HIGH POINT, N.C. — The last few years have been nerve-racking for the American furniture industry. Consumer spending fell after Sept. 11, and competition has become stiff from Chinese manufacturers.
Furniture-makers have been groping for a hook to entice the public to buy. Now, for better or worse, they seem to have found it. They are not peddling living room groups or bedroom suites. They're not pushing design styles or historic periods.
They're selling lifestyles.
"People don't buy furniture; they buy a manifestation of their own lifestyle, and those lifestyles tend to be aspirational," stated Ed Tashjian, vice president of marketing for Century Furniture, which introduced five very targeted lifestyle collections here last week at the International Home Furnishings Market, the world's largest wholesale home furnishings event. Among Century's offerings were the Kentshire dining room collection for formal, family-oriented people who exhibit "grace under pressure," and the Andalusia outdoor furniture line aimed at those who indulge in "garden soirees, pool parties, and hot cocoa on the screened porch."
There seems to be a lifestyle collection out there for every conceivable way of life, real or imagined. Hot for racing cars? Consider Racing Furniture licensed by NASCAR, a line of "automotive seating" for the home, including a Corvette leather armchair and a Daytona recliner that flips backwards at the yank of a chrome-plated stick shift.
Yearning for the great outdoors? Check out the Woolrich outdoor living lifestyle collection that features wall sconces embedded in snowshoes and lampshades on canteen bases. ("It's not just lighting . . . it's a lifestyle," is the Woolrich pitch.)
For the heavy-duty gearhead, there's Hot Rod Garage, a complete furniture system for the garage by Sauder, licensed by Hot Rod magazine. It includes a mobile work island, storage cabinets for holding clunky compressors and pistons, and fluorescent lighting. "A lot of people are looking at the garage as the new room in the house," said Doug Krieger, Sauder's director of design.
For armchair travelers, National Geographic has its first-ever home collection, an extensive line of 2,500 items inspired by the rare artifacts that have shown up on the magazine's pages. Be the first on your block to own a tropical sideboard modeled after the multibasin water filter cabinets that collect rainwater in the West Indies.
For homebodies, the Betty Crocker line by Home Styles has retro kitchen furnishings. Not to overlook the hipster population, Todd Oldham was on hand to introduce his new line of chairs, sofas, and assorted other pieces for La-Z-Boy, in vivid stripes, animal prints in electrifying colors, and little dots inspired, he said, by the candy he ate as a kid that was stuck on paper. He intended his collection for "people who are young at heart, young of age, and young in spirit."
Lifestyles, lifestyles. There's furniture for "busy moms," designed by former supermodel-turned-"lifestyle designer" Kathy Ireland. There's furniture for those who aspire to be tasteful but may not trust their own tastes — to wit, the well-received Turkey Hill collection by America's doyenne of good taste, Martha Stewart, with Bernhardt Furniture. It includes utilitarian pieces like a potting table, and furniture for great rooms "like all my friends have now," she said at a press conference. (The collection was pronounced "really peerless, when it comes down to it," by Mark McMenamin, senior editor of the trade journal InFurniture.)
There are collections for the celebrity-obsessed, such as those who'd like to dine at an Oscar de la Renta table, designed for Century; and furniture evoking lifestyles so finely nuanced it's hard to picture the target audience. For example, the Antiques Roadshow Collection by Southern Furniture Company is modelled after furniture appraised on the PBS-TV show, presumably for those who like the look of antiques but not the genuine article.
Century Furniture's Grande Pacific collection is intended for that subset of individuals who "revel in creature comforts, share lavish food with friends and colleagues, stroll through dew-drenched vineyards, and breathe in the heady, fertile aroma of ripening grapes," according to the marketing literature.
Why the obsession with lifestyle? "What's changed is that in the past, people were more likely to be dictated to by the wiles of fashion, to buy furniture in suites, where someone else matched an armoire with a chest and a mirror. Now, people are becoming more eclectic and are picking out individual pieces that remind them of places they've been or would like to go," said Century's Tashjian. "People want to express their lifestyle through things they buy."
But do they? Some see the lifestyle marketing approach as a frenzied attempt by manufacturers to stay competitive, especially now, at a time when Chinese manufacturers have gained some 40 percent of the wood-furniture market in the United States, contributing to the loss of 16,000 jobs in North Carolina, the hub of the nation's furniture production.
Some of the more extreme lifestyle collections had mixed reviews. "Some of the (lifestyles collections) are ridiculous. People aren't going to buy a piece of furniture because it's endorsed by NASCAR," said Barry Tatelman, chief executive officer of Jordan's Furniture, who was shopping at High Point.
"There is a sense now that people are really reaching," said Mark McMenamin. "I'm a firm believer in hooks. Furniture retailers need hooks. But even more, the consumer needs the hook. They go to mass furniture stores and don't know where to start. Without some sort of marshaling and labeling of styles and themes, they really are lost. It's a shortcut for the consumer."
One lure that manufacturers are casting is toward the so-called "echo boomers," the estimated 74-80 million children of baby boomers also known as Generation Y. According to analyst Jerry Epperson, who spoke at the market about furniture trends, they're the wealthiest young generation ever, yet the furniture industry has been slow to latch on to them.
"The younger generation under 30 doesn't know any furniture brands except in certain localities . . . IKEA," he said. "No one out there has established a brand to appeal to young people."
Not that manufacturers weren't trying. A Danish company called Innovation, with offices in Maryland, showed their "Living and Loving" sofa bed collection targeted to the MTV generation, with bold colors, op-art designs, and a catalog just this side of risque that hinted broadly at the sofas' potential functions.
At the other end of the extreme was the upscale French Heritage "Sauvignon" collection of rural French maple dining room furniture for "younger, affluent customers in their 20s and 30s" who appreciate reproduction quality furniture and like lighter finishes and a smaller scale. "It's perfect for a first home," said French Heritage spokeswoman Kathy Wall.
The Sauvignon table will retail for about $3,250 and each chair is $800, but on the other hand, the echo boomer who appreciates the French reproduction lifestyle can have a $3,900 buffet with "escutcheons that really work," said Wall, referring to the ornamental plates around the keyholes. "This is not for the person who would accept a faux escutcheon."