American Drew Steps Aggressively Into New Broader Positioning With Introduction Of PROFILES

Furniture World Magazine

American Drew, a La-Z-Boy Company based in Greensboro, has announced an aggressive expansion into the medium price point category as part of its overall strategy to make the brand more accessible to more consumers. Once primarily focused on the mid price points, the company has over the years gravitated toward becoming a more style-oriented upper-medium to upper priced line including several very successful licensed collections by Bob Mackie and Jessica McClintock. While making clear their continued commitment to better end case goods and occasional furniture, Jack Richardson, President, stated that the company’s goal is to broaden their overall assortment to also include well styled products at more affordable price points. “Clearly, we have been very successful with our strategy to improve the quality, value and style story as it applies to American Drew over the past few years. And we will continue to expand our efforts in this area this market with the introduction of the next generation Jessica McClintock Home Collection. “With PROFILES, we are introducing three new collections designed to address not only the lifestyle trend that has become so important but to also make sure that the vast majority of consumers who are seeking these kinds of collections will be able to easily afford them. By doing so, we now are able to offer all of the style and quality features that retailers have come to know us for but now can offer to a much broader segment of the market.”, Richardson said. “In doing so, we are also able to take an important step in achieving our goal of repositioning American Drew so that we can appeal to a much broader base of retailers and consumers than we have in recent years.” The PROFILES collections feature three casual designs that take their cue from several key lifestyle changes that exist among today’s consumers. But unlike many “lifestyle” collections, American Drew is bringing theirs to market not just to speak to the Gen X population but to virtually every demographic group. “Our research indicates that the direction towards a more casual, relaxed lifestyle is prevalent at all demographic levels. Whether you are speaking about Gen X or recent retirees, there seems to be a significant percentage of each population that has not only adopted this more casual lifestyle, but they also feel very strongly about their furnishings being a better reflection of who they are how they wish to live their lives. Our intention with PROFILES is to allow consumers to create their own, truly unique style story without having the furniture itself overwhelm the room.” , said Richardson PROFILES will be shown inside a five-thousand square foot space within the American Drew showroom that has been remodeled to better reflect these new lifestyle trends. “We wanted to create an environment that would not only showcase the product during market but would also hopefully provide our key retailers with ideas on how they might present the collections to their consumers.”, said Bob Averett, VP – Merchandising for American Drew. “In the end, we want our retailers to be able to re-capture some of the consumers that are now being drawn away by specialty stores. To do this, we must be as creative as these retailers in both the design of our products as well as the way we display them at retail.”, he added.