New Classic launching first whole-home collections

Three groups will debut at Las Vegas Market

Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, July 26, 2010

New Classic’s Franklin Park is a 34-piece collection that includes bedroom, dining room, living room and home entertainment. Made with hardwood solids, the group has a contemporary design and a dark espresso finish.

LAS VEGAS — Case goods and upholstery resource New Classic Home Furnishings is taking its first concerted whole-home approach at next week's Las Vegas Market with three new collections.

Franklin Park, Luna and Sanibel each have 25 to 35 SKUs of bedroom, dining room, occasional, home entertainment and upholstery.

Made with hardwood solids and ash, maple and birch veneers, the case goods are largely transitional or contemporary in design and have dark espresso or ebony finishes.

To keep a manageable SKU count, each collection has one bed, the company said. Dining sets are casual and feature counter and standard height tables and sideboards, rather than formal chinas or hutches.

A four-piece bedroom in Luna, a contemporary collection in an ebony finish, would retail from $899 to $999, while a six-piece dining set that includes a table, four chairs and a dining bench, would retail around $799.

Pricing was not available on the upholstery in the new collection.

New Classic also is launching six other new master bedrooms, nine dining rooms, 10 occasional groups and 10 stationary and motion upholstery groups. Combined, this represents the company's largest product introduction ever, a feat made possible by an expansion of its production facilities in the Guangzhou province of southern China.

New Classic is the marketing and distribution arm of Chinese furniture manufacturer Yihua International Group.

Including an expansion that came fully online about three months ago, Yihua's plant has about 1.2 million square feet of production space, said New Classic General Manager Michele McPherson.

Up to now, that facility has produced adult and youth bedroom, dining room and some entertainment. The dining portion will move to a 1 million-square-foot facility the company opened in the same region in March.

The upholstery is produced in a new 800,000-square-foot plant that also came online this year.

Heading up development of the new collections is Bruce Huggins, vice president of product development, who joined New Classic earlier this year from a similar post at Coaster.

"What it took is the right person to pull it all together and Bruce is the right guy," McPherson said. "He is quite brilliant at what he does. He tapped into what the sales managers and the customers were asking for - he figured out what everyone really wanted and needed and pushed us in that direction."

While the collections are meant to coordinate, they can be mixed and matched with other pieces in the line, she said.

She added that some sets are already in production and will hit the water around the time of market. Others are already in transit and will arrive at the company's Fontana, Calif., warehouse soon.

The collections and other new items also will be available on a container direct basis.

New Classic shows in World Market Center A-854. 

 

More Las Vegas Market August 2010 Coverage