'Organic contemporary' retailer Motif adds stores
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, March 17, 2008
San Antonio — Motif Modern Living has opened two stores here, bringing to this city the contemporary home furnishings fare it introduced up the road in Austin two years ago.
The 17,000-square-foot location in San Antonio's Legacy shopping center features a main Motif Modern Living store and an attached 3,500-square-foot Motif Studio — its smaller, edgier sister store — each with exterior entrances and also interior access from one store to the other.
Legacy is the first shopping center in this Texas market to mix retail and restaurants on the ground level with work and living spaces above.
Motif Modern Living, the flagship store, features what it calls "organic contemporary" furniture, blending clean-lined styles with earthy elements both in display and product. Walls and shelving throughout the store are finished in chocolate browns. Vignettes include touches such as transparent water walls and large windows that visually open up the store.
Motif Studio, meanwhile, features ultramodern designs in an environment of white walls, concrete floors and high-gloss white shelving. The mix includes furniture at the top of Motif's price spectrum but still targets the broad midrange, said Steven Lora, president and co-owner with partner John Perez.
In the new stores, four-seat sofas range from under $1,000 to just under $2,000, while the highest-priced leather sectional from new vendor American Leather goes for as much as $10,500.
Other suppliers include Elite Modern, Palliser, Sitcom, Tema, 18Karat, Dan Form, GFI and Umbra, which recently named Motif its Retail Partner of the Year. In addition to American Leather, Motif also introduced higher-end Magis and Calligaris in the new Studio space.
Lora declined to disclose the company's investment or sales, but he did say initial response to both new San Antonio stores has been strong.
He said that in its first year, Motif generated twice its projected sales. Last year, it had a 41% same-store sales increase, Lora said. He wouldn't disclose figures but confirmed last year's total sales were below $10 million. This year, Motif is looking for sales to increase 114%.
Lora said he has heard about the weak economy nationally and the furniture industry's struggles, but added, "Our area really hasn't been that bad."
"If you really focus on the quality of your business, you're going to do well even in a downturn," he added.
Lora and Perez have kept that focus in mind since they opened the 21,000-square-foot Motif Furniture Outlet near Austin in Kyle, Texas, two years ago. They opened an online store, motiffurniture.com, at the same time.
Perez and Lora work seven days a week, spending time each day in the showrooms doing everything from selling to loading customers' cars.
"We both enjoy interacting with customers and greatly value our relationships with them," Lora said. "And because we wear the same uniforms as everyone else who works here, the customers usually do not know we are the owners."
Lora gives credit for the company's success to "the exceptionally talented team of bright, smiling people" at Motif. He said the employees are paid well and enjoy a generous benefits package.
"At every opportunity we thank them for their contributions," he said, adding that the company recently surprised 10 employees who went "above and beyond" with five-day, expenses-paid vacation packages to Mexico's luxurious Playa del Carmen resort area.
Another key aspect at Motif is its online presence. Lora wouldn't disclose online sales figures, but said the fact that the company refers to the Web site as store "01" reflects its importance.
"The ability to sell online is absolutely critical to our business model," he said. He said the dot-com and brick-and-mortar stores have a symbiotic relationship — when sales are down in one channel, they are usually up in the other.
"But building a Web business is a marathon, not a sprint," he said. "It takes years of investing time and money for sales to grow to the level that can be reached in just a few months with a well-located brick-and-mortar store."
Lora said Motif's online store enables the company to expand its reach and allows consumers to pre-shop. While online sales currently are only a small part of Motif's total business, he said he's confident the Web site is capable of eventually eclipsing the results of any single Motif store.
As for the retailer's next move, Lora said there are expansion plans beyond the new stores in San Antonio but declined to elaborate, saying only that "there's a lot of room for growth in Texas."
