Kidspace thrives in two locations
Custom designs and accessories abound
-- Kids Today, 9/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
Randy and Sandy Buttrill opened a small unfinished furniture store in Amarillo, Texas, in 1976. Five years later, they opened their second store in Lubbock.
In 1983, when the influx of big box stores hit the Amarillo and Lubbock markets, the couple added high quality, finished solid wood furniture as well as upholstery, lamps and accessories and became Furniture Center. In 1989 they sold their 45,000-square-foot building in Lubbock and leased half of their furniture building in Amarillo to Havertys.
Sandy had been particularly interested in the youth section of their full-line furniture stores and had been closely watching a small store that had opened in Lubbock that sold baby furniture. The Buttrills ended up buying the story in 1990.
“We kept the Furniture Center corporation, but added the DBA name Kidspace Lubbock and opened the second Kidspace in the remaining 10,000 square feet of our furniture building in Amarillo, next to Haverty’s,” Sandy said.
Sandy’s idea for Kidspace was a comprehensive niche specialty store filled with products to help create “dream rooms for baby to teen.”
Sandy’s son Stephen joined the business in 1991, at the age of 21, when he moved back to Amarillo to run the Kidspace store there. Randy, Sandy and daughter Kathy worked in the Lubbock store until 1997 when Randy unexpectedly had a stroke.
At that point, the Buttrills sold the Kidspace store and building in Lubbock, Randy retired and he and Sandy moved back to Amarillo. Sandy and Stephen continued to work in the Amarillo store. The new owners of the Lubbock store ran the business under a different name for a few years but decided to sell the commercial building by the mall and close the store.
In 2004, the Buttrills opened Kidspace again in Lubbock for their daughter, Kathy Coker, and about a year ago they built a new building for the store.
In the 1980s, when full-line furniture stores began to create vendor galleries within stores, Sandy used the format in the Kidspace stores. While most other baby stores at that point were selling cribs, changing tables and packages of crib bedding, Kidspace created “magic” through merchandising vignettes with all the accessories they could hold.
This not only was a new concept for baby/youth stores, it also was very appealing to the parents shopping for their children since they could envision what the rooms could look like in their own homes.
The stores carry baby, toddler, tween and teen furniture, bedding, lamps, rugs, wall décor and accessories, and they carry Peg Perego and Britax car seats and strollers. Sales are about 50/50 between baby and teen.
Kidspace communicates with its customers by relating the tangible and intangible benefits of the products.
“For example, we tell the customers, ‘Oh, you must sit in our marshmallow glider rocker. It feels like you are engulfed in a marshmallow. And when you are up for the 2 a.m, feeding, put your feet up and snuggle in with baby in cozy comfort,’”Sandy said.
They subtly pass on information that relates the human interaction of the products for the child’s room.
“Youth furniture manufacturers have addressed what the industry recognizes as the three S’s — sleep, study and storage,” Sandy said. “Kidspace adds an additional S, which is socializing. Children grow up interacting with siblings, relatives and friends. Their rooms can be designed as an environment to satisfy the needs of the four S’s.”
Sandy realizes that in a competitive marketplace, independents have to work hard to set themselves apart. Kidspace does this by offering custom bedding and accessories; it’s also a potentially profitable category.
“A unique and a well accessorized store gradually and consistently increases customer traffic,” Sandy said. “Customers’ excitement creates a buzz, and the customers themselves promote that special store.
“Kidspace realizes that if you have several customers buzzing around visiting among themselves, even if they are only buying wall flowers and butterflies, it is much easier to close a furniture sale customer. The furniture buyer is at ease because other customers are confidently spending their money creating their child’s special place. Consumers sense other consumer’s confidence in the store’s values, products and services. Sales breed sales.”
Kidspace offers delivery and set up, a Web site, shower registry, custom bedding and room design consultations, gift cards, three-month layaways, six months same as cash financing, special orders and extensive product knowledge. It also tracks customer purchase and notifies customers if their furniture collection is scheduled to be discontinued or if they have purchased a product that has been recalled.
Sandy says that “being blessed with the second-generation management involvement,” Kidspace has been able to stay at the forefront of current business technology and fashion forward product presentations.
“The talents, energy, comprehension and dedication that Stephen and Kathy have in these areas continue to keep Kidspace a healthy growing company,” she said.
Kidspace has used TV advertising successfully in both markets almost exclusively for the advertising dollars invested. The stores are visual, and both cities have one dominant TV station that has been willing to do extras, like no-cost in-store 30-second spot production and/or discounts on advertising packages.
Kidspace cultivates repeat business with continued communication with its existing database. The point-of-sale software Kidspace put into place in 1998 has proven to be a big benefit.
“It is truly the life blood of the business,” Sandy said. “It enables us to target specific customers with opportunities.”
“We can contact a specific group and offer closeouts on items matching merchandise they may have purchased. It has even proven to be a great facilitator to move out discontinued combo hutches, which probably every retailer in our industry can identify with as lost inventory dollars.”
Sandy says her competitors include everyone from Toys “R” Us and Target to a few small specialty stores to resale stores and the Internet.
“The Internet remains a difficult obstacle to compete with,” she said. “We handle price matching and every situation on an individual basis.”
When it comes to dealing with vendors, Sandy has a “partner for profit” attitude. She says they’ve always paid vendors in full and on time on “every obligation, which has often resulted in being presented with opportunity buys or favored shipping.”
Sandy says one of their best business ideas was to separate, in the mind of the tween consumer, the baby and children’s product offerings. During the first eight to nine years that Kidspace was open, they tried to merchandise the furniture collections so that the vignette showed the families how the baby room could transition to the older child’s room in the same vignette. When they moved the Amarillo store into its new building in 2001, they designed an entry vestibule that offered entrance to the right for baby and an entrance to the left for teen.
“Little girls, especially, did not like being taken to a baby store to look at furnishings when they were transitioning to ‘big girl’ rooms,” Sandy said. “But boy, do they like going to our teen side. They love the sassy signs, bright colors, boas, chandeliers, canopies, wall daisies, jeweled butterflies. These little girls wield a lot of buying power and Kidspace listens to these little consumers.”
Another great business move was buying, rather than leasing, their real estate. Since 1979, the Buttrills have bought their buildings.
“In doing so, we have not been held hostage by landlords and have built equity and made money through the years in buying, selling and buying all of our buildings,” Sandy said.
Another good move for Kidspace, Sandy said, is its membership in a strong trade organization, NINFRA. Sandy says networking with other successful store owners in the industry has been invaluable.
Running a retail business in today’s world is extremely challenging. Sandy says during the past few years, the industry has squeezed and squeezed margins between the cost of goods and retail selling prices. Mostly because of price shopping on the Internet, but sometimes because of cut-throat dealers, many vendors have established minimum suggested retail prices.
“Unfortunately for brick and mortar stores, the minimum selling prices often represent margins suitable for the survival of non-overhead stores, not feel, see, touch, explain, show, warehouse, stock and service stores,” she said.
Because of shrinking margins, Kidspace has started buying containers in order to have quality products, competitive pricing and healthier margins. Kidspace is concentrating on vendors that provide opportunities for healthy margins.
After close to two decades in the industry, with two generations of Buttrills working side by side, Sandy has a few secrets of success to share.
“Know that for everything you get in life, you pay a price. Carefully evaluate the price you are willing to pay before you make a commitment. Honor all commitments,” she said. “Have the courage to make big decisions and the stamina to prove they were the right choices. Set specific long and short term goals. Surround yourself with people who want to make a difference; recognize and applaud their talents and contributions. Work as a team. The operative word is work. Embrace change and growth, the world is in a state of constant flux. Be constantly aware of new business opportunities around you. Think. Enjoy a bit of humor daily. Laughter is healthy. Every night evaluate what you accomplished that day. You traded one day in your life for it, was it worth the trade?”
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