by New showroom at 600 S. Main is more than 4 times the size of its previous location at 212 Jacobs Place, making it one of the largest furniture showrooms in High Point
HIGH POINT — Full-line furniture resource Homelegance will begin occupying its new showroom building here in time for the spring market, a move that ultimately will allow it to showcase more of its products in a space that is four times the size of its previous location.
The new showroom is in the former Zaki Oriental Rugs building at 600 S. Main St., which was acquired last fall for $8.5 million.
The company previously occupied a 23,000-square-foot space at 212 Jacobs Place downtown for the past 21 years. By comparison, the former Zaki building is 100,000 square feet, all on one floor. It also occupies an entire city block, making it one of the largest standalone showrooms in High Point, plus one of the largest individual market showrooms period.
At the April High Point Market, the company will have a soft opening of the facility, occupying about a third of the showroom space.
“This market we’re going to peel back the curtain,” said Jamie Collins, executive vice president. “We’re going to display approximately the same amount of product we did in the old building, perhaps a little more, but in a more temporary way. We wanted to get into the building, and this gives us a chance to do a sort of dry run. Then the contractor will get in there after market and get to it.”
By October, the company will occupy the full space, with some 80% of the building used to showcase new and inline product, with the rest devoted to staff offices, plus conference rooms for meetings with customers, indoor/outdoor hospitality areas, showrooms for proprietary product, plus a design lab featuring fabric swatches, hardware samples and finish panels.
In addition, the building has an on-site warehouse which will hold goods previously shipped to the showroom from an off-site location. Having this type of holding area on-site is important in that it will reduce product handling, Collins noted.
But a key for the company and its customers is the showroom footprint. It will be more of an open floor plan than the company’s prior showroom, which was largely segmented by walls separating major categories.
While the new space will have walls for certain categories such as bedroom, there also will be more clear sight lines between areas showcasing the various segments of its business, from bedroom and dining to living room — including upholstery, occasional and entertainment furniture — plus office furniture.
And while the prior showroom featured mainly new introductions and product from the most recent market, the new space will showcase a much wider mix of both new and inline goods, thus allowing customers to see items they might not have seen in a few market cycles or more.
“In our two showrooms —High Point and Las Vegas — we can show new product and maybe last market’s product so it leaves very little room for us to show our bestsellers,” Collins said. “We’ve been looking for a long time for a location that would allow us to really present the breadth of the product line.”
For example, the new showroom will be able to floor a minimum of 60 sets of motion plus stationary upholstery, compared to 25-30 previously. The new space also will show from 60 to 80 bedrooms compared to 35 previously. The area to be devoted to casual dining also is significant, at roughly 10,000 square feet, nearly half the size of the entire former showroom building.
“So the main thing that it’s really going to allow us to do is give us an opportunity to show the different categories we’re in,” Collins added. “Everybody knows we do bedroom and dining room, and especially at the Las Vegas show you can get a really good idea of our presence in upholstery. But again, you get to see the new stuff — not the stuff that we already know is selling. So this building is going to give us the space to show those bestsellers that have been winners for a long time.”
“They might be on a floor say in Ohio selling really well. We then get a customer that comes in from Arizona and they’ve never seen the group before because it hadn’t been on our floor in four or five years,” he added. “Now we’ve got a much better chance of selling it to them if we can. You sell what you show, that’s the old saying. This gives us an opportunity to show a lot more.”
At the April market, the company will begin seeing customers in the new showroom starting Wednesday, April 10, through Tuesday, April 16.
