Smaller units prove stars in home theater arena
By Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, May 3, 2004
HIGH POINT — HIGH POINT— Home theater seating continued to attract considerable attention from dealers hoping to reach DVD-crazed consumers.
Producers said that, while there's still plenty of interest in configurations with four seats or more, units with two to three seats increasingly were among their best-sellers at last week's market. That's because consumers have learned they don't need a $100,000 home theater room in order to use the furniture.
"The family with a 32-inch TV wants to be comfortable, just like the one with a 60-inch flat screen and surround sound," said Don Hunter, vice president of merchandising at Catnapper.
Catnapper was one of more about 20 producers showing home theater seating here, and many were targeting the middle to upper-middle-income family with seating units retailing for $499 to $799 per seat. A power reclining unit will add at least $100 to each seat.
"The category is going to get more and more important," said John St. John, product manager at Flexsteel. "It's still emerging … even though a lot of people don't know what to do with it yet."
Peder Sorensen, national sales manager at Ekornes, believes growth will continue unabated as long as DVD players continue to fly off the shelves and prices of flat-screen televisions continue to fall.
"Look at the electronics. That will tell you what's going to happen in furniture," Sorensen said.
Key product introductions included Lane's Hopkins seating system, one of the few on the market with traditional styling, and Douglas Furniture's Home Theater Solutions group.
The Douglas entry featured six different reclining units to make a variety of curved or straight configurations.
Drexel Heritage made its debut in the category by unveiling two leather seating systems and a conversation sofa with recliners at each end. One seating system, for the company's dh line, retails for about $1,299 per seat, while seating in its Drexel line retails for about $2,399 per seat, including a power reclining unit.
Berkline, one of the first mainstream producers to plunge into home theater seating some five years ago, unveiled what it believes is the next phase of the category — seats for video-game players.
The seats are nearly identical to ones found in some of its home theater units, but its video-game configuration features a storage console for game controls, cartridges and the game unit itself. The back of the console is vented to allow heat to escape from the X-Box or Game Boy.
"I think the home gaming market could be the next growth area for this type of product," said Cabot Longnecker, Berkline's vice president of merchandising for recliners.
