New NFM store's a knockout
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, August 18, 2003
Kansas City — Nebraska Furniture Mart wowed some 2,000 industry and community guests during a pre-grand opening gala at its 712,000-square-foot mega-store and warehouse here.
Last week's event, on the eve of its Aug. 15 official grand opening, gave guests a full serving of what the Omaha, Neb.-based retailer has in store for this new market. They also got a chance to mingle with Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, NFM's majority owner since 1983.
The two-level superstore has about 310,000 square feet of promotional to high-end furniture and accessories display as well as 60,000 square feet of electronics and 40,000 square feet each for flooring and appliances, said Bob Batt, NFM executive vice president.
That's give or take a few thousand square feet for other items in the one-stop superstore, including some 3,000 DVD titles and nine working dream kitchen displays.
The upper level features 20 "dream rooms" of furniture under large, peaked skylights. Throughout the store, NFM takes signage to a new level with colorful lifestyle images, easy-to-follow category signage and strong branding of key suppliers including La-Z-Boy, Broyhill, Lane, Simmons and Palliser's EQ3, the latter prominent in a Metro area targeting young consumers with colorful, contemporary goods.
Another large space is dedicated to a high-end Design Gallery with furniture from Pennsylvania House, Drexel Heritage, Henredon, Bernhardt, Century and Lexington.
Buffett quipped that, after reviewing the early, soft-opening sales figures, he "very gently" offered up the idea to NFM management of opening another store soon. He said this was his first visit to the store, which was in development for three years, and that he was "blown away."
"To all of our competition, I just say, 'Hasta la vista, baby!'" Buffett said, playing off his recently announced plan to serve as senior economic advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the actor's bid to become the next California governor.
NFM wasn't disclosing projected sales for the store, but Buffett told the crowd he believes the amount "is going to set a world record."
During the event, the Blumkin family, longtime operators of NFM, presented Dr. Carol Fabian, a breast cancer researcher at the University of Kansas Medical Center, with the first Rose Blumkin Award for Excellence, and held a charity auction benefiting the center's breast cancer services.
Among the items auctioned off: lunch with Warren Buffett. A similar auction was conducted recently online with a winning bid of $250,000, and NFM's lunch fetched an impressive $90,000.
The winner also gets the recliner he was sitting in when he made the bid.
