by Executive shares what he believes are core tenets of the association and how important they will be to serving members now and in the future
HIGH POINT — When Peter Theran became chief executive officer of the Home Furnishings Association in early September, he brought an extensive retail background the organization had not seen previously in its leadership.
In addition to his role as president of HNN 125 Retailer Boston Interiors, he was vice president and head of consumer channels at Brookstone. Before this, he headed up retail segments of Bose Corp. as director of marketing for its Retail Direct Group and other roles including general manager of its retail division.
He also has served on the HFA board as a director and member of its Board Development Committee.
Experience in these and other areas will guide him in his new leadership position of an organization that serves small to large retailers around the country.
“One of the most significant threads through the many experiences I have had is that I have worked in many different forms of retail,” he told Home News Now shortly after he began his new position. “I have worked in department stores, I have worked in big-box retail and I have worked in franchise retail. All that reflects a pretty large percentage of HFA membership.”
He noted that experience has given him a high level of appreciation not only for various drivers of the business but also the unique challenges retailers face, including getting consumers to make such a large investment in their homes.
“For the consumer, furniture purchases can be very scary,” he said. “We are asking them for an awful lot of money and they also have varying degrees of confidence in their design decision for their homes. My great passion in retail is customer engagement — being able to give people the confidence to say yes. It is really what furniture retail engagement is about to me.”
As an organization whose mission it is to serve retailers, he said he also realizes that needs vary based on the size of the operation. While larger retailers may call upon HFA for advocacy and lobbying related to larger issues such as tariffs, smaller retailers may need help in areas such as marketing and how to use AI to help increase efficiencies.
Indeed, the HFA has continued to bring these and other topics to its membership whether it’s through seminars held during the High Point Market, or through its live webinars, which address issues ranging from navigating leadership in a family business to how to manage inventory through smart buying patterns.
Thus, as he has become more firmly entrenched in his new role during these first few months, Theran identified three core focus areas that will guide HFA moving forward.
The first of these is advocacy and government relations, an area he believes has never been more important than it has over the past few months.
“When I moved into this role, I really felt like I had gotten thrown into the deep end of the pool because I was two weeks into the job when the president announced his intention to put tariffs on furniture specifically,” he said. “So many people, including our members and the press, continue to count on us to provide leadership and guidance when something like that happens. … So advocacy and government relations is a huge focus for us.”
He also noted that member benefits is another key area of emphasis.
“We are constantly looking to enhance the value of HFA membership for our thousands of members,” Theran said, noting that HFA just renewed its partnership with Synchrony for another six years. “It is just a relentless area of focus. … It’s an area where we try to do things that members can’t do on their own. We only exist to serve our membership.”
Education remains another core area of focus for the HFA and its members, Theran said, noting that its educational panels are made up of very knowledgeable sources who are generous with their time and insights they provide for HFA webinars and other sessions.
“It’s something we are always very excited about,” he noted. “There is just always so much new information to bring to our members, and we are so fortunate that experts in so many areas are more than willing to participate in these kinds of events all the time. They really welcome the opportunity to be able to share their insights with furniture retailers all over the country.”
He noted that its webinar schedule — of at least two per month — is designed to be convenient for members. While they can watch these live, they can also watch the archived episodes at any time of the day, or multiple times if they choose.
Another important element of his own leadership style, he notes, is accessibility to members. For example, messages to members come from his email, versus a general HFA mailbox, meaning that they can respond to him directly with a question or thought about the subject matter at hand.
“That is what I want, for our members to be able to get directly back to me,” he said of the open level of communication. “It gives me the ability to make sure I am thinking about everything they are thinking about.”
And of far-reaching and impactful issues such as tariffs, he said, he wants HFA to be able to respond as quickly as possible with timely and meaningful information.
“I feel like a huge obligation on HFA’s part is to be learning faster than our members are and transferring that knowledge to them as quickly as we can,” he said, noting that the goal is to keep them as current and up to date as possible. “Those are the kinds of things we should be doing. We should be out in front and staying out in front of these topics.”
He also applauded the HFA team, which has many decades of collective experience with the organization.
“Being new to the role, I have had a meeting with every single member of the HFA team,” he said. “And I am so impressed with the passion and the level of talent. There are members of the team who have been with HFA and some of its previous iterations for decades. And their enthusiasm for what they do is impressive. Having done this for such a long time, their depth of the knowledge of the industry is just stunning.”
From his perspective, that, along with the many services it provides, is a big part of how important HFA is to the industry it serves.
“Our goal is to be indispensable,” he said, again noting that that definition depends on the size and needs of the individual retailer. “We want members to say, ‘I can’t imagine running my business without HFA.’ And the definition of indispensable changes every day in these dynamic times. But our ability to provide education, to provide services, to provide networking, to provide access to experts is something that every single furniture retailer can benefit from enormously. The price of membership is a bargain.”
