UPDATE: Boyles Furniture parent makes management changes

Appoints three to finance, sales, creative posts

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, February 22, 2010

CONOVER, N.C. — Hendricks Furniture Group, parent of retailer Boyles Furniture & Rugs, has named Wayne Tsunoda vice president of finance and created new positions that bring its merchandising, marketing and sales operations under one team.

Kathy Kennedy-Miller was named creative director, and HFG executive Dan Minor has been promoted to vice president of sales and merchandising.

Hendricks announced the new positions along with structural changes that the company said are designed help Boyles more effectively and efficiently respond to consumer demand at its five remaining North Carolina stores.

Tsunoda replaces Jeff Leary, who was hired as vice president of finance and controller in October, when Hendricks Furniture Group was in the midst of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company won court approval to emerge from Chapter 11 in January. Spokesman Matt Ferebee said Leary was an interim vice president of finance.

Tsunoda was most recently with accounting firm KPMG in Charlotte, N.C., and has more than 20 years of public and private financial management and accounting experience, HFG said.
"Wayne's fresh approach and experience will help us reconfigure and enhance our organization's enterprise systems," Chad Hendricks, president of the Conover, N.C.-based HFG. "These changes, together with Wayne's strategic interpretation of our finances, will be invaluable to our management team and its decision making."

The company added that the once-separate buying, merchandising and sales groups are now "integrated to respond to customer demand in the most effective, efficient way possible."

The integrated effort will led be by HFG sales management veteran Minor, formerly vice president of sales for HFG. Kennedy-Miller, now creative director, is a retail, design and visual display expert who has worked in the consumer and commercial furnishings industries, the company said.

Minor and Kennedy-Miller will be responsible for ensuring Boyles' retail efforts "accurately reflect consumer tastes, interests and pricing expectations," from product selection and development to effective retail promotion and display, the company said.

HFG buyer Bob Kapellusch left the company earlier this month. Ferebee said Kapellusch's responsibilities will be assumed by Minor and by HFG's integrated sales and merchandising team, including Kennedy-Miller.

The company confirmed that another unidentified merchandising employee also is no longer with the company while a third was recently promoted to a new position.

Kapellusch, contacted by Furniture/Today, said he was terminated, disagreeing with the company's earlier characterization that he left "to pursue other opportunities." The industry veteran had been with Boyles for 20 years and before that, worked for retailer Weir's in Dallas as advertising manager and buyer.

"Obviously I did not leave to pursue other opportunities, but now that I'm gone, I do need to pursue other opportunities" in the industry, he said.