Not worried by competition, contemporary furniture store excited for growth
SYMMES TOWNSHIP – Furniture retailer Praddy Mangat doesn’t see the opening of international competitor Ikea as a threat to his business.
Mangat’s Bova contemporary furniture store at 11349 Montgomery Road has succeeded in its own right. It opened in 1985 as the second U.S. Bova franchise, then selling mostly Danish teak furniture.
“We’ve finally established ourselves – I hope – to where people recognize our name, quality and design expertise,” Mangat said.
In fact, Mangat is counting on Ikea – a trendy Swedish home furnishings retailer with more than 230 stores in 34 countries – to boost Bova’s sales when it opens in 2014 in West Chester Township.
“Ikea will bring a lot of awareness to the marketplace,” Mangat said about contemporary Scandinavian furniture.
And the timing is good.
The U.S. furniture industry last year generated $77.8 billion and is growing at a rate of 3 percent to 4 percent annually, according to Ray Allegrezza, editor-in-chief of Greensboro, N.C.-based Furniture Today, a weekly business trade newspaper.
Allegrezza said contemporary furniture, which represents about 8 percent to 10 percent of the market, also is growing.
“It’s more user friendly and has more universal appeal by virtue of the fact that the designs are not as stark and austere and not quite as industrial as they had been in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said.
With Ikea coming to town, Bova won’t be the only furniture retailer to profit, according to Allegrezza.
“Ikea comes in and bangs the drum so loudly for their store opening and what they sell that they raise everyone’s awareness about furniture in general,” he said.
And contemporary furniture has something in its corner that other styles don’t: clean lines.
“This gives you a little more flexibility in terms of design,” Allegrezza said.
Bova was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1980. It now has eight U.S. stores.
While the simplicity of Bova contemporary furniture has stayed the same, the type of wood now includes darker finishes and the number of its manufacturers has expanded.
Bova now buys from companies in Scandinavia, Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia. Catalan, Jesper, Ekornes, W. Schillig, Axi and Elite are just some of the brands Bova sells.
CONTEMPORARY STYLES
Bova was one of the earlier adopters of inexpensive contemporary furniture. It took contemporary designs and made them available to a large number of consumers.
Mangat, his sister, Roony – both University of Kentucky grads who were born in Kenya – and some other family members first opened the local Bova store in Anderson Township in 1985. Praddy and Roony are the sole owners now.
“We just had an inkling that a city this size could use a contemporary furniture store,” Praddy said. “It was a chance that we took.”
A move six years ago from the 10,000-square-foot Anderson Township store to the 25,000-square-foot Symmes Township store was prompted by growth in the northeast suburbs. Revenues last year exceeded $2 million, according to Roony.
London-born Cyd Alpher Sedgwick, Bova’s interior designer, makes house calls and helps customers with everything from layout to paint colors. A certified feng shui practitioner, Sedgwick said she uses the ancient Chinese art of “clearing negative energy” in her design work through color selection and placement of furniture.
Among Bova’s clients are Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Procter & Gamble, Premier Planning Group and Bella, Beluga, Jump and Cumin restaurants in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.
Von and Randy Hartmann, owners of Lake Cumberland Marine, a boat dealership in Somerset, Ky., furnished much of their business and their personal houseboat with Bova furniture.
Von said Bova brands are “very durable” – the couple have two small children – and she likes the colors and styles, which she said are easy to accessorize.
Craig Risheberger, a Newport resident and retired vice president of Fifth Third Bank, said he and his wife have contemporary taste in furniture and shop at Bova often for “things you don’t see anywhere else.”
They furnished their entire CitiRama house with Bova furnishings. It took them nearly three years, beginning in 2002, to get it the way they wanted, Risheberger said.
“It’s reasonably priced; a good value. And it’s very well made,” he said.
FUTURE GROWTH
Praddy is positive about Bova’s future growth potential.
“The retail consumer is hard to please,” Praddy said. “We have to work hard to maintain our presence and reputation in the marketplace.”
E-mail aguido@fuse.net
