Jeff Linville —
Company couldn’t find dealer partner in the market, CEO says

HIGH POINT — The first company-owned Henredon store is set to open this August in Atlanta.

The 15,000-square-foot showroom in the Perimeter Mall area will feature Henredon collections and such licensed groups as Ralph Lauren Home, Lauren and Barbara Barry. Another 2,000 square feet will be dedicated to offices and a dock area.

The opening will bring to five the number of stores either fully dedicated or mostly dedicated to Henredon furnishings. Robb & Stucky has stores featuring mainly Henredon and Hickory White in Coral Gables, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz., while Treasures has two dedicated Henredon stores in Southern California. Robb & Stucky has three more Henredon stores in the works.

Henredon President and CEO Tom Tilley said this is not the start of a chain of company-owned stores. He said Henredon, which is owned by Furniture Brands International, would prefer to partner with retailers, but nothing panned out in the Atlanta market. The dedicated stores target the high-end consumer and work better in bigger cities, Tilley said, which makes Atlanta an attractive location.
 
While Furniture Brands has combined the management of Henredon with Drexel Heritage and Maitland-Smith, its other high-end divisions, the Atlanta store will not carry furniture from those divisions, said David Walker, Henredon’s director of trade showrooms. The emphasis will be on “a total luxury experience … a total immersion into the Henredon lifestyle,” he said.

Furniture will be shown in full room settings, similar to the way it’s displayed in Henredon’s High Point showroom, Walker said. A design center will house an array of fabrics, sales tools and an assortment of samples to assist about a dozen sales associates with design experience.

Walker said the company soon will hire a staff and get the store ready for its mid-August opening.