by Mix of 166 furniture pieces being shown in Atlanta this week includes styles that reflect efforts to build a sense of “permanence versus trend”
ATLANTA — Visitors to the summer Atlanta market this week will catch a glimpse of how Park Hill Collection has continued to transform itself with what it describes as a new brand persona and design language for its furniture line.
In its nearly 11,000-square-foot space in Building 2, 1003, the company is showing 166 pieces from its latest catalog including dining tables and chairs, bench seating, occasional furniture and storage pieces, not to mention a wide mix of upholstery. Having shown about half the mix at the winter markets in January, it also showed the entire mix of products from its full summer 2025 catalog in Dallas in June, giving dealers and designers an even broader glimpse of its new style direction.
In its marketing materials, the company describes its traditional design aesthetic as having a connection to the Southern United States with English and French heritage styling at its core. But since industry veteran Randy Wells joined the company around May 2023, the company has embarked on a repositioning in the marketplace that expands the aesthetic at the same time it continues to reference its traditional roots.
“The primary objective in establishing this design language was to maintain a strong connection to our roots, differentiate Park Hill Collection in the marketplace and provide the breathing room we need to draw from a broader range of design styles and grow our business — without sacrificing our legacy customer,” Wells noted in the verbiage of its summer 2005 catalog. “In short, we are building the Park Hill Collection brand and product line for permanence, not trend.”
Thus, the company spent most of last year developing and building what it said is the first of three waves of product introductions “that mark the most expansive and considered collection of proprietary product design in the brand’s history.”
Wells noted this is a shift from the company’s prior experience mostly buying product off the shelf in various furniture plants that were part of its global sourcing network.
“They were shopping for a particular aesthetic,” Wells told Home News Now earlier this past spring, noting that the company pioneered the farmhouse design that has been so prevalent in many collections throughout the industry in recent years. “They really had a terrific run with the farmhouse perspective in holiday and home décor and furnishings. In that place and time buying for a singular look, it worked.”
In joining the company in 2023, Wells and the design team set out to broaden the company’s aesthetic and appeal in the marketplace.
“Of course to really build a brand and a company that is at the top of the industry, you have to differentiate yourself, and to differentiate yourself you have to build a defined design language that should speak to your competencies and your roots, for the business,” he said, noting that furniture is between roughly 30% and 40% of the business.
“We have redefined the entire design language for the brand and we have held onto our roots in Southern American and English and French design. That is at the heart of our DNA,” he said, adding that the company also delved into some other different aesthetics including rustic modern and updated casual designs that are still popular in the marketplace. “But you will see with each introduction, we are adding in building blocks that are Chippendale, or Ming, or they are Moorish or Jacobean or Louis and French Chateau. All those little elements are connected to those American French and English roots in some way, but they reach just a little bit further. That is allowing us to expand our perspective from Farmhouse to what we call Estate furnishings.”
“If you do this correctly and you do it patiently and thoughtfully and do it with measure, I think in our case, we can go from Farmhouse to Estate and we can represent different style categories and aesthetics but do it from the lens of our brand in a way that is connected to our roots, our DNA and our history. But we are not chained to that.”
He said the product is also being developed in a very cohesive manner, for example with the occasional tables designed with the arm heights and seat heights of its sofas and other seating in mind.
“It is just like designing a dining chair to fit a table,” Wells said. “I can’t imagine not doing that. If you want a contiguous display, you need harmony in your products so they fit well in a store because the store is going to give you much smaller space than you will have in your showroom and those things need to fit and flow and feel good together. They need to work and live together.”
For the winter 2025 cycle, the company said, it did “a complete redesign of the brand’s coastal products, along with most of its occasional tables and sofas. As part of that process, we continued our work to reinvigorate and dramatically improve the quality, packaging and pricing of our most popular case goods, while building an entirely new multinational supply chain that allows us to shift their manufacture from China to Vietnam.”
For the summer cycle, it said it is continuing to move all home furnishings manufacturing operations out of China — with only two SKUs being active, including an Antiqued Black side table and Bluebird settee. The shift is moving products primarily to Vietnam, although some items are coming out of India and Indonesia.
Thus, whether buyers are shopping for an entire suite, or wish to buy individual items for a more eclectic look, the Park Hill assortment in Atlanta aims to offer display solutions for dealers and designers alike with sourcing aimed at keeping tariffs to a minimum.
In addition, the company is showing another 100-plus home decor items and 15 SKUs in its candle assortment.
Wells noted that the product is either in stock, or on the water, meaning dealers can order and receive it immediately, or within a few weeks.
“If you don’t have it, or have it at a good value, it’s just an art project,” he said, of the importance of creating salable designs that are readily available.
