JLA to offer slipcovers, upholstered headboards

Rusty Ortiz heads new furniture division

Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, September 25, 2008

FREMONT, Calif. — Upholstery fabric supplier JLA Home is launching a furniture division that will offer portable upholstered headboards and slipcovers.

Called JLA Furniture, the new division is headed by Rusty Ortiz, a former senior vice president of sales and marketing for Keeco, a textile and bedding manufacturer.

One of five styles, this headboard from JLA Home comes in three ready-to-assemble pieces with a slipcover.

According to Ortiz, the new EE Headboard ("Easy to Carry, Easy to Change") is different from other upholstered headboards in that its patent-pending modular design is ready-to-assemble and comes in a retail-ready take home carton.

A queen-sized headboard comes in three pieces and weighs 38 pounds. It will retail for $149 and comes with a neutral faux suede slipcover.

There are 15 stock slipcover fabrics but with its affiliation with JLA Home, "We could pretty much customize to whatever retailers want us to," Ortiz said.

He said that JLA Furniture also could do a tie-in with the company's fashion bedding division to provide a turn-key bedding ensemble.

"If we get the market penetration we expect, we could really begin to redefine what a conventional bed-in-a-bag looks like with shams, bed skirts, sheets and slipcovers to coordinate. We see a lot of ability to leverage capabilities in fashion bedding as well as our strong expertise in fabric," Ortiz said.

He said the product is targeted at "everything from furniture specialty stores to large mass merchandisers."

"We have worked very hard to bring a truly consumer-driven idea to market," he said, adding that the product, nine months in development, "features the latest in quality, convenience and value for today's savvy consumer and we are excited by the wide support and commitments from all levels of our key retail partners."

The EE headboard comes in five styles and a variety of slipcovers that will make it easy to update a room's décor without buying new furniture, the company said.

Michael Mullen, JLA vice president, said the product "offers a true bedroom furnishing solution to our customers and will be very synergistic to our fabric and fashion bedding business. We believe this is a game-changing idea for the upholstered headboard category."

JLA has had a soft rollout of the headboard program at markets earlier this year, and also will show the product line at next month's High Point Market, which opens Oct. 20.