What’s next for Sarreid?

Under CEO Brad Cates’ leadership, the importer will expand into the bedroom category by Spring Market as part of its transformation into a whole-home brand

HIGH POINT — In one short year at Sarreid Ltd., Brad Cates has managed to change the way the luxury home furnishings importer does business.

It’s all about speed now and meeting the consumer’s desire for instant gratification head-on. And that starts with speed to retail. Under Cates’ lead as chief operating officer, Sarreid dramatically changed its go-to-market strategy, shortening the window from the time a product hits this shore to the time it’s available for sale across its distribution channels. 

At the fall Market here, the company was showing hundreds of new SKUs, and not one could be characterized as “wait-and-see how retailers respond.” Sarreid bought inventory on all of them, and some items were already sold out before the furniture market started. That’s how quickly it’s relaying product news to its customers.

But this is only  Cates’ first act. This month, Sarreid’s three partners — Alex Sarratt, Charles Hoffman Jr., and Charlie Mauze — promoted him to CEO, a new lead position for the company. The three will continue to serve as the company’s board of directors.

“We needed an executive who would not only keep the spirit alive but who could take the reins and move Sarreid into the next half century,” Hoffman said in a statement. 

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Cates said the partners, “have done a brilliant job of building the company to where it is today,” over Sarreid’s  54-year history. The business started as an accessories importer. Today, that’s a very small part of a pie that has grown to include dining, occasional, storage, and fabric and leather upholstery.

“Our profitability structure, our debt structure — all of that is fantastic,” Cates said in praise of the founders. “But to get to the next level, they felt there needed to be one voice, one decision-maker, one vision.” Cates added that he’s always been a big believer in teams and team building, “but at the end of the day, we have to have a tie-breaker.”

When asked what’s next for Sarreid,” Cates said, “We’re going to build a brand.”  Not that Sarreid isn’t already an established brand, but the goal now is to build it into one recognized “for whole-home or specific one-of-a-kind art pieces.”

“We’re going to make it easier for the designer to come in to shop and work with our product across a color palette because we’re going to narrow the color palette,” he said, “But we’ll also always have something extra special … limited run items.”

The initial push has started. The plan for next High Point Market is to have a full line of bedroom furniture available in its 16,000-square-foot showroom on the third floor of the C&D building. It will be produced by the boutique manufacturing companies Sarreid works with in Vietnam and Italy. And while Cates declined to name the designer Sarreid has contracted to develop the line, he described the individual as fourth-generation, “best in the industry,” and one who can execute the company’s vision in the narrow palette range it’s shooting for.

“We’re going to maintain Sarreid’s tradition of always having beautiful product, but we’ll make it even easier to shop,” Cates said. 

The bedrooms will be more suited than the usual offering for Sarreid, but not overdone. It’s also going back to its roots as an accessories importer, with designs that employ a heavy mix of materials and textures. “You’re going to see woven leathers. You’re going to see traditional shapes because we also moved into a period where we were doing antique productions,” he said.

“So we’re looking at taking that ethos of who we are and melding it into three or four lifestyle categories that would feature bedroom, dining and living all under the same Sarreid umbrella.” 

While the company already carries the other two categories, it hasn’t designed them necessarily to go together. The coming lifestyle collections shift won’t be “matchy-matchy” he said, but will have “more of a purposefully eclectic mix to it, where you’ve got an element that works here but also works back within the historical items we have within Sarreid.”

The importer, which develops product through eight boutique suppliers in three countries (China, Vietnam and Italy) is also working on a domestic upholstery program, and Cates hinted other product categories may be coming soon, too, though he declined to elaborate.

An industry veteran, Cates began his career as a salesperson at Furniture Today in the early 90s. It was a great training ground for learning the industry, he said, and it wasn’t long before Cates moved on to executive-level positions with suppliers in the industry. The first big move was to Mitchell Gold + Bob William and then later to Thomasville, Natuzzi and other companies that have worked to develop their brands in an industry not particularly noted for consumer-recognized brands.

At Sarreid, which Cates joined in September 2019, he turned much of his early attention to equipping the company for speed, efficiency and the digital era. The 78,000-square-foot Wilson, N.C. headquarters and warehouse facility now has a Zoom and photography studio. “New product comes in, we shoot it and we distribute content,” Cates said. Dealers are seeing the goods shortly after Cates and the others in Wilson see it, especially now that international travel is out of the picture for the Wilson team.

Sarreid’s website was overhauled, too, in part to reflect this focus on speed, clearly showing what’s in stock, how much is in stock and what’s in transit so retailers and designers are encouraged to move fast. There are more than 300 product photos on the website and “we’re constantly increasing our awareness, pushing out messaging to retail partners, the design community and our social media followers on a nearly daily basis,” he said.

In the midst of the pandemic and related inventory constraints, Sarreid is now looking for ways to help its brick-and-mortar partners meet the crush of demand coming at year-end — showcasing in-stock, cash-and-carry items on its website, items that are UPS-able or can fit in an SUV, product. On average Sarreid ships in-stock merchandise within 48 hours and often just a few hours after an order is placed.

During this High Point Market, Cates talked to Home News Now about the “new normal,” about how the company continues to push to be faster to market and how it won’t necessarily wait for a furniture market to bring the newest bedroom category to its customers. Currently, the plan is to have bedroom in its Wilson facility in March, and as soon as it hits the facility, Sarreid will photograph it, stage it, video it, and “put it up for sale and promote the heck out of it.”

“We want to have the opportunity to show it to the industry (at a market) because we’ve got multiple lifestyle collections we’re bringing to the market, multiple themes, but we’re not dependent on the High Point Market to do that any longer,” he said. 

Indeed, the pandemic, the cancellation of April Market and the light attendance at October Market are among the factors convincing many suppliers, not just Sarreid, that there should be contingency plans, that there might be a better way — or, at least, another way — including virtual showroom tours and year-round showroom access.

Sarreid’s speed-to-market strategy doesn’t make it immune to the supply chain disruption the industry has been facing. Cates noted there’s talk Italy could shut down for a second time as COVID-19 cases rise in the country, and that could hamper production of the bedroom and other new products. But there are a few things working to its advantage, too.

“Because we’re in with boutique manufacturers, not multi-million-square-foot monsters, we command the lion’s share of production where we are,” he said. “And we own or have a financial interest in multiple factories we partner with.

“But we’re going to face the same issues as everyone else as the supply chain constricts, so our orders are in. We have order volumes in at record levels for the company, betting on the future, betting on the strength of the brand and betting on gaining market share after this market.”

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