Ashley Furniture’s outdoor category has seen impressive growth since it started eight years ago. They have found success adding the category to their whole-home mix and offering a one-stop shop for retailers. They encouraged this message at the recent High Point Market, and it has turned out to be the company’s best year yet for the outdoor category.
While some in the industry previously viewed Ashley Outdoor as a competitor to smaller retailers, Andy Sokol, senior vice president of sales and merchandising for Outdoor by Ashley, says independent retailers have embraced Ashley now more than in the first few years.
“Once retailers realized that we were a manufacturer and they could buy our product, they understood the value we could offer them,” Sokol says.” We have a breadth of assortment, and we aren’t a niche company; we do everything from resin wicker to aluminum and HDPE. Even though you’ll find our outdoor in Ashley HomeStores, there’s diversification and flexibility so each retailer can work with their marketing specialist to streamline and finesse their own assortment.”
The company’s massive logistics system gives retailers an opportunity to mix and match products in one container, and Sokol says in the past year the company has improved this process.
“We’ve had a direct container program and a domestic program, and now we’ve added a third dimension, where you can buy most of our products on a consolidated container with other categories that we have,” Sokol explains. “If you’re a furniture store and you want to buy motion upholstery, for example, you can include that and outdoor on the same container.”
Sokol says the company also has resources to offer retailers that set it apart from its competitors.
“We emphasize with our base — mostly brick-and-mortar stores — the importance of having a great website to do omnichannel business,” Sokol explains. “We want to help our independent retailers grow their online businesses, and we have people on board who are marketing gurus that can help these stores.”
At the recent High Point Market, the company had a wide variety of outdoor sets, but one in particular set the company apart and exemplifies the capabilities of Ashley.
The seating set (shown above) had an indoor-style fabric with high and low stripes that alternate in textures. The piece looked like it came straight from a living room, and that’s because it partially did. Ashley has the ability to see indoor trends and bring them outside, and that’s exactly what they did with this particular set.
The company boasts an impressive fabric called Nuvella that has all of the same properties as the best high-quality performance fabrics available in the industry, but it’s branded by Ashley and created by mills in partnership with the company.
Collections shown in High Point exemplified the colors and textures Nuvella fabrics offer, like natural greens with a soft hand or pearly whites with dynamic textures.
“The line between indoor and outdoor continues to blur, and the term ‘casual furniture’ is starting to take on a new meaning,” Sokol says. “The more I look at our furniture, it’s not just outdoor, it’s casual.”
