LIGHTSOURCE is a permanent blog providing informative lighting industry and retail news.
Issue 3 - June 1, 2021
Perhaps the most talked-about store in the entire home furnishings business, including lighting and home décor, is RH and the retailer formerly known as Restoration Hardware has just opened a brand new Gallery format location in Dallas. It’s a must-see if you’re in town for June market week.
READ MORE: No other retailer in the entire home furnishings space has undergone such a remarkable transformation -- and such a successful one too -- as RH. Once known as Restoration Hardware, the furniture, lighting, and home décor retailer, has reinvented itself as an upscale place for home furnishings, both online and in its stores, which it calls galleries.
And in serendipitous timing for attendees at this month’s Lightovation show in Dallas, the latest Gallery has just opened in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood of Dallas, a quick car or Uber ride from the Market Center. Built on the bones of an existing store, The Gallery on Knox street is a 70,000-square-foot location that features the company’s full array of indoor and outdoor furnishings, topped off by a glass-enclosed rooftop restaurant and wine bar that is already proving to be one of the toughest reservations in town to get.
‘RH Dallas represents our ongoing quest to revolutionize physical retailing with architecturally inspiring spaces,” said Gary Friedman, chairman, and CEO of the company and the executive who has overseen its remarkable metamorphosis. He said the new complex “blurs the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality.”
The three-story Gallery features a charcoal grey Venetian plaster exterior with massive French doors, lush courtyards and terraces, and a 42-wide wall of cascading water. Other features include extensive uses of glass, soaring ceilings, barrel-vaulted passageways, and room settings that feature RH’s mix of products including an extensive assortment of portable and hard-wired lighting.
The Dallas store is one of four scheduled to open this year and the first in the Dallas metroplex. The closest Gallery format location had been in Houston previously. And if you’re hoping to have dinner at RH, you’re probably out of luck but it’s still worth a visit for anyone in the business to see the state of the art in luxury home furnishings retailing.
Lowe’s Focuses on Its Branding
The home improvement channel is one of the biggest sellers of lighting products in the country and the number two player in the space, Lowe’s, has embarked upon several new initiatives that will impact competitors and suppliers alike.
READ MORE: While Lowe’s continues to trail its arch-rival Home Depot in the retail home improvement space, it has closed the gap during the past year a bit, putting up outstanding performance numbers on both the top and bottom lines. More importantly, it has been aggressively rolling out new merchandising initiatives that are among the most progressive in all of retailing, especially when it comes to branding.
As one of the largest sellers of lighting products in the country, Lowe’s moves are of great importance to other retailers who sell in this product classification, as well as the suppliers who do business with them. Taken together they represent a newly aggressive posture for the $80 billion company in its bid to compete with Home Depot and are part of its Total Home strategy created by CEO Marvin Ellison who joined the company three years ago.
“Our Total Home strategy will enhance customer engagement and grow market share,” Ellison said when unveiling the program. Specifically, he said the plan is about “intensifying our focus on the pro customer, expanding our online business, modernizing installation services, improving localization efforts, and elevating our product assortment.”
Here are some of the highlights of Lowe’s new strategy:
- The Lowe’s “House of Brands”: The retailer is increasing the role of brand names across all its classifications. The goal is “strategizing national brands with our own private labels,” according to Sarah Dodd, Senior Vice President of Global Merchandising. The most recent move in making this happen was Lowe’s purchase of the Stainmaster label in the floor coverings area earlier this year. It is the most recognizable name in the field and signals that the retailer wants to increase control of its branding mix, something its suppliers should be aware of.
- More Home Décor: Even as the home improvement business remains strong Lowe’s is expanding its home furnishings offerings, both in its stores and online. Like Home Depot it has always focused on lighting, rugs, and window treatments in its stores but online its assortment has expanded to include furniture, home textiles, and even housewares. Ellison has called it a plan to be a one-stop resource for consumers shopping for products for their homes.
- The Lowe’s List: Introduced this spring, this is a new program that highlights product offerings across the entire merchandising mix that are new, have technological innovations, is proprietary to the retailer, or a combination of the three. Among the first round of 59 products are three from the lighting field, each a hard-wired fixture from three different suppliers. Lowe’s said they will add to the list on an ongoing basis and the products are featured both in-store and online.
All of these initiatives send out a clear message. Not only does Lowe’s want to close the gap with Home Depot but they also want to be a serious player in the home décor and furnishings sector too. Home improvement for Lowe’s has taken on a whole new meaning.
The Best Product Designer in the World
It’s not hype to call former Apple executive Jony Ive the best product and industrial designer in the world so his recent commencement speech at the California College of Art is worth watching to see his comments on the future of product creation.
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