March 04, 2005

Furniture Row

Dueling it out on the Promenade parking lot, both the Thomasville and Lane furniture showrooms are now open, in the former Gateway Country and Sports Authority stores.

This puts me in mind of the strategy that Home Depot and Lowe's seem intent to employ, of locating within spittin' distance of each other. Anyone have good answers as to the thinking behind this? If frustrated customers can't find it at one, they'll immediately hit the other?

Posted by Miss Cherry at 10:58 AM | Shop
Comments

It is about the same with the Lowe's off Lindbergh at I-44 and the Home Depot off Watson at Lindbergh.

Posted by: jsfla1 at March 6, 2005 02:21 AM

Its called clustering. Putting similar stores close to each other makes a lot sense for stores selling high value goods, studies have show that sales go up. It provides more product variety and price comparison in a small area. For example, furniture stores (see also downtown), Circuit City and Best Buy and car dealers are always close to each other.

I don't get it with 1-stop shopping stores like Home Depot and Lowes, Target and Wal-Mart, especially in Kirkwood and Chesterfield Valley.

Posted by: Matt B at March 7, 2005 10:42 AM