by CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif. — Furniture of America has completed its highly anticipated move to larger, more strategic operational and corporate headquarter buildings in Southern California.
The move marks another phase of the company’s rapid growth since its founding in 2005. FOA spent the last 12 years at its previous location where it began with one warehouse in 2011 with 220,000 sq. feet. In the following years, the company entered new product categories along with good, better and best selections, and another four warehouses were added. A combined warehouse space of over 2 million sq. ft. was the result and spread between the five buildings all along Walnut Avenue in City of Industry, just outside of Los Angeles.
The move was completed at the end of October to just less than a mile away. With two locations as part of the move, sales, operations, e-commerce and will-call for customer pickup is located at 20300 Business Parkway. This distribution center will enable streamlined services for a quicker pick-up and delivery experience for customers.
“Improving efficiencies, primarily not transferring product between warehouses will result in less man hours, less product handling, thus reducing the opportunity for damages,” said Jodi Brookshire, corporate vice president of sales and marketing. “It also will eliminate bottlenecks that can create friction points for customers. The reduced processing time and manpower involved will result in savings that will be passed along to FOA customers as part of its ongoing commitment to support our dealers.”
The need to consolidate warehousing under one roof was a driving factor in the relocation but not the only one. Just across the street is a newly created headquarters location at 680 S. Lemon Ave.
The new corporate headquarters building marks the first time in company history to have a dedicated and separate location and that will be utilized in new ways. The building is over 500,000 sq. ft. and boasts state of the art meeting rooms, vast gathering and workspaces, entertaining areas, training rooms, etc.
Creative influences are all around with vibrant colors, a larger-than-life Incredible Hulk statue and a brightly colored dragon on the second floor that are permanent building fixtures. The lobby features an elaborate fully stocked koi pond that runs the length of the lobby floor along with a waterfall and saltwater fish tank. All of this will greet the visitors of this new space that will offer many options for FOA to expand into. Besides housing corporate operations such as accounting and marketing, it offers plenty of room for expansion with R & D, VIP showrooms, private events, and potential new business units. Creative collaboration will be a big focus in this space that does not resemble a furniture distribution center.
“Thinking outside of the box sometimes requires you to be in a different environment,” said Brookshire. “The purpose of the move is really two-fold: efficiency and streamlining processes for our dealers with the new DC. The other purpose is to focus on the future growth of Furniture of America. That could mean many different things for us and having a separate environment not only opens the door for fostering creativity but offers the varied type of spaces where we can bring to life the visions and ideas generated by the FOA team.”
“As we have grown so rapidly over the years, we must continue to rethink some of our business models. This is the time to make strategic improvements and be well positioned for the additional growth that is coming. With our substantial investments in factories, we harness the power of both quality and pricing, ultimately delivering optimal value to our valued dealers,” Brookshire added.
