DAYTONA BEACH — When Nancy and Tom
Pennington arrived in Pierson last year for their winter stay, they went shopping for furniture and found what they wanted at Havertys on West International Speedway Boulevard.
This year, the Penningtons’ search for another item coincided with the opening of the new Ashley Furniture Homestore at Volusia Marketplace on West ISB.
“They’ve got beautiful furniture,” Nancy Pennington said about the 50,000-square-foot store.
Howard Fineman, a spokesman for Ashley, said more than 1,000 customers visited the store during the preview week.
“We’re seeing a lot of pent up demand,” Fineman said in a telephone interview. The grand opening is set for Feb. 19, he said.
This is the area’s second Ashley store. Fineman and his business partners bought the Ashley franchise, which previously was on Nova Road in Ormond Beach. The owners of that store now operate under the name Furniture Trends.
As of Dec. 25, Ashley was the No. 3 furniture retailer in the country, according to statistics complied by Furniture Today, an online industry publication. Second place went to Rooms to Go, the publication stated. First place belongs to retail giant Wal-Mart.
A spokeswoman at the Rooms to Go store here said the proximity of its nearest competitor wasn’t a worry.
“People are going to shop where they want to go,” office manager Helen Knauer said, adding her store regularly draws customers from as far north as Palm Coast as well as Southeast Volusia.
Tom Curran, a spokesman for Havertys, said the addition of another furniture retailer on that end of ISB doesn’t bother the company. In fact, it seems to fit well with their corporate strategy.
“We always locate where furniture stores are clustered,” Curran said.
Dealers along “Furniture Row,” meanwhile, say the more the merrier.
Barry Kalin, president of Kalin, which has a 52,000-square-foot showroom plus a new 45,000-square-foot distribution center, said the arrival of the new Ashley store should help spur more business across the board by whetting consumer appetites for new furniture.
“They will be doing a lot of ads,” he said.
Consumers like comparison shopping, which means they will visit several stores, as was the case with the Penningtons. Since 1970, the average size of homes has increased 50 percent which has resulted in more furniture purchases, according to U.S. Business Reporter.
There should be more than enough business to go around, Kalin said, further noting his store and Ashley are not direct competitors.
“We are trying to fill a different niche. We think of our store as a destination” for consumers looking for more brand-name furniture lines.
In coming months, consumers should have another reason to stop by the plaza that houses Kalin Home Furnishings, he said.
Kalin, who owns the plaza, said he has leased the storefront nearest his to a retailer that specializes in kitchens and cabinets. The spot most recently housed a TropiCasual furniture store, which moved to a 27,000-square-foot storefront next door that had been empty for the past year since Rhodes Furniture closed.
“It seemed a profitable thing to do,” said Chuck Walker, TropiCasual store manager.
The new location is almost three times the size of the other store, Walker said.
valerie.whitney@news-jrnl.com
Second row
Ashley joins a growing number of major furniture dealers with large showrooms lining the West ISB corridor between Fentress Boulevard and Interstate 95.
Others are Haynes Brothers Furniture, Rooms to Go and American Signature Home.
For many years most of the large dealer showrooms could be found on U.S. 1 in Ormond Beach in what some referred to as “Furniture Row.” The area is still home to several major retailers, including Kalin Home Furnishings, Kitty Scott’s, Ethan Allen, Hudson Furniture and Modernage Galleries. Haynes Brothers also has a store there.
