Knock on wood: retailers find solid footing in RTA - ready-to-assemble furniture

Discount Store News, April 15, 1996 by Teresa Andreoli

HIGH POINT, N.C. - Exhibitors of solid wood furniture and tubular metal units will be busy at this month's International Home Furnishings Market as buyers search for program- and profit-enhancing products for their growing furniture presentations.

Topping buyers' lists this year are solid wood and tubular metal, which discount store furniture buyers report are being used to upscale their departments' images. Many such places are already on showroom floors, with much more still to come.

From April 18 to 26, about 70,000 attendees will be in High Point looking for new styles, fabrics, colors, finishes, constructions and other means to make the business more profitable.

Ready-to-assemble futons and other real wood furniture for the dining room, bedroom and. kitchen will be hot at the show. Office furniture is still a popular segment of the RTA category due to the continued emergence of small offices and home offices and the interest in personal computers for the home.

Increasing numbers of discounters have begun to swing their assortments toward solid wood and metal-contructed furniture - futons and bakers racks - although "engineered wood" products, or what is known as fiberboard/compressed particle-board, still hold dominance in RTA aisles, especially at Wal-Mart and Kmart.

The regional discounters, like Ames, Hills, Bradlees, Caldor and Venture, have been, using the furniture department to distinguish themselves from the national chains. Over the past year, they have gone full force into better-quality product with higher price points, particularly solid wood pieces in a variety of furniture styles.

Target, unlike Kmart and Wal-Mart, has long been committed to a more upscale furniture presentation. It is often considered the most fashion-forward of the upscale discounters, offering customers smaller wood veneer pieces (telephone stands, accent tables) under the Furio line. In its larger stores, Target has also offered customers the opportunity to build their own tables and chairs by offering a range of tops and bottoms with which to mix and match for a customized look.

Now Bradlees is teeming with solid wood product. The Northeastern-based discounter has enough real wood furniture to dominate two sides of one 20-ft. run at its store in New Hyde Park, N.Y., a New York City suburb on Long Island. Five dinette sets, mission-style chairs, a desk, a night stand, a few dressers, a Dutch cupboard, an armoire and even a jelly cabinet (a three-sided cupboard designed to fit into a corner), are just a sampling of its RTA, real wood selection.

On a recent DSN visit, prices ran from a $199 ready-to-finish five-drawer solid aspen wood dresser (Aspen Ridge Collection from Khoury, Iron Mountain, Mich.), to a pre-finished farm table for $179, to $78 for a pre-finished, solid pine, two drawer desk (Mill Creek Collection, Bertram & MacLeod, Stockton, Calif.)

"Consumers are willing to accept higher price points; most are willing spend as much as $150 to $200," said Charles Ellis, senior vp at Bradlees. He indicated that consumers are not ready to go above the $300 or $400 mark.

Manufacturers agree that the discount store. as of right now, is not the place where consumers would feel comfortable dishing out more than $300 on any one furniture item.

But solid wood furniture gives retailers the tools to persuade customers to invest more heavily in the home, suppliers said.

"Furniture should not be a commodity," said Paul Bolt, president of Bertram & MacLeod, a real wood furniture maker that operates its factories overseas. "Everyone is trying to sell up, and solid wood offers more margin. The discount world is highly competitive with vinyl-clad and paper-clad product. We can't compete [with that kind of product], but we can offer furniture with turned legs and curved pieces, or details that make our product more stylish than a box good."

The dining area is Bradlees' largest and fastest-growing furniture segment, Ellis said, followed by entertainment, then bedroom. In the next few months (sometime before the third quarter), Bradlees will bring the dining sets onto the floor and draw, accent pieces from its surrounding home furnishings areas (tabletop, dinnerware, domestics) to accessorize and better romance its furniture, Ellis told DSN. Although individual stores in some chains have flirted with this idea, this is a major move for an RTA department at a discount department store.

"The quality of RTA furniture is better than most consumers are aware," Ellis said, noting that only word-of-mouth will truly reshape customer perception.

Caldor has expanded its solid wood offerings as well, although this discounter traditionally displays its unfinished assortment in the paint aisle, adjacent to stains and finishes. The thinking behind this, one store manager said, was that the customer interested in assembling and finishing furniture at home is a different customer than the one who just wants an instant desk or wall unit. Cross-merchandising with paint and stain for add-on sales is another reason for keeping the furniture in the hardware department.