Furnished fantasy

A new store for Arhaus, a fashion-forward, high-end furniture chain with more than 50 stores nationwide, is a strange combination of an exhilarating yet laborious process for Gary Babcock.

The chief creative officer for Cleveland-based Arhaus, Babcock's job is to oversee the formation of a “fantasyland of home furnishings” out of a concrete box. The creation lasts up to 18 months, from concept to store opening, and includes a mix of hurry-up-and-wait with organized chaos. In total, Babcock says creating an Arhaus store from scratch, which he does with a team of around 40 people, is “like birthing a child.”

The latest delivery is a new Arhaus store in the Mall at University Town Center in Sarasota that opened Feb. 27. The store is loaded with details and features to attract customers, and, ultimately, drive both in-store sales and online purchases. It's the fourth Florida location for Arhaus, joining others in Naples, Palm Beach and Jacksonville.

For the Mall at UTC, the store is part of an overall strategy to bring new-to-market brands to the center, which opened Oct. 16. “The addition of Arhaus further extends our excellent lineup of home furnishing stores,” UTC Marketing Director Kim Dominguez says in a release.

Here's how the creative process behind the latest Arhaus, pronounced like our house, came together:

Aim big: The first task Babcock takes on is a conceptual look of what he wants the store to look like. That goes from the fabric design center in one corner to how close the potted plants will be to the cash registers. He draws it up just like architectural plans, on oversized paper. “It's amazing to see a vision I had in my mind a year and a half ago come to fruition,” says Babcock, who has set up dozens of Arhaus stores over the past decade. “I always try to top whatever I did before.”

All spaces: An immediate challenge with the Sarasota store is the size — at 12,300 square feet, it's about 20% smaller than the average Arhaus store. Some stores in large metro areas are even three times bigger than the Sarasota store, says Arhaus spokeswoman Kimberly Clark. So Babcock wants to pack a lot in without making it seem too cramped. “I want it to look as grandiose as it can,” Babcock says, “within a small space.”

Arhaus sells original handcrafted designs, from sofas and sectionals to outdoor furniture to rugs, drapes and chandeliers. The pieces range in price from pillows that cost less than $30 to a tufted leather sofa in Bronco Whiskey for $5,200 to a $14,000 wall unit.

Look around: Babcock attacks the space challenge through the specific placement of items and everything a customer will see, down to the paintings, mirrors, and chairs lined up around tables. It's a blend of simple congestion that fosters a relaxed feel. “I want to have a path for people to meander,” says Babcock. “We want to create a traffic flow that makes it easy for people to explore.”

See it, buy it: Arhaus, like some other furniture chains, is partially designed like a home — or what people wish their house looked like. “We want customers to walk in and say, 'Oh my God, I love this. How can I make this work in my room?'” Babcock says.

Puzzle pieces: Filling up the actual store, past drawings, starts about two weeks before opening day. In Sarasota, that began with a convoy of eight trucks that came down from Ohio. The big pieces come first, followed by upholstery and accessories. The best sellers go near the front, says Babcock, and each store's visual merchandise manager has the freedom to change products based on seasonal and local trends. It's like a large puzzle. “It's hard to interpret what can fit in a store,” from a paper diagram, says Babcock. “Two dimensional doesn't always translate to 3D.”

Get ready: The corporate Arhaus office sent 22 visual merchandise managers to Sarasota for a week to work on various tasks. The managers were broken up into five teams, each with a different part of the store. On the second-to-last day before the opening, they worked on a variety of tasks from sewing fabrics to painting tiny green leaves on a wall to going over sales procedures. Babcock ran a short meeting every night to address potential problems before the staff left the store for the hotel.

Lesson learned: Flexibility is a key lesson Babcock takes from project to project. A polishing finish the crew used for the hardwood floors of the Sarasota store, for example, left a terrible smell. It was so bad mall employees complained to management. Babcock and his team quickly changed out the finish, and the problem was averted. Says Babcock: “Anything can happen.”

By the numbers
Stocking the new 12,300-square-foot Arhaus furniture store at the Mall at University Town Center required a significant amount of logistics. The work included:

8 semi-trailer trucks packed full of merchandise, including ...

22 dining chairs

20 sofas

13 dining tables

6 beds

24 wall-unit options displayed throughout the store

At least 40 chandeliers hung above the merchandise, from end and console tables to dining tables.

More than 25 fresh floral varieties, purchased locally, arranged at the store

40 people, including 22 visual merchandise managers, helped set up the store over two weeks.

At a glance
Company: Arhaus

Year founded: 1986

Headquarters: Cleveland

CEO: John Reed

Stores: 54, including four in Florida

Employees: 1,088

Niche: Artisans worldwide make the furnishings. “Each piece is unique to our stores, one of a kind,” says Reed.

Source: Arhaus

Art lovers
National furniture chain Arhaus recently sent a team of 40 people to open a new store in Sarasota, at the Mall at University Town Center.

That's a stark contrast to the team behind Soft Square in downtown Sarasota, where three people, mostly husband and wife owners Teliee and Svetka Popov, operate the growing independent furniture store and showroom. Soft Square sells mostly contemporary and modern furniture.

Soft Square has grown significantly since the couple founded it five years ago out of Teliee Popov's garage. At one point in the early going the Popovs sold mostly low-end furniture. That was a tight-margin gig. “It was miserable,” says Teliee Popov.

They moved to Palm Avenue in 2011, near multiple art galleries, and significantly upgraded the inventory. Business grew fast, and the couple moved to its current location in 2012. They doubled the size, to 6,000 square feet, early last year.

With merchandise from lamps that cost up to $1,200 to dining tables that go for up to $7,800, the store has a colorful vibe, down to the art for sale on the wall. “We looked for furniture like this in Sarasota, but the closest place we could find it was in Miami,” says Svetka Popov. “We have a love for modern furniture.”

The Popovs are aware of the retail activity going on at the Mall at UTC, where Arhaus is one of several competitors for customers' discretionary spending. But they are determined to stick to their niche. “Our furniture are pieces of art,” says Teliee Popov. “I don't think of this as just a chair or just a table or just a couch. That's why this showroom looks like an art gallery.”

(This story was updated May 6, 2020 to reflect the correct brands sold by Soft Square in 2015 and the range of prices of Soft Square's merchandise.)