Finger Furniture builds on youth in Houston
By Clint Engel -- Kids Today, 11/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
Finger Furniture has added display spice and a new baby category to its youth furniture area with the opening of its newest store in Houston.
Roughly 3,000 square feet of the 93,000-square-foot Willowbrook store on Tomball Parkway in northwest Houston is devoted to youth. It's not the largest of the Top 100 company's youth displays, but with it, Finger has definitely turned up the dial on presentation, said Rodney Finger, CEO of the eight-store Houston chain (which includes two Ashley Furniture HomeStores).
Added Cindy Emerman, a Finger buyer credited with leading the new store design charge, "Youth has always been a major category for Finger. The key difference here is we kicked it up a notch on accessories."
For the first time, Finger's Room To Grow department features an accessories boutique near the entrance filled with mass merchandise displays of lamps, wall art and rugs, for example, which match the various themes of the youth vignettes.
Key suppliers of the non-furniture goods include Southern Textiles, California Kids, Hallmart Collectibles, La-Z-Boy Kids and Davenport for bed linens; Judith Edwards, Harris Marcus and Stylecraft for lamps and Creative Images, Paragon and Art Classics for wall art.
Emerman said children's accessories typically don't sell as well as the accessories in other areas of a Finger store, so she decided to mix it up a bit at the new store, creating excitement by filling a dedicated space with accent items, including lamps, rugs and wall art and saving most of the wall pace in the youth area for special graphics and other touches that pull shoppers in, including three-dimensional silhouettes of kids playing ball, flying kites and playing tug of war.
Finger employed a local artist specializing in faux finishes to work on the walls in this area as well as throughout the store, and she, in turn, brought in about a dozen specialists for the project.
The result is a fun, vibrant department that includes a colorful graffiti room, where Finger used graffiti plaques from Creative Images; a tree house that extends out over a La-Z-Boy Kidz bedroom and the introduction of a new comic superhero — Finger-Man.
Inspired by Powell's Sunday Funnies bedroom collection, Finger-Man is a caped crusader painted life size on a wall at the entrance of the department. He uses the catch-phrase, "At your Fingers!"— made popular in television commercials years ago by former CEO Robert Finger, who died earlier this year after a fight with cancer.
Finger plans to use Finger-Man on T-shirts that it will hand out to kids during the grand opening this month.
In a "Finger Paints" room, the retailer will display original artwork by Olivia Finger, the 3-year-old daughter of Rodney Finger, who speaks highly of her creativity.
"I have an original Olivia on my living room wall — a red canvas," he said with a smile. "She's very talented, so who knows?"
On the furniture side, Finger employed its current key vendors, including La-Z-Boy Kids, Kathy Ireland Home by Standard, Powell, Broyhill and John Boyd. And in the new nursery area, the company has added cribs from both John Boyd and Million Dollar Baby that can be converted to full-size beds.
Rodney Finger, Finger Furniture CEO, stands in front of a tree house display featuring La-Z-Boy Kidz's Jackson Creek bedroom group. The retailer spiced up the youth display at its new Houston store in the Willowbrook shopping area with special graphics, an accessories boutique and the introduction of baby furniture.
A John Boyd bedroom with Hallmart bed linens makes a splash in the Finger Paints room. Finger plans to add artwork from CEO Rodney Finger's daughter Olivia soon.
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