Home of Economy News

Friday, April 24, 2009

Homecrest Furniture

Here’s our Homecrest Furniture ad for the year. 

Homecrest is a GREAT line of high quality outdoor furniture based in Wadena Minnesota.  We’ve sold it for 50 years and last year was our best ever with an increase of 40%. 

We’re not sure why it took off that much.  We did do a couple things like move it up to the front of the Grand Forks store.  The Grand Forks Herald did feature that red group in the ad in a feature article.  I think that helped as well. 

We really wish that Homecrest would put in more bright colors.  That bright red sold terrifically last year.

Homecrest isn’t for everybody.  It is a bigger investment than the stuff that’s imported from China.  On the other hand this stuff is heavy duty and it lasts.  The fabrics are made to be resistant to fading.  On my porch is a set that I got from my grandmother’s house after the flood of 1997.  The frames are probably close to 40 years old.  We had to replace the cushions because they had been wrecked in the flood.

Homecrest, like all of our fine furniture is only displayed in Grand Forks.  However we will ship free to our other stores for pickup. 

Valspar House Paints In Grand Forks

Home of Economy is going to start carrying the Valspar line of house paints.  In the past we’ve carried Van Sickle paints.  I thought the Van Sickle did a great job at a very good price, but not enough customers knew who they were.

Above you’ll see the new display (not quite finished) in Grand Forks.  We will be rolling these out to the other stores as we go along.  In the meantime the Van Sickle House paints have been marked down to make room for the new Valspar.

The paint market has changed over the years.  Rather than looking for a good paint at a good price the consumer wants color and is willing to pay a bit more for what they get. 

Valspar is in other stores, but don’t worry.  We are offering our “Guaranteed Lowest Price” guarantee on the entire line.  If you find it on the shelves of a competitor, OR in their ad, we’ll match that price.  I don’t think we’ll be having any problems with anyone’s regular price because we’ve priced it to sell.  But if someone else has it on sale our customers can buy it where they know they’ll be treated right. 

We are still carrying the Van Sickle line of implement and farm paints.  We do a great job with the equipment enamels and barn paints.  We aren’t going to mess with that business.