Retailer changes strategy, caters to working class

By AMEERAH CETAWAYO, The Daily News,
In a time when furniture manufacturers are going out of business because of foreign competition, one of Bowling Green’s own furniture retailers recently changed its market strategy.

The owners of Simply Furniture previously owned Designers Warehouse at the same spot on Scottsville Road.


Owner Aaron Boggess said he reopened his furniture store in November with a new name. Designers Warehouse had operated since 2001 until about July 2013, Boggess said.

Now instead of focusing on high-end products, Boggess said he wants to go after the dollar of the working men and women in the community.

“This furniture (demographic) fits me better,” Boggess said.

“If you make the extra effort, it’s worth it,” he said, adding that unless you had a big house and were willing to spend $1,500 for a couch, you were probably out of his former demographic.

And the prices Boggess now offers through Simply Furniture show what he’s talking about, rivaling trendy fab-fashion retailer Target with affordable prices.

Pointing at a couch in his store, he mentioned that his couches average from as low as $300 to $3,000, and for $500, any person should be able to find a good, high-quality couch that should last for about a decade, even with everyday use.

With its warehouse on Russellville Road, Simply Furniture offers delivery and customer service that goes the extra mile, Boggess said.

Both he and his wife, who are 1984 graduates of Warren Central High School, have watched as the furniture industry has grown more competitive as manufacturers from China and other places offer the same quality goods – dining room and bedroom furniture, coffee and end tables – at lower prices than American manufacturers.

Since 2001, more than 200 factories that focused on furniture in North Carolina have closed, Boggess said.

Boggess worked at Madisonville Log and Lumber for 17 years prior to getting into the furniture business, and saw this firsthand, as several cabinet makers in Indiana started going out of business, he said.

With 70 percent of his merchandise being imported, Boggess knows it’s at the expense of American jobs, but said other furniture retailers probably have a higher percentage of imports.

Most of his upholstered products are made in the United States, he said, but those products are also making a slow progression toward foreign markets.

“Furniture is no more expensive today then it was 20 years ago,” Boggess said, adding that in most cases, it’s probably less expensive because of the quantity of foreign imports.