Home Decorators Collection to Open 65 Retail Locat
Hazelwood, MO, March 30-- Home Decorators Collection, a company, which has focused on catalogs, is expanding into new territory, with plans to open 65 retail stores across the United States within the next five years.
The company has sold furniture, rugs and home accents through its catalog for about 15 years and online at homedecorators.com.
Home Decorators opened a retail store at Hazelwood, Missouri in 2003 and a new one on Town and Country, Missouri late last year, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The company, which previously used outlet stores as a way to sell outdated overstock, said these outlets will be closed.
The new retail stores offer shoppers a chance to come in and see and touch Home Decorators' most-popular merchandise.
"Our product is better when you get it" than catalog customers might expect when they place orders, said Kathy Lefler, executive vice president for Home Decorators Collection. "In the store, (customers) can actually see the quality."
The retail environment also taps into shoppers who would never buy furniture online or from a catalog, Lefler said.
About 58 percent of Americans shop from catalogs. But only a third of those shoppers will buy home décor and furniture without visiting a store, according to the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group in New York.
The growth of Internet shopping is turning a growing number of successful catalog companies into shop owners, said Sherry Chiger, editorial director of Catalog Age, a trade magazine.
Catalogs used to rely on buying lists of names to find new customers, Chiger said. Now, the Internet brings in a wider customer base and can turn a niche catalog into a popular brand more quickly. Chiger cites women's specialty stores J. Jill and Coldwater Creek as examples.
Still, Chiger was surprised by Home Decorators' projected growth.
"Sixty-five stores? Wow!" she said. "I didn't know they were planning that big."
She described Knights Direct as a "smart" company that shed some less-profitable clothing catalogs to focus on home furnishings.
Knights Direct is a private company and doesn't release financial information. Chiger estimated its 2003 sales at about $172 million.
"They've just really been savvy," Chiger said. "I'm sure they've put a lot of research into (retail stores) and know what they're doing."
Lefler said 65 stores is only the beginning. She's already looking for Home Decorators' third location, which probably will be in the Kansas City area.
Most Home Decorators' retail stores will be 15,000 to 17,000 square feet. That's smaller than big retail outlets, such as supermarkets and discount stores, but larger than a typical space in a strip mall.
"The size store that we're looking for makes it difficult," Lefler said.
Finding the right markets is far easier, she said. Home Decorators' mailing and customer lists give her leads on areas where its products are popular.
She said the Town and Country store's neighbors, including Wal-Mart and Home Depot, bring in constant foot traffic.
"That center is just busy all the time, and when you drive down the main lane, you basically just run right into us," Lefler said.
