HOM Furniture opens World Rugs

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 9/11/2006 2:12:00 PM

Plymouth, Minn. – HOM Furniture has opened its first area rug store and has revamped rug departments across the chain, aiming to make the most out of a growing category.

The company's 15,000-square-foot World Rugs is attached to the retailer’s largest store here but has its own entrance. It opened with more than 3,000 rugs from key suppliers Oriental Weavers, Sphinx, Momeni, and Concord Global, as well as goods directly imported from China, India and Belgium.

Since the opening, World Rugs has rung up an average sale ticket of nearly $800, double that of the rug departments in HOM stores, said Doug Ernewein, HOM’s rug buyer and also the advertising spokesman for the rug business.

Like HOM, World Rugs is value-oriented. But the value extends across a broader product line and price spectrum, with prices starting at $39 for a 2 by 3-foot size and ranging up to $7,000 for a 10 by 14 vegetable-dyed rug.

The rug department in existing HOM stores have been renamed World Rugs and expanded to an average of about 3,000 square feet, with new display fixtures and better, color-corrected lighting. The chain as a whole does about $175 million in sales.