Clint Engel
Opens 20,000 sq ft store

LEAWOOD, Kan. — Seville Home has expanded to a 20,000-square-foot showroom here, a sign that not all Kansas City-area retailers are wilting in the shadow of Nebraska Furniture Mart.

The eclectic, midpriced-to-upscale Seville Home moved from a 12,000-square-foot store in nearby Overland Park, Kan., to a location in the Cornerstone of Leawood lifestyle shopping center, which is under development.

With the move, a $4 million project, Seville Home owners Stuart and Sue Wilkins have successfully expanded a concept they developed in 2000, emphasizing eclectic looks, in-home interior design and service.
Stuart Wilkins projected annual sales could reach $6 million to $8 million, up from about $5 million last year.

With its new elbow room, Seville Home is adding features as well as expanding its existing format. The additions include goods from Vanguard and Lee Inds., more direct imports from China, Indonesia and Mexico, and broader lineups from existing suppliers Paul Robert and Wesley Hall.

The retailer also expanded its long relationship with American Leather by adding goods from its American Upholstery division.

Seville Home’s focus has been on living rooms and casual dining, but it’s now adding bedroom as well. The retailer also started to offer more clean-lined, soft contemporary looks to go with its previously emphasized dramatic Old World styles.

The store continues to be served from its 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Lenexa, Kan.

Wilkins described the new store’s interior as “rustic contemporary,” with wide use of stone and iron elements and clean architecture that gives it the feel of a contemporary lodge or urban loft.

From a new entertainment bar, Seville Home serves coffee, cookies and other refreshments. It also has a larger, 2,500-square-foot design center with better lighting and larger hanging fabric pieces than in the old store, and a computer with Internet access and PreVue room planning software from MicroD.

Like the former unit, the new store is on the south side of the Kansas City area in affluent Johnson County.
“We’ve been very pleased, as we knew we would be,” Wilkins said. “This is an outstanding location. Traffic (has been strong) from day one, even though we opened soft and just started with advertising a couple of weeks ago. It’s all working.”

Grand opening events have included gift certificate giveaways and visits by designers, including Lauren Brooks, who designed a case goods and upholstery collection for Vanguard.

As a branded line, Vanguard is a bit of a departure for Seville Home, which mainly emphasizes the store as the brand.

With the expansion, the company is thriving — something that some other stores have had a hard time doing since the arrival of Nebraska Furniture Mart in the market in August 2003. Rhodes and Cousin’s stores have closed in the market in recent years, and big-box player Benchmark Home Furnishings just wrapped up its closing sale.

Wilkins said Seville’s designer staff, in-home service and upscale niche have helped the company differentiate itself.

“The affluent customers we have often have just moved into new homes, often with more square footage than (the homes) they left,” he said. Such customers are used to taking part in the custom design of their homes and “want to continue that process with their furniture.”

Serving such a clientele has led Seville Home to step up price points, Wilkins said, noting that its average price for a fabric sofa has doubled in the past six year to about $2,000.

Seville Home’s success doesn’t surprise Nebraska Furniture Mart.

“There’s 1.8 million people in the Kansas City metroplex,” said Bob Batt, executive vice president of Omaha, Neb.-based NFM, part of Berkshire Hathaway’s retail furniture operation. “There’s always room for at least one other furniture store in the marketplace.”