Robert Allen Group set to grow
New owners move to expand furniture offerings
By Carole Sloan -- Furniture Today, August 18, 2003
New York — The new owners of The Robert Allen Group see the multi-faceted home furnishings resource hitting the billion dollar mark in the next decade, four times its current revenues, with much of that growth coming in furniture.
Ron Cordover, chief executive officer, and his son, Jeff Cordover, president, owners for about a year, are taking a long-term view but moving ahead quickly. Already, they have dramatically expanded the furniture offerings in the Robert Allen/Beacon Hill designer showroom network.
Meanwhile, new upscale collections in decorative fabrics and accessories have been created for the company's 18-unit corporate showroom network, and new emphasis has been placed on the mainstream Robert Allen at Home and Ametex fabric lines for retailers, home textiles suppliers and furniture manufacturers.
In addition to the Cordovers, the top management team includes Terry Weber, senior vice president of marketing and communications, and Andy Pacuk, senior vice president of product development.
The foursome is focusing not only on product enhancement but on "the need to broaden and deepen management. We have many very competent people, but the management became thin, especially in the face of our strategic growth," said Ron Cordover.
As Robert Allen's designer showrooms, once focused primarily on decorative fabrics, add more and more furniture, the channel will become even more important to the furniture industry, the executives believe.
The expanded product development and merchandising team, headed by Pacuk, now includes such home furnishings veterans as Suzanne Kelly, Steve Avitable and Jennie Wilde.
In furniture, major additions include an exclusive alliance with E.J. Victor and Pride Sasser, announced earlier this summer, and furniture collections from Ferguson Copeland, Wesley Hall and Dakota Jackson, as well as Italian exclusives, Pacuk said.
But hundreds of suppliers are creating exclusive designs for Robert Allen, Ron Cordover emphasized.
All these efforts are showcased in the company's new Dallas showroom, Pacuk said. "It's a whole different statement of integrated product design throughout, rather than just a lot of furniture, a lot of fabrics, and so on," he said.
Among the changes in merchandising, Pacuk added, "is recognizing that our customers are frequent shoppers. We need to surprise them with new things and a new way of presenting the merchandise. We suggest collections of products and let the designers do their jobs and create rooms."
One such surprise is the collection of 60 or so pieces of Murano glass made exclusively for the showrooms, Ron Cordover said.
Differentiating the Robert Allen and Beacon Hill offerings in the same showroom is as much a marketing as a merchandising effort, according to Weber. Robert Allen is for all designers, she said, while Beacon Hill is aspirational, with exceptional products such as the recently launched Artisans decorative fabric collection, which features unique weaves and surface applications.
"We are working to separate the brands in marketing and identify them with these different points of view," Weber said.
Looking to the Robert Allen at Home and Ametex fabric businesses, Pacuk said, "Our Susan Sargent collection is clearly focused in the furniture market, with Lexington and with major retailers. We'll be introducing her fabrics for outdoor furniture and her sheers as well as a new print and woven collection this summer."
Ametex, Ron Cordover said, "Has an important place in our plans. Our basic furniture market activity will revolve primarily around the Ametex brand."
Ametex is a "whole different business from Robert Allen," he continued. "It services a whole different customer and is more commercial. We see (Ametex) as an important introduction outlet."
The company, which has been part of LifeStyle Furnishings International and Masco over the past 15 years, is "now a family business, but we're not running it as a family egocentric business, but as a management team with a strategic plan," said Jeff Cordover.
About three-quarters of management is new. That includes Greg Tarver, senior vice president of manufacturing; Paul Sarazin, senior vice president of sales; and Judy Fishman, who has just joined as senior vice president of human resources and will be part of the company's executive committee. Fishman had been with Korn-Ferry International.
Peter Gallagher, who served as senior vice president of sales until early this year, and David Klaristenfeld, general counsel, have left the firm.
