UPDATE: HOM Furniture opening three stores in March

New HOM, two Gabberts units set for Sioux Falls and Sioux City

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, January 5, 2011

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — HOM Furniture will open its first new Gabberts Design Studio & Fine Furnishings stores here and in Sioux City, Iowa, in March, its first expansion of the high-end brand since the Top 100 company acquired it in 2008.

In Sioux Falls, HOM will open an 18,000-square-foot Gabberts along with a 62,000-square-foot HOM store in a former Sportsman's Warehouse location that HOM purchased last year. The retailer has raised the roof on the facility to make room for its typical two-level HOM, which will open in March to replace a 30,000-square-foot store it currently operates in the market.

That center will also feature a Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar and Sonic restaurant, said Rod Johansen, president and CEO of the Coon Rapids, Minn.-based chain. When the stores are open, HOM's store count will climb to 17 stores in greater Minneapolis/St. Paul and elsewhere in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, including three Gabberts locations and a Dock 86 weekends-only format.

In Sioux City, HOM will add a roughly 16,000-square-foot Gabberts to an existing 60,000-square-foot HOM location, part of a downtown mall-style property the company owns.

HOM acquired the one-store, Edina, Minn.-based Gabberts in September 2008. Johansen said HOM managed a slight sales increase with the Gabberts concept in 2009, and then followed this past year with a double-digit gain.

He said HOM also has succeeded with its Passages format in HOM stores, a gallery of higher-end goods including the Lauren Ralph Lauren line from Schnadig and better case goods from Bernhardt, among others. In March, HOM added a Stickley gallery to the Passages area in its Duluth, Minn., store, and "we've had some decent success with it so far," Johansen said.

Those successes led the company to move forward with the Gabberts expansion, he said.

"The Sioux City market lacks the service of better-goods retail, and in Sioux Falls, there's a pretty good appetite for it," Johansen said, adding that Gabberts already makes deliveries into the Sioux Falls market almost weekly.

Both Gabberts stores will carry the full line available in the Minneapolis-area flagship store, including Stickley, Century, Maitland-Smith, Serta and Tempur-Pedic in bedding, Brown Jordan and Summer Classics in outdoor furniture and carpeting and rugs from sources such as Fabrica, Masland and Karastan.

The combined projects in Sioux Falls and Sioux City represent about a $10 million investment in real estate and improvements, Johansen said. He said it's too early to make sales projections for the stores, but added that he believes the combined Gabberts and HOM stores in Sioux Falls will double the business HOM is currently doing out of its store there.

Business conditions for HOM remain challenging, Johansen said, although the company finished 2010 with sales of about $195 million, a gain over the estimated $183.5 million in 2009.