Retail Furniture Market Changes

With the urbanization of Northwest Arkansas, traditional furniture stores may go the way of the bundling bed.

“I don’t think five years from now there will be traditional furniture stores in Northwest Arkansas,” said Dave Layman, 44, co-owner of Layman’s furniture store in Springdale. “In my opinion, tradition is over. It’s got to be a different venue.”

Layman is talking about the trend toward smaller, specialized furniture stores and away from furniture superstores like the 41,500-SF one he and his brother Tim own in Springdale’s Center Point Place shopping center.

Paul Bynum Sr. came to the same conclusion a few months ago. This past spring, Bynum, 67, downsized his five stores into three clustered along U.S. Highway 71B in south Springdale. He expects revenue to be about half of the $12 million he was bringing in annually, but overhead will be downsized, too.

“This area is changing,” Bynum said. “That’s why we’re changing with it … We had $3,000 to $5,000 sofas. Quite frankly, that business is dwindling. We saw the handwriting on the wall.”

Now, Bynum’s sofas range in price from $277 to $1,000.

Springdale became Northwest Arkansas’ furniture market because of cheaper rent and sales taxes that were traditionally 1 percent less than in neighboring cities. For decades, Bynum and Layman have been the biggest names in Northwest Arkansas furniture.

Urban Settlers

Layman said the the influx of Wal-Mart vendors into Benton County has ramped up the area’s urbanization. As a result, his traditional customer base may be dwindling or at least changing.

“What I grew up knowing as a farming community, that is, a close-knit community, is trying to readjust itself to deal with what I would call urban settlers,” Layman said, couching his comments. “I really do think the majority of my customers are within a seven-mile radius [of the store], at least within a 15 mile radius.”

Attitudes toward furniture are also changing, Layman said. For most of the 20th century, a family would usually purchase furniture once and keep it for a lifetime. Now, with styles changing, people often want to buy new furniture every few years. That means customers don’t want to invest as much in something they may discard a few years later.

“What we’re trying to do here [at the Springdale store] is gear to needs of the family that might want to keep the furniture for the rest of their lives,” Layman said.

Layman’s offers a wide variety of traditional furniture for a wide variety of prices. Sofas range in price from $400 to $3,000 there. Mattresses start at $100 and go to $4,900 each.

But it can be difficult to compete with national chains that have moved into the area, such as Furniture Row, a Denver-based company that owns Oak Express, Denver Mattress, Bedroom Expressions and Sofa Mart all in one building in south Springdale.

Mitch Colvin, manger of the Springdale Sofa Mart, said Furniture Row opened its stores on what was known to many as “furniture row” along U.S. Highway 71B because clustering furniture stores together is good for competition.

“The end result is the customer ends up with the best deal,” he said.

Layman’s now has more than 100 suppliers, but the store’s four major vendors are Broyhill, Serta, La-Z-Boy and Whirlpool.

While he caters to the indigenous population of Northwest Arkansas, Layman sees Benton County sprouting Pottery Barn-type stores for the vendors and their ilk while Fayetteville woos the mod crowd with artsy and retro design (see story, p. 26).

“If 80 percent of the customer base is traditional, why would I open a store that caters to the other 20?” Layman asked.

In March, the Layman brothers opened an Ashley Furniture Home Store in Fort Smith. Bynum had already staked out the Northwest Arkansas franchise territory when he opened an Ashley store in Springdale in 2000.

Sofa So Good

Although he foresees a change within the next few years for his big store in Springdale, Layman said he doesn’t know yet what that change will be.

But he isn’t complaining, at least not yet. Layman said sales are up since moving his store in October from Springdale’s Emma Avenue, where it had been a fixture for 57 years and nine months, to the shopping center on Interstate 540. That’s 4.5 miles away as the pickup drives. Layman said he’ll bring in more than $5 million in sales at the Springdale store this year. That’s double the gross revenue the store did a decade ago, but Layman wouldn’t say how much the increase has been since last year.

As the market changes, so has Layman’s concept of retail furniture sales.

“The thought process furniture stores have had forever is that furniture stores are a destination,” Layman said, even though he has $2 million worth of inventory on his showroom floor. “My mindset now is I am not a destination. I need to be near a retail center.”

Five years ago, Layman said, he couldn’t imagine the fancy decor like working fireplaces and fountains with running water that he has in his furniture store today.

“Who would have dreamed about a furniture store having to have that?” he said.

After all, for decades, Layman’s furniture store was attached to Layman’s hardware store, which carried everything from hammers to horse feed.

Layman’s grandfather Lawrence brought Springdale Cash Grocery in 1946. Eventually, the 6,000-SF store became 36,000 SF with the addition of hardware and appliances in the 1950s and home furnishings in 1966. The grocery closed in 1973.

Dave Layman’s father Gene ran the furniture store from about 1970 until 1996, while Joe Layman (Dave’s uncle) ran Layman’s hardware store.

“My folks used to tell us about bottom lines instead of nursery rhymes,” Layman said. “So I’ve been in this business for some time.”

Bynumopoly

Trained as an embalmer and mortician, Paul Bynum Sr. left the funeral home business to start Bynum Home Furnishings in 1974 in a 4,000-SF building in downtown Siloam Springs.

“I started on a shoestring, and it was raveled,” he said.

But things quickly improved.

By 2000, he had five stores, including the 80,000-SF Bynum Home Furnishings in Siloam Springs. But that year, he closed the original store and moved much of the inventory to a new 30,000-SF store he opened along Springdale’s U.S. 71B furniture strip.

“I had the one big store concept in Siloam Springs,” Bynum said. “But being over there, all the action was over here.”

About 40,000 cars traveled U.S. Highway 71B in Springdale every day, Bynum said. And most of his customers were from the I-540/U.S. Highway 71 corridor anyway.

When he closed the Siloam Springs store, Bynum abandoned sales of appliances and electronics because Fayetteville stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and Lowe’s had squeezed the profit margin out of those goods.

Bynum made the decision to downsize again this past January. That meant closing the Bynum Home Furnishings store in Springdale and his Bassett/Kincaid store.

“The bottom line is we had too much business to keep our hands on it,” he said. “We didn’t have enough warehouse space. Quite frankly, it was chaos.”

The downsizing also meant he cut the number of his employees almost in half to about 35.

With the downsizing, Bynum upsized his Ashley Furniture Home Store from 18,000 to 30,000 SF in early August. He also owns the 15,000-SF La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery next door and a discount store — Sofas, Beds & More Direct Furniture Center — in an 18,000-SF building across U.S. 71B.

Bynum Home Furnishings carried upscale furniture from companies like Drexel Heritage and Harrods of London.

“We feel like we have as good a quality and much better prices in Ashley,” Bynum said. “This is factory-direct pricing. It’s down to the bare minimum to turn a profit.”

Down the road, Bynum said, he may open an Ashley store in Rogers.

“The growth is coming,” he said. “No doubt, it’s already here.”