-
Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq Kathwari mingles with employees and guests at a June 2017 company picnic. The Danbury, Conn.-based company enters the spring of 2019 with plans for a major expansion of its outdoor furnishings, including two new collections called Redding Ridge and Nod Hill.
Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq Kathwari mingles with employees and guests at a June 2017 company picnic. The Danbury, Conn.-based company enters the spring of 2019 with plans for a major expansion of its
Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media
Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq Kathwari mingles with employees and guests at a June 2017 company picnic. The Danbury, Conn.-based company enters the spring of 2019 with plans for a major expansion of its outdoor furnishings, including two new collections called Redding Ridge and Nod Hill.
Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq Kathwari mingles with employees and guests at a June 2017 company picnic. The Danbury, Conn.-based company enters the spring of 2019 with plans for a major expansion of its
Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media
With interior-design services long touted by Ethan Allen Interiors as a major selling point, the Danbury company is embarking on a major new foray as the warmer spring months beckon: outdoor furnishings, including lines named for a pair of southwestern Connecticut communities.
On Monday at Ethan Allen Interiors’ annual investors meeting in Danbury, CEO Farooq Kathwari promised a major expansion of the company’s “Home and Garden” line of outdoors furniture for patios and other settings, as well as outdoor fireplaces.
Two debut lines take their names from Redding Ridge and the Nod Hill part of Ridgefield, with pieces already being sold online.
“Very classic designs but … with a very modern perspective,” Kathwari said Monday in describing the new furniture lines at the company’s annual investors meeting in Danbury. “This is going to be marketed starting in the spring of this year.”
Last summer, Ethan Allen was knocked off Furniture Today’s annual list of the 25 largest furniture retailers as ranked by the previous year’s sales, displaced by Amazon even as Ethan Allen has run its own “marketplace” website on Amazon.
It was a significant departure from the Furniture Today list, leaving just Ashley HomeStore and La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries as the two remaining inclusions that both manufacture furniture and run their own retail networks, as the case with Ethan Allen.
Ashley HomeStores is proof the hybrid manufacturing-retail model can be a success even in the age of Amazon, having led the Furniture Today list nine years running with the company having locations in Brookfield, Norwalk and Orange.
Ethan Allen builds itself about 75 percent of the furniture it sells at seven U.S. plants, including in Vermont where the company was founded, and two more in Mexico and Honduras. Half of the furniture Ethan Allen sells today is made to order, and most of any upholstery, allowing the company to save money by avoiding huge stocks of inventory.
The company owns about 140 of its retail centers in the United States, with just over 40 more operating on license agreements, the model for the vast majority of its 120-plus international locations.
In addition to its flagship design center in Danbury, Ethan Allen has locations in Stamford and Milford while maintaining a former design center in Norwalk as an outlet store.
Ethan Allen sales fell slightly to $197 million in its second fiscal quarter ending in December compared to a year earlier, with profits down 18 percent to $12.2 million. The company indicated sales in the current quarter were up 5 percent through the President’s Day weekend.
On the marketing front, the company has adopted augmented reality apps not unlike those available from Houzz, Ikea and PotteryBarn to help people visualize rooms by superimposing a piece of furniture into the camera view of an app.
Ethan Allen is also encouraging its in-house designers to become “influencers” on social media, said Bridget DePasquale, vice president of marketing.
“It’s very ‘hyper-local’ at the design center level; they have events in their design centers or even out in the community where they’re sharing their trade and giving information on trends and inspirations,” DePasquale said. “They’re very proud of what they do in their communities and we like to give them everything that they need, … (including) assistance with any of the new social media.”
It is part of an ongoing overhaul of Ethan Allen in the current economic cycle that Kathwari said has positioned the company to compete in the fast-evolving furniture landscape, while adhering to its core principles of catering to the customer and delivering on what it promises.
“Five years back, you entered into a furniture store — now you are entering into an interior design center,” Kathwari said Monday. “Five years back, if you delivered a custom sofa in four months, (customers) thought we were doing pretty good. Today, they expect it in less than four weeks.”
Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman