The City that has it all
Furniture, accessories, design help and more = FUN
By Lisa Casinger -- Kids Today, 4/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
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Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based City Furniture was founded in 1994 by brothers, Kevin and Keith Koenig. The store, now ranked No. 31 on Furniture/Today’s Top 100 with estimated 2007 furniture, bedding and accessories sales of $291.1 million, evolved from Waterbed City, the chain Kevin started in 1971.
Today the company includes 17 City Furniture stores and six Ashley Home Stores scattered throughout Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, Collier and Lee counties in Florida. Last year, City opened four stores, in Naples and Fort Myers, its first on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Youth sales represent 6% of the overall business.
Each store carries a youth furniture and accessories assortment with between five and 20 vignettes on display, depending on the location. Youth has been part of the business for about 20 years and in the last five years, head merchant Mike Lennon has remerchandised the area and doubled the sales. Lennon and Keith Koenig actually have been friends since they were 8 years old, went to college together, were frat brothers and then ended up working together to grow City Furniture.
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| Youth sales represent 6% of the company’s overall $240 million sales. |
Lennon began merchandising the stores in “worlds” years ago and coordinating bedrooms, dining, living room and home entertainment are shown by collection as are accessories, youth and mattresses. The Worlds include Contemporary/Modern Galleries, Traditional/Old World, Transitional/Coastal Casual, Tropical, Youth, Mattress Galleries and there are five Rug and Textile Markets.
“In some cases we display youth alongside the adult collections because we offer twin and double with a few of those groups,” said Vanessa Rodriguez, City’s marketing director. “All Worlds have casegood collections—bedroom, dining, walls, occasional—in one or two finishes with matching fabric, leather and motion upholstery offering the customer coordinating choices if they like the look we’ve created. And, we frost the cake with coordinating accessories, lamps, linens, rugs, etc. We are very different than traditional chains in the way we merchandise.”
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| The Fun Zone in City’s Fort Myers’ store offers a plethora of youth furniture and accessories. |
City also differs from other retailers in its operational structure. Many retailers have category buyers but City has a buying team. Lennon is the head merchant, Rodriquez is the self-described “side kick merchant” and Dan Tolzien is the third buyer and supply chain manager.
“The three of us buy all products at City as a team,” Rodriquez said. “I buy all accessories, including youth, along with two reorder buyers and I buy youth along with Mike. We also run an in-house ad agency, which Mike and I manage as well. We run all creative and ad time buys. In our marketing office we manage buying, showroom space planning, supply chain, logistics, inventory control, quality, ad agency and photo studio. We have an amazing team of 23 people. I directly manage the buying, space planning, ad agency and photo studio. Dan manages supply chain alongside Mike. We work very tightly as a team.”
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| The Fun Zone has video games and music videos to wow kids and keep them engaged. |
One of Rodriguez’s challenges is youth accessories. “It is very hard to find youth specific accessories, so we do not have a lot of vendors in that category,” she said. She picks accessories for the youth area from her mainline accessory vendors like IMAX, Eastern Accents, Uttermost, UMA and Hallmart.
Rodriguez says customers shop City Furniture not only for the variety of styles and the value but also because it’s a fun environment.
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The retailer offers same day delivery 7 days a week, fresh-baked cookies and hot coffee for shoppers, interactive video games and music videos as well as interior design services through its Academy of Design.
City shares the same daily challenges most retailers are facing today —“vendors shipping when they say they are going to ship” and the economy. Business so far this year is flat compared to last year, but City adopted lean initiatives (the practice of continuous improvement through the elimination of waste) a couple of years ago when Koenig’s son Andrew, City’s operations manager, brought the idea to his father.
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| Beds retail for $199 and up and complete rooms start at $599. |
“We are working on our lean environment,” Rodriquez said. “We’re standardizing all of our processes, tightening our belts and we are seeing all of this as an opportunity. 'Calm seas do not make good sailors,’— we love this quote because we feel these economic times are making us all better at what we do.”
Rodriguez is hopeful for the Florida market. “Florida is a special place to live and work,” she said. “We continue to see economic growth and are positive our housing market will turn around. Who doesn’t want to live in a place with beautiful weather, great communities and schools, fabulous restaurants, shopping, golf courses and beaches?”
City Furniture continues to improve its daily processes, reinventing its showrooms with better visual display and it plans to open more Ashley Home Stores. It also is in the process of revamping its Web site and television commercials.
