Hipper, younger, cheaper: Furniture retailers are redesigning themselves
IKEA started it. In 1985, the Swedish chain began introducing the United States to mod-looking couches and stylish bookcases you assembled yourself in exchange for an attractive price point. The home- furnishings industry was floundering, but IKEA grew by leaps and bounds.
Or maybe it was Target that started it. In the late 1990s, the big-box store began selling Michael Graves designs: shiny kettles with sculptural handles, curvaceous bottle openers, white toasters with egg-shaped knobs. Soon there was a Graves garlic press in every kitchen, and people were only semi-ironically referring to ``Tar-get" as ``Tar-jay."
Whoever started it, contemporary design was suddenly available to everyone, even the relatively impecunious. It wasn't long until retailers with a more traditional aesthetic began spinning off hipper, cheaper versions of themselves aimed at recent college graduates, starving artists, and anyone else who ever drooled over an Eames chair he couldn't afford. Crate and Barrel begat CB2.
``We were missing the younger customer," says Marta Calle, product director of CB2, who was previously at Crate and Barrel. ``We thought we could start developing a concept that would appeal to them in price and look." The first CB2 store opened in 2000 in a remote part of Chicago, she says. Now there's a second store, a website, and a catalog. Next year, CB2 will begin opening stores outside of Chicago. (West Elm, which launched in 2002, has seen similar growth. Eight new stores are planned for the brand by the end of the year, including one in Boston and another in Burlington, both opening next week.)
But here's the true proof of CB2's success: ``We're outfitting the `Real World' home in Denver," Calle says. ``We furnished the whole home."
Another retailer is also facing reality, but it doesn't look so rosy. Pier 1, long in a downward spiral, recently reported that July store sales this year were down 14.9 percent from last year; year-to-date sales were down 8.3 percent.
And so the wicker-and-scented-candle palace has decided it's time to reinvent itself. Its game plan: following in the footsteps of fellow catalog retailers and embracing affordable contemporary design.
Kickoff came in the spring, when Pier 1 unveiled a new approach it's calling Modern Craftsman; this includes collections with names such as Brownstone, Micro-Pod, and the recently debuted Loft 21, an appellation that seems strategically calculated to evoke both youth and an urban sensibility.
``Many of our new items combine up-to-date/fashionable shapes and colors with handcrafted detailing, which has always been a Pier 1 signature," says Daryle Gibbs, Pier 1's director of trend development.
Which is to say that while Pier 1 is embracing black, chocolate brown, and asymmetry, it isn't losing the wicker. The look may be best summed up by the Micro-Pod orbit chair, described in the catalog as ``our coolest chair ever." It looks a lot like the 1957 Arne Jacobsen swan chair that inspired it, only rendered in rattan.
``We definitely wanted the Loft 21 collection to appeal to a more youthful consumer," says Gibbs. Good thinking: Those youthful consumers have serious financial clout. According to Alloy Media + Marketing's annual College Explorer Study, 18- to 30-year-olds currently wield $182 billion in spending power.
They are also increasingly gravitating toward the look West Elm, CB2, and now Pier 1 offer. ``Young people love modern," says Chris Norfleet, a studio account executive at Design Within Reach, which sells the higher-end furnishings that inspire other stores' lower-priced lines. ``It's colorful, it's sculptural, it's clean. And it's not what they grew up with. I hear a lot of people say that."
Norfleet, who is 24 himself, continues: ``For young people, if there are things that look great and they can afford, they'll buy it." That concept is the cornerstone of this niche.
With more than 1,200 locations nationwide, Pier 1 is certainly making its new collections accessible. But it faces a challenge in establishing a new brand identity. In keeping its name, rather than spinning off a store with a separate identity, it also keeps its baggage.
That could be a problem for the company. When presented with three accent tables -- say, the Loft 21 Barton end table ($150 ), West Elm's display side table ($199), and CB2's outline side table ($219) -- a shopper can find it hard to choose. Their prices tags are in the same general range, and so are their dark-wood looks. Pier 1's table is the simplest and least design-y; West Elm's and CB2's have more contemporary lines and silver accents.
If none of them leaps out at the shopper as the table of his dreams, the decision may simply come down to which brand most speaks to him.
``This generation is very brand-centric," says Samantha Skey, senior vice president, strategic marketing at Alloy, which focuses on youth. ``Brand is important. Are they buying the brand or the product? You can get anything on the Web, but they still go to shopkitson [the website of a boutique favored by celebrities], at least in LA. That doesn't mean there's not an opportunity for retailers to adapt."
The way to capture young consumers' attention, Skey says, is to avoid traditional advertising venues: no 30-second TV commercials (like the one Pier 1 made for Loft 21, set to a version of the ever-so-hip Isley Brothers' ``It's Your Thing"), no 15-second radio spots, no annoying pop-up ads. With so much control over its media consumption, the target audience will just tune these messages out.
``You really need to be aware their time is precious if you want to engage them," she says. ``You need to do it in a more modern way, build into lifestyle platforms. . . . They'll read a message in their own time if it's relevant to them."
So Pier 1 may be able to remake its image yet. It's been done before, after all, by everyone from Abercrombie & Fitch to VH1, which turned stodgy brands into youth-centric ones. But, sooner or later, Pier 1's situation is one all these companies will face.
If Norfleet of Design Within Reach is right, the modern look may only be around until the next generation start s wanting something it didn't grow up with. Then everyone will have to reinvent themselves all over again. 