Electronics majors hone strategies
Furniture offers add-on opportunity, but category also poses challenges
By Tom Edmonds -- Furniture Today, February 16, 2004
HIGH POINT — The furniture riddle has been a tough one to crack for electronics superstores like Best Buy and Circuit City.
These majors and other electronics retailers see furniture as an attractive opportunity for add-on sales to their computers, televisions and stereos, but none seems completely confident in their approach. And none has developed a merchandising and display strategy that could serve as a model for this retail channel.
Most electronics chains carry ready-to-assemble entertainment pieces, and some have a few desks. But the differing approaches to furniture at Best Buy and Circuit City, the two electronics goliaths, underscore the difficulties furniture presents.
In these superstores, furniture seems to be something the chains know they should offer, but it's not a category that seems to inspire them.
At Best Buy, furniture occupies its own department. And while the company's bestbuy.com Web site offers a much larger selection, the furniture departments in the stores are lonely little aisles showing a handful of desks, TV stands and audio racks.
The contrast between the pulsing excitement of the rest of the store and the quiet solitude of the furniture display is palpable. A kiosk describes the expanded assortment of chairs, desks and entertainment pieces available on the Web or through special order, but frequently this is just a binder of laminated pages with little signage explaining how the pieces can be ordered.
According to industry sources, Best Buy is considering upgrading its in-store furniture departments, adding more solid wood and higher price points. But for now, the displays lean heavily toward the flat-pack boxes whose makers are most capable of replenishing the vast Best Buy store network.
Circuit City used to carry desks, but home office was phased out several years ago, with the last few chairs now in clearance on the chain's Web site.
Circuit City, in contrast to Best Buy, integrates the entertainment furniture category with its TV offerings, allowing consumers to put together a TV stand with a TV monitor. And while the stores offer plenty of pieces at promotional price points, a number of stands, especially the contemporary Italian metal-and-glass units from Bell'O International, carry price tags approaching $1,000.
Another superstore chain, H.H. Gregg, based in Indianapolis, treats furniture like a headline category along with its electronics and appliances. Large in-store graphics announce the company is in the furniture business while inviting shippers to "take a stand."
The department is visible from the rest of the store, and the displays follow a logical price progression, from an RTA workstation from Bush at $179 up to about $1,200 for a home theater wall from Oak West. The Gregg stores also set up large-screen TVs in the furniture departments, injecting some life into the category.
