Worldwide Furniture adds bedroom line

Names former Home Line EVP Jon Marino president

Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, September 6, 2011

Worldwide Furniture’s Baldwin collection is available in black and includes two panel beds. Case pieces feature four travertine accents on the tops.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Andrew Schure, who produces a laminate home office line in a factory he owns in Lithuania, is now offering a new line of melamine bedroom sets from the same facility.

Schure and two other investors formed the bedroom company, Worldwide Furniture Group, in April and named Jon Marino, former Home Line executive vice president of global operations, president.

Schure's office company, Worldwide Furniture, continues to produce a line of laminate home office that is shipped to retailers container direct.

Schure said he launched the bedroom line to make better use of the factory, which he has owned since 2005.

Jon Marino

"I bought the factory in Lithuania and operated it very nicely until around 2009," he said. "At that point, we sort of reached a plateau, so I was looking to expand the factory and increase the volume and look to other products I could make."

The new bedroom line, made with what he terms a high quality melamine rather than paper laminate, features five-piece sets that retail as low as $599 to $699.

The product will be assembled and packaged as complete bedroom groups in the company's Valley Forge, Pa., facility from parts produced in the 100,000-square-foot plant in Lithuania.
The groups are available on a quick ship basis from a warehouse in King of Prussia, Pa., which will inventory the entire line.

Drawers have fully finished interiors and are assembled with glue and dowel construction. Case pieces are assembled with full bottom case panels for extra stability, use metal brackets and stretcher bars and have fully stapled Masonite backs.

The company is promoting the line heavily in the Northeast - from northern Virginia to Boston, its primary distribution area. Schure and Marino said it is selling well. It also recently added reps in Georgia, Ohio, Pittsburgh and upstate New York.

Worldwide eventually plans to show the line in High Point, but has mainly been promoting it through its sales force.

"It has been unanimously well received and we are looking forward to aggressively expanding it," Marino said. "It really fills a need right now for good product for everyday people. That is where it fits and given the current economic climate out there, we are well suited to serve the vast majority of the furniture buying public."