— Furniture Today
Offers low price in-home consultation

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — City Furniture has launched an effort to bring affordable interior design services to its customers.

The Dianne Davant Academy of Design, in a 150-square-foot space inside the Wellington, Fla., store, is the first step in a program that is expected to be rolled out in all 21 City Furniture stores within a year.

Consumers can buy three packages of interior design services — priced from $295 to $695, in keeping with City’s midpriced product line. That buys in-home consultation, shopping assistance and other services.

“The concept is to take great interior design and make it easy and affordable for most homeowners,” said Keith Koenig, president of the Top 100 chain.

Most people think interior design help would be too expensive, he said. But he adds that City salespeople tell him that only a small percentage of their customers are confident in their ability to develop well-planned interiors.

“The truth is, (design advice) is not too expensive, not any more expensive than getting someone to do your taxes or a lawyer to do things that a professional should do,” Koenig said.

City rolled out its Academy of Design in Wellington in December and is “very encouraged so far,” he said.
He said the service has led to some big sales — City’s average store ticket is less than $2,000, but the average from Academy customers is more than four times the norm. One designer made a $23,000 sale.

The plan is to introduce the Academy of Design gradually. Koenig expects the service will be in about six stores by the fall and probably in all City stores within a year.

Dianne Davant is a well-known interior designer with offices in Florida and North Carolina. Koenig and his wife know Davant socially, and she did interior design work on their home. Davant’s work has appeared in shelter publications, and her celebrity clients include former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula and former Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese.

She recently joined City as a director and vice president and is setting the design direction for the academy, including helping select and train staff.

“Dianne happens to be a dear friend and someone I greatly respect and admire,” Koenig said. “Her authority in the design community is significant and helps build our credibility.”

He said City spent more than $1 million developing the academy — on everything from point-of-sale materials to systems to investments in training and recruitment. The company worked with IBM to build an infrastructure, including a Web site and in home-consultation materials, available through the laptops that designers take on house calls.

In the Wellington store, TV screens mounted in the Design Academy area show an educational video about the services in which a spokeswoman says, “Interior design is no longer an exclusive undertaking for the affluent.” She walks consumers through the steps and tells what they get for their money, using before-and-after illustrations of all three packages, with real academy clients.

The service has a money-back guarantee. “I don’t think we’ve refunded anybody,” Koe-nig said.

City and the designers it employs split the package fees. Although the designers receive a commission on items their customers buy from City or its six Ashley Furniture HomeStores, users of the service aren’t obligated to buy there and can ask the designers for help at other furniture stores.

Davant doesn’t expect that to happen very often.

“We do think that City Furniture offers such a wide variety of looks that clients will be able to find probably most of what they need there,” she said.

Koenig and Davant acknowledge that some other furniture stores in the area offer designer services for free, but say that in general, this competition is aiming for a much more affluent customer base. They also say that stores that delve into the midprice range might say in-house services are free, but consumers would end up spending less money at City even after the service fee.

“Why do most people fear using interior designers? Because they know nothing is free,” Koenig said. “If I’m offering a free service, that cost gets built into the product one way or another.

“What we’re combining is a very affordable package of interior design service with a superior set of deliverables — all the way to a printed budget at the first meeting,” he said. “We feel we have reinvented the interior design process — not for the very high-end customer that Robb & Stucky caters to, but to the thousands of homeowners that have nice homes but are afraid of hiring an interior designer.”