and smaller showrooms to the updated 35,000- to 40,000-square-foot formats, most including attached Rooms To Go Kids & Teens showrooms. About three of the former Rhodes locations that RTG acquired in 2005 will be replaced with new stores, including the showroom in Mobile, Ala.
Roughly half of the net growth will come in Texas, including two new markets Seaman wouldn't indentify. About three stores will open in Florida — including new market Destin — and the others will be in Georgia and Alabama, he said.
The midpriced RTG opened a 35,000-square-foot store in McAllen in South Texas in November and its fifth Houston-area store last month in Katy, but neither is counted in the 16-store expansion.
New stores are already under construction in Houston and Dallas and in the Perimeter Mall area of metro Atlanta, where RTG is filling out existing territory and expects to open within six months. In addition, a 30,000-square-foot Sarasota, Fla., store will soon be under construction to replace what Seaman called a “vintage 1991” showroom, probably by the end of the year.
Seaman said his company started to see a turn for the better in business this past fall. Part of it had to do with easy-to-beat comparison numbers from 2008, “but it's definitely taking a tick up,” he said.
Some of the expansion, including in Houston, has been planned for a while, but Seaman said the company slowed the pace of growth. It first wanted to finish two new distribution centers, an 850,000-square-foot facility in the New Orleans area that opened last year, and a 1 million-square-foot center in Houston that just came online, so it could support new business.
Also, “we wanted to get a little more visibility on the economy,” he said.
“I'm feeling better (about business),” Seaman added. “I think it's going to be a slow slog out of it, but there's no doubt things are a little better.”
For 2009, he estimated sales came in at about $1.35 billion for the company, down about 11% from the year before. RTG operates stores throughout economically hard-hit Florida as well as in Georgia, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Alabama.
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Rooms To Go plans to open 16 new stores
Feb 10, 2010
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