Clint Engel
GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Danker Furniture here has a gained a new business partner and four Stickley furniture galleries.
James Shrawder, majority owner of the high-end Sheffield Furniture in the Philadelphia suburb of Malvern, Pa., acquired a stake in the four-store Danker in September, replacing an earlier plan to open his own store in the Washington market.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Danker principle Gerard Kvasnovsky remains CEO for now.
Sheffield is a Stickley retailer, and with the deal, Danker also has opened Stickley galleries in all of its stores — in Rockville and Annapolis, Md., and Arlington and Dulles, Va. The galleries range from 8,000 to 15,000 square feet and are expected to eventually account for about 40% of Danker’s business, said Susan Christie, Sheffield’s director of marketing.
Danker’s sales are projected to grow 50% next year to about $30 million, from a projected $20 million this year, Christie said.
Earlier this year, Danker closed its Fairfax, Va., store.
Sheffield, with one 50,000-square-foot showroom in greater Philadelphia, is on target to do about $20 million this year and expects to do $22 million to $23 million in 2014, she said.
Shrawder had planned to enter the D.C. market with a Fairfax store, but had to cancel the plan when spring floods affected the proposed location “That’s when Kvasnovsky came to the rescue,” Christie said.
Stickley has been absent from the Washington marketplace for nearly six months, since the liquidation of Belts-ville, Md.-based retailer and Stickley dealer Mastercraft Interiors.
Christie said that Sheffield in the Philadelphia area is Stickley’s largest-volume single-store dealer. She added that Shrawder “is very grateful” for the manufacturer’s support — it as the exclusive dealer in D.C. and offering special terms to help the Stickley galleries in Danker open quickly.
Shrawder, the former owner of Shrawder Furniture in Philadelphia, bought a majority interest in Sheffield in 2000 and later merged the two businesses into one location. The owners are Shrawder, his Shrawder Furniture partner Michael Holmes and Sheffield’s remaining principal, David Zartman.
The three also own the one-store, midpriced Home Furnishings Market in the Philadelphia suburb of Phoenixville, Pa.
