Hendricks shares details on growth plan
Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, November 24, 2003
Hickory, N.C. — Hendricks Furniture Group has opened a Thomasville Home Furnishings Store in Charlotte, N.C., and has more planned next year for Southeast Florida and greater Atlanta as part of its deepening relationship with Furniture Brands International.
Within two years, Hendricks expects to have 20 Thomasville stores in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida and five Drexel Heritage stores in North Carolina. Currently, the Top 100 company has six Thomasville units — in Charlotte and Hickory, N.C., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and three in the Atlanta area — and no Drexel Heritage stores.
Hendricks, listed as Boyles Furniture in the Top 100, did about $191.1 million in furniture, bedding and accessories sales at 15 stores last year, according to Furniture/Today estimates. Rick Grant, Hendricks executive vice president and chief operating officer, said business this year has been "challenging" but is up slightly. Including recently opened units, the company now operates 20 stores.
Hendricks will open its second Thomasville store in Florida in Miami's Dadeland area by Jan. 1, Grant said. Other locations on tap for the state: Jensen Beach in March, West Palm Beach and Pembroke Pines in April or May, and Wellington (near West Palm) and two in the Boca Raton area, late in the second quarter.
A Thomasville store in Kennesaw, Ga., could open in April or May, Grant said. Three more also are planned for the Atlanta area, but dates haven't been announced. One in the Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., area, is probably a year away.
In North Carolina, Hendricks plans to open a Thomasville store in the Raleigh market a year from now and has yet to determine a fourth location, he said.
"We believe in the Thomasville store program," said Hendricks President Larry Hendricks. "We believe in the Drexel store program. And we believe that with the right locations, beautiful store displays and great sales team and an unsurpassed level of service, we think there's an opportunity."
He said the management teams of Thomasville and Drexel — separate units of Furniture Brands International — are "both are really on target with their product and presentations."
While Hendricks called the dedicated store programs "the thing of the future," he added that it parallels rather than replaces the company's successful strategy of opening full-line upscale stores in North Carolina and Florida under names including Boyles and Norris Furniture.
Indeed, in May or June, Hendricks expects to open a 45,000-square-foot Boyles store in northwest Charlotte near a planned new mall.
