Devon Brooks
After more than ten years of selling under the Ashley banner Case Furniture is back
Not too long after Marion and Dennis Case opened their first furniture store in Enderby in 1977 they realized the need for accounting help. Shortly after that they brought on Loydeen Hagman, but finding office space required them to pry the door off a closet, stick up a shelf and squeeze a desk and chair in.
Times have changed.
Case Furniture Gallery today employs 54 people, working 68,000 sq. ft. of home furnishings in three different buildings in Enderby, Vernon and Kelowna.
They ran under the Case name until 1997, when they signed on to the Ashley Furniture business model. In 2004 the pair opened their second Ashley store in Kelowna.
Ashley is a privately owned firm based in Wisconsin, which started up in 1945. Retailers with Ashley are independently owned and operated, but agree in their license to stock only Ashley products.
Marion says the Ashley product line is a good one, but after working that model for 13 years the Cases felt the restriction on bringing in other lines wasn’t the best option for them or their customers. She says, “We want to be a leader in fashion.”
Along with different manufacturers the company also added outdoor furniture and appliances to the product mix.
In 2009 the Cases decided to expand again. They took over the 18,000 sq. ft. Sandy Furniture store in Vernon.
After renovations it was renamed to the Case logo. This time it was not only an expansion in size, but to another generation. The Vernon store is running under the management of Marion and Dennis’ daughter, Jody Swartz along with her husband Brad.
This year the family changed the other two stores to the Case banner.
Asked about the loss of identity under the Ashley name, Marion shrugs it off. “In Enderby they still referred to us as Case even though we were Ashley for 10 years.”
While the Case name in furniture was never established in Kelowna, she believes that a strong track record of customer service will keep customers returning to the store.
She lists off several examples of service that make the difference.
The customer, she intones, is always right, even to the point where it sometimes hurts them. When a custom-ordered sofa was brought in the customer came to tell them he’d run into financial difficulties and needed his money back.
He got it, but at Case’ expense. Marion says, “We’re flexible. In fact, we’re too flexible.”
He’d paid for it with a credit card, so they not only had the furniture, but they had to pay the credit card fees. She is certain that this kind of service will bring that fellow back, and likely have him recommend them to others.
All parts of the business work under that service model. Delivery people must check in so that the manager and sales person know a customer is happy with what they bought and how it was delivered.
Explains Marion, “The better the experience the customer has, the better our performance, and [the customer] might not even know why.”
Changes in furniture retailing are about more than the evolution of the Case family business name.
Technology and changing tastes have had profound impacts.
Marion, who is her company’s IT guru, remembers when they used to track inventory using a system of recipe cards. The first computer they brought in, sometime in the early ‘90s – she can’t remember exactly when – was to help with that task.
Unlike many other industries, the computer has not brought a revolution of online buying. Research, yes, but relatively little purchasing. She asks, “There is furniture bought online, but who’s going to buy a sofa they haven’t sat on?”
More important changes have come from how they market and, significantly, to whom. The days when someone would buy a sofa to last 20 years or a lifetime are long gone as is the time when the man believed he ruled the household.
One of the reasons that furniture changes, aside from changing fashions, is our transience. Canadians move much more frequently than they used to, and new homes usually need different furniture. Statistics Canada has charted a correlation and says, “On average, homebuyers spent twice as much on furniture in 2002 as homeowners who did not move.” Statistics from 2002 show the average non-moving homeowner spent $1,371 on furniture (not including appliances or electronics) while a mover spent $2,788. Given the large number of people, especially retirees coming to the Okanagan, strong sales in this market.
This also ties into who makes the decisions about furniture purchases. Women aged 25 to 54 buy 80% of all furniture, and how they buy is very different from men. Marion explains, “Men will sit on a sofa and like it or not. Women have a relationship with their environment. They’ll relate [furniture] to their room, their living space and family and friends.”
It also ties into how Case (and most other furniture stores nowadays) market. It is also reflected in their advertising where, Marion says, “In graphics we like to have lifestyle images.”
They used to display furniture as is, in rows in their stores. Then in 1992 she says they paid “a fortune” to bring in a San Francisco designer to look at their Enderby store and give them advice. His suggestion was to arrange the furniture into settings the buyer could relate to, that she or he could see being in their home.
That vision shapes how the company arranges displays to this day and it’s reflected in dozens of set ups you see as you wander through the main store.
There is another figure from Statistics Canada that reinforces the Case business plan, which is the growing trend for people to buy their furniture and appliances from furniture store specialists. Sales growth from general merchandise stores like department stores are declining in relative importance as are other retail outlets like supermarkets, drug stores and home building centres.
