The La-Z-Girl: Recliners for women

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 26, 2004 by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan The Wall Street Journal

The recliner -- the ultimate symbol of the channel-flipping, beer- swilling male -- is getting a feminine makeover.

Hoping to perk up flat sales, recliner makers have been rolling out chairs designed to dispel that image and appeal to women. Only distantly related to the hulking Barcaloungers of the past, the new recliners are as much as 25 percent smaller than the traditional models. They feature slender armrests and softer colors like eggshell and (what would Archie Bunker say?) raspberry. Rather than using slot- machine-like rods to recline, they glide back discreetly via tiny levers hidden in the arms or remote controls. One even aims directly at nursing mothers, with a built-in baby-bottle holder, side pockets to hold diapers and extra back support. One color option: buttercup yellow.

Designing recliners with women in mind is a nod, arguably a belated one, to the fact that wives often call the shots in picking out furniture. Sales in the field known as "motion upholstered furniture" have tapered off during recent years, hovering between $3.2 billion and $3.4 billion for the past two years, even as the furniture business overall has been slowly picking up. The idea is to try to reverse that by offering new designs and colors, as well as sizes that don't take over the room. The smaller recliners are also aimed at younger, more urban shoppers who don't have the space for big furniture.

VF Corp.'s Wrangler Jeans, which introduced its first line of furniture in October, won't even use the term "recliner" for its chair, which looks like a small side chair with wooden legs and a hidden lever in one of its arms. "Press-back chair" is the term it prefers. "We absolutely did not want to use the word 'recliner,' " says George Weldon, Wrangler's director of licensing. "It has a lot of negative connotations for women, like football."

At the recent International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., No. 2 recliner maker Lane Home Furnishings was showing eight new recliners targeted at women, up from just one in 2002. With names like "Julia" and "Harmony," these chairs come with sleek details such as curvy wooden arms and delicate piping on the cushions.

In October, No. 3 recliner maker Berkline/Benchcraft LLC introduced half a dozen chairs that are significantly smaller than its regular recliners, with simple, understated silhouettes and narrow arms designed to offer women a more comfortable grip. (The companies note that men will still fit in most of these smaller recliners.)

Even recliner giant La-Z-Boy Inc., long associated with massive chairs for dads, says 25 of its 65 recliners are now designed to look like stylish side chairs that just happen to recline. La-Z-Boy's Todd Oldham line offers "Lipstick" red as a color option to match the brightly colored sofas and side chairs the collection offers.

Further fueling the frillier look in recliners, some high-end manufacturers that have focused more on traditional-looking furniture are getting into the business. Taylor King Furniture Inc., an upscale upholstery company that sells fabric and leather sofas in the $1,999 to $6,000 range, introduced recliners for the first time last month. It now offers reclining options on eight of its best-selling traditional wing chairs and skirted lounge chairs. Del Starnes, the company's president and chief operating officer, says it decided to make the move after years of customers asking for elegant-looking reclining chairs. Instead of fat cushions and overstuffed arms, Taylor King's recliners have dainty, pleated roll arms and feminine skirts. Some come motorized for a smoother recline.

Of course, recliners have long been a source of marital tension. Jennifer Ko and her husband, Paul, have been split on the issue since they moved in together four years ago. He wants one, but she says their Jersey City, N.J., apartment is too small -- and she can't imagine one fitting in aesthetically. "I told him that someday when we have a house he can get one and hide it in the basement," Ko says.

Manufacturers hope to get around such conflicts not only by making recliners "prettier" but also by offering more versatile models that can go in any room of the house rather than being parked in front of the family-room TV. The new recliners' smaller, more graceful shapes are designed to fit in more easily with the furniture in bedrooms and studies. Berkline/Benchcraft, which already offers the nursery chair with a baby-bottle holder, will introduce a version with a built-in bottle warmer in April. Manufacturers are also featuring more feminine colors in showrooms and advertisements.

Some manufacturers began churning out smaller recliners as a way to snag customers who aren't necessarily in the market for a recliner but might splurge on one as a complementary piece to a new sofa. Lane, a unit of Furniture Brands International, began increasing its number of smaller chairs last year after discovering that 40 percent of its recliners were being sold outside the recliner department. People were purchasing them on impulse after seeing them in stores' general living-room displays where they were shown as accessories to sofas or loveseats.