Garber family launches Valley Furniture in Pa.
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, March 15, 2010
WHITEHALL, Pa. —
The Garber family, which led D&D Home Furnishings here before it merged with a competitor and later closed, has opened a new furniture store at its 45,000-square-foot former flagship location here.
Valley Furniture & Mattress is led by Jon Garber and Julie Sebastian, children of Dave Garber, who was CEO of the three-store D&D and then CEO of DD Huber after it merged with Oskar Huber Furniture in 2008. That business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few months later and subsequently shut down.
Dave Garber said he is acting as a consultant to his children and Valley Furniture.
Although it has a new name and the next generation of Garber family members as its principals, Valley Furniture primarily features the brands D&D carried before — including Klaussner, American Drew, Lea, Fashion Bed Group, Ashley, Jofran, Vaughan-Bassett, Universal, Stanley, Rowe, Riverside, Sealy and Stearns & Foster.
New suppliers include Craftmaster, Southern Motion, Wynwood, Hekman and Howard Miller.
With Ashley, Garber said the retailer is doing a store-within-a-store concept along the lines of the retail expansion push Ashley announced in February at the Las Vegas Market. In three weeks, it will open a 4,000-square-foot no-frills area called “Valley Values,” dedicated to promotional, low-margin Ashley goods. It will be one-price, cash-and-carry oriented, offering the option of credit, other financing or set-up service with a 5% additional charge for each.
Garber said the store already tried the concept in a smaller space with Ashley home entertainment furniture and stationary upholstery, and it worked so well that Valley decided to expand it to youth and master bedroom, dinettes and motion upholstery for what he calls the “commodity customer.”
Overall, however, the store offers a broad line of promotional to upscale goods.
Located near Allentown, Pa., and about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, Valley Furniture soft opened in November, and Garber said the response so far has been “really good…. People are glad to see us back.”
That's not to say business isn't tough. “People are cautious,” he said. They're not buying rooms. They're buying pieces, which really hurts the volume.”
Garber said the store lowered its break-even volume to about 50% of what it had been as D&D, a result of having no debt and because its landlord was eager to negotiate a favorable new lease. The Garber family, he added, has invested $1 million in the start up.
The company is shooting for $5 million in sales its first year, he said, but added the store will be profitable with less than that.
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