Furniture stores cozy up to Weld County market

Once a year or so, furniture tycoon Jake Jabs and some of his deputies will hire a helicopter and fly the Front Range from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

“We look for wherever they’re moving dirt – where the housing projects are going up,´ said Jabs, owner of American Furniture Warehouse.

About two years ago, the flyover gave Jabs and his managers a sense that there was a growing market for his goods in southwest Weld County. The result is a 520,000-square-foot behemoth that’s now under construction in Firestone and due to open this summer.

Jabs’ unscientific survey was recently backed up by hard data.

A recent report by Furniture Today magazine, a trade journal for the industry, projects the Greeley metro area – which spans Weld County – to be the fastest-growing metropolitan market in the country for furniture sales between 2005 and 2010. Furniture Today forecasts 41 percent sales growth in the Greeley area during the five-year period, reaching $76 million by 2010.

By comparison, the Fort Collins-Loveland area should experience 26 percent growth in the same period, and the Denver area will see 25 percent growth. The national average will be about 18 percent.

Even before the Furniture Today report was released in late December, furniture retailers such as Jabs were already picking up the scent in Weld County.

American Furniture Warehouse announced its plans late in 2004. Almost simultaneously, Furniture Row, a Denver-based retail chain that includes store names such as Denver Mattress Co., Oak Express and Sofa Mart, was crafting plans for an 85,000-square-foot center in Dacono, about five miles to the south of the American Furniture site. The Furniture Row center is scheduled to open in May.

In January, Ethan Allen Retail Inc. announced its decision to build a 20,000-square-foot store at the 2534 project in Johnstown, near the Larimer-Weld county line.

While Firestone and Dacono are still tiny, both with population of less than 10,000, the two towns in the so-called Carbon Valley region are in the midst of one of the hottest growth corridors in the country.

For instance, in a press release that accompanied the groundbreaking of its Dacono store last year, Furniture Row said the Carbon Valley vicinity would reach 200,000 people within 20 years.

“We need about 200,000 in population (within a 10-mile radius of the store) to support our stores,” Jabs said, explaining his choice of Firestone.

The Greeley metro market ranked first in the nation in population growth between April 1, 2000, and July 1, 2003. In that period, Greeley-area population increased 16.8 percent. For the period April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2004, the area’s population increased 21.2 percent.

Such figures reflect new home construction, and new homeowners buy furniture.

“These stores are going to cater to purchases for new homes,´ said Wendy Manning, public relations manager for Furniture Row.

Most important to the new furniture stores, the growth in Weld County is stacked with households with Generation Y occupants, which means young families, said Kay Anderson, director of market research for Furniture Today.

“Take mattresses for example,” Anderson said. “There are more mattresses purchased by Gen Y households (those born between 1981 and 1995) then by elderly households. That stands to reason … Looking at the population growth in the Greeley area, we’re looking at many households that fall in the Gen Y age bracket versus the senior bracket.”

Another important category is income. Many of the new developments in southwest Weld County attract families with combined household income of $75,000 or more – a segment that accounts for 47 percent of all money spent on mattresses, Anderson said.

Both American Furniture Warehouse and Furniture Row believe the pace of growth in Weld County means they won’t undermine existing stores they each have in Fort Collins and the northern Denver suburbs.

“The traffic keeps getting worse, that traffic funneling into Denver from the north,” Jabs said. “Every morning there’s traffic jams around 120th (Street), 104th (Street) and that area. I think more and more people will be happy to see a store there in Firestone so they don’t have to fight that traffic coming into Denver.”

Nor is the proximity of the two major retailers a competitive problem.

“Most people don’t end up buying furniture every other week,´ said Leslie Carothers, a furniture retailing consultant and owner of The Kaleidoscope Partnership. “Whoever is going to be in the market that weekend is going to shop from store to store … When all of those retailers are spending the advertising dollar, it does bring consumers into the area.”

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