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Designers don't fear big-box challenge - Sears' Great Indoors, Home Depot's Expo Design Centers - Brief Article

Home Channel News, August 6, 2001 by Eleanor Lee Yates

But expansion of Expo and Great Indoors could force specialists to rethink their roles

Sears' Great Indoors and Home Depot's Expo Design Centers are attracting homeoweners with their under-one-roof displays of the latest colorful bedroom linens, stylish bathroom fixtures and cutting-edge designer kitchens. Customers are also taking advantage of design services offered by these huge design emporiums

Great Indoors operates six design centers and expects to have 15 opened by year's end and 150 within the next several years. Home Depot currently operates 31 Expo stores and expects to expand to 44 stores by the end of the year and to 200 by 2005.

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One would expect that designers and specialty dealers who compete with these warehouse-sized outlets would resent this invasion. But the sentiment among specialists interviewed by NHCN was that neither Great Indoors nor Expo is making a dent in their design business, at least not yet.

Interior designers are known for walking clients through projects, and kitchen, bath and other specialty firms rake pride in their personal attention to customers. They are betting that they retain the clientele that wants to deal with a smaller company.

Interior designer Cynthia Adler, of the architectural and design firm Crandall and Associates in Dallas (where there are two Expos and one Great Indoors), said she has not seen seen any negative effect on her business from this competition. "Every once in a while a client will price march me. They'll say 'I can get this in Expo for much cheaper.'"

Interestingly, she noted that the big design centers help to educate her clients on pricing. Sometimes a client might question the high cost of a particular product -- say, a brass showerhead -- that's part of a design project. Now these customers see similar high-end merchandise and their price tags at the design centers. The two megastores also help to inspire her clients with their full-room display settings. "The showrooms stir their imagination," said Adler. "They see how things can be done. I can't show that. I don't have the space and the wherewithal. The best I can do are magazine pictures."

Like most designers, Adler gets a discount from trade-only showrooms and various dealers, but not from Home Depot or Seats. Having everything under one roof is appealing and convenient for customers, she admitted, but Adler doesn't specifically send clients into Expo or The Great Indoors to look around; many browse on their own.

Quality of service questioned

Jeanne Allen, of the Scottsdale, Ariz-based design and retail firm Est Est Inc., gives her local Great Indoors high marks. Like Adler, she doesn't think it's hurt her business. She also does not think in competes with her company's services or products.

"These places are aimed at the lower-upper end," Allen said, indicating that many of Est Est's customers in Scottsdale are wealthy second-home owners or retirees who want to relax and play golf, not run around doing home improvement projects on their own. These shoppers require a firm that can offer full design service, something Allen thinks the big stores may not be able to deliver as well as specialty dealers.

Est Est has a 4,000-square-foot retail showroom, along with 16,000 square feet of wholesale space. The firm has a staff of 18 designers. Allen said she has heard from clients that most Great Indoors' designers are young and many have limited experience. But she's also heard that the how-to classes Great Indoors offers, such as faux finishing techniques, are excellent.

Tina Watt of the kitchen and bath design firm Drury Design in Glen Ellyn, Ill., thinks the Great Indoors and Expo stores help raise the awareness of consumers and expand their vision. Customers come to her saying, "Can I get this style of cabinet?" she explained. Drury Design has its own showroom, but at 2,000 square feet, it can't match the big design centers.

"They fill a niche. We don't do bits and pieces like they do. If a customer wants a faucet, we wouldn't just sell them a faucet. We would send them elsewhere," said Watt.

But like others in her field, Watt wondered about the quality of service being offered by huge design outlets. "A store opened in our area and there was a big corporate blast-off," she recalled. But if someone really liked a display and wanted to speak with the designer who did it, would that designer be on site?" Watt wonders if the designer who did the display was now in Chicago or Atlanta, the headquarters cities of Sears and Home Depot.

Watt also has concerns about the work experience of the big-box cabinetmakers and installers. And she wonders if the huge center designers have the time to keep clients posted on every aspect of a project, be it painting, flooring and lighting.

Mission could change

In Denver, where Great Indoors is about to open its second store, Christine Shaw owns Limited Edition Design, which specializes in kitchen countertops and cabinets. She admitted that the megastore is "very convenient for people, with everything under one roof. There's good inventory. But they never seem to have enough staff." She's also heard that the store seems to have high employee turnover.

Designers don't fear big-box challenge - Sears' Great Indoors, Home Depot's Expo Design Centers - Brief Article

Home Channel News, August 6, 2001 by Eleanor Lee Yates

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