by As high-end off-price inventory becomes harder to source, the Pittsburgh retailer is replacing its 26-year-old Designer Furniture Outlet with a new concept
PITTSBURGH, Penn. Founded in 1953 by Sigmund and Audrey Lenchner, Today’s Home has grown across three generations into one of Pittsburgh’s names in luxury furniture and interior design. But after 26 years, the company is closing one of its most recognizable retail concepts: Designer Furniture Outlet, or DFO. On Aug. 26, Today’s Home began a $2 million liquidation sale, clearing the DFO floor as the retailer prepares to transition the space.
The retailer will reallocate 12,000 square feet from its 60,000-square-foot Greentree Design Center to a new leather and motion furniture concept featuring specialized galleries. The decision isn’t the result of weak performance. Instead, it reflects a fundamental change in the supply of the high-end closeout and overrun merchandise that made DFO successful. And a willingness to try something new has always been a core tenet of the retailer’s strategy.
“I think we’ve never been afraid to change and make a splash in the market. Because you have not to be afraid to admit it’s not working anymore,” said Alyssa Moore, president of Today’s Home.
Moore said the company spent roughly 18 months evaluating what to do with the space before making the decision. When DFO launched in 2000, it gave design-conscious consumers access to manufacturer overruns, showroom samples and closeout merchandise from furniture brands at discounted prices. A few decades later, more manufacturers are producing to order, creating a decrease in surplus stock and limiting the supply of unique merchandise available for outlets.
“Nobody’s making extra anymore,” Moore said. “They’re making it to order, which is not necessarily a bad thing in the majority of our store, but those off-price goods just don’t exist.”
And although there still are some off-price goods, it’s lower quality than Today’s Home wants to carry.
“We just feel like it’s so readily available through (places like Wayfair) that we thought we could reinvest the space into something much better for our customer base,” said Rachel Lenchner, Today’s Home director of marketing and design.
Rather than continue searching for merchandise that no longer reliably exists within their target price point, Today’s Home is retooling the space to categories it believes offer greater opportunity, including leather and motion furniture.
“I think there’s a lot of new technology in (motion) as well,” Lenchner said. “Sofas can play sound, you can charge your phones and everyone’s always looking for the next big thing. We’ve seen some very cool innovations from Flexsteel, for example. It feels like you’re in a movie theater.”
Its merchandising strategy also will evolve. Creating vignettes by manufacturer or style of furniture, Moore said, will make the selling process easier for designers as well as consumers because everything will be in one place, rather than having to roam all over the store.
“You can just guide people from one to another to see the options, rather than roaming all over a 60,000-square foot-space,” Moore said.
Today’s Home will also continue investing in its high-end residential showroom, The Rug Studio, custom window treatments and TH Trade, which serves designers, architects and commercial clients.
“Our success over 73 years has never been about holding onto a concept past its moment; it’s been about making the strategic pivots that best serve our customers,” Moore said in a news release. “DFO did exactly what we built it to do for 26 years. Now the smartest thing we can do with that space, and with our energy, is put it toward what’s next.”
