Sketchbook: Victoria`s Attic to Byzantine Bazaar

VOLUME 16
WWW.HOMEACCENTSTODAY.COM
The
Information
Source for the Home
July 2001
Accent
NUMBER 7
Industry
Sketchbook: Victoria’s Attic to Byzantine Bazaar
Decorative Glass: Clear and colorful
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Blacklion’s design center offers new
business model for small retailers
By Nancy Butler
lease their space on a two-year basis. Each
tenant creates a highly personalized decorative vignette to showcase his wares and
offer shoppers a wide variety of in-home
decorating ideas.
But you won’t find any of those 330
retail owners or their employees in residence. They’ve set it up and walked away,
leaving the sales, the marketing and the
management in Blacklion’s hands.
B
ob and Nita Emory, owners
of
Charlotte,
N.C.-based
Blacklion, have come up with a
big-box retailing model that
breaks the mold. Unlike the
archetypal big-box store, Blacklion doesn’t
thrive by putting small, independent retailers out of business. It does just the opposite.
Blacklion is actually many stores, each
independently owned, operating under
one roof. And while that may have a
familiar ring to it — a small mall or a flea
market, perhaps? — the concept, soon to
go national, is altogether different.
The five-year-old flagship design center, now one of five and counting, is
housed in a former Kmart in Charlotte’s
affluent Pineville area. The shopping carts
are still there, but that’s where any resemblance to the building’s former identity
ends.
Inside the 68,000-sq.ft., clear-span
structure are 330 vignetted boutiques presented in a layout reminiscent of an
upscale, designer-oriented antique mall.
Buyers on the show circuit might compare
it to a large representatives’ showroom in
the Atlanta Gift Mart or the “permanent
temporary” showrooms in High Point’s
Suites at Market Square.
But unlike a show venue, this isn’t 330
different lines, it’s 330 different retailers —
almost all of them local — each with its
own handpicked assortment. Because each
retailer is doing business with different vendors, the number of SKUs that pass
through Blacklion’s doors is huge — far
more than any single retail operation
would carry on its own. The individual
Eliminating the hassles
The Dry Sink, a tenant from the beginning, has four spaces at the main store
and three at Concord Mills. Left, Nita
and Bob Emory, owners of Blacklion.
retailers, not Blacklion, carry the inventory.
On any given day, there are upwards of
3,000 home decor and gift items on display, with next to no duplication. The
merchandise runs the gamut of home
accents and garden decor, gifts and personal care products, children’s items and
holiday decor, interspersed with antiques
and original artwork.
Blacklion retailers, including a cadre of
local interior designers, are tenants that
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Home Accents Today
August 2001
For many local retailers and designers,
participating in Blacklion has changed the
way they do business, and for the better.
For most, it’s taken the worst of the hassles out of retailing. For some, it’s made
staying in business possible.
“The typical retail store owner is so
busy opening the mail, unloading the UPS
truck, tagging the merchandise, unstopping the toilet ... and then a customer
walks in the door and has the audacity to
want to buy something,” Bob said.
“We’ve taken all of the un-fun stuff out of
it for the retailers. And we’re able to do
lots of things most retailers don’t have the
time or money to do.”
Blacklion tenants no longer have to
employ their own sales people or run their
own advertising. Each pays an 8% commission on sales to fund sales activity and
contributes to a marketing fund based on
the amount of leased space. The marketing fund ensures the Blacklion name is
a constant presence in The Charlotte
Observer, local magazines and on billboards.
For retailers who opt to keep their own
stores open elsewhere in the area, as more
than a handful do, the space at Blacklion
itself becomes a great form of advertising.
In talking to prospective tenants, Bob often
points out, “The rent is cheaper than one ad
in the local paper, and it’s a three-dimensional ad that actually sells merchandise.”
Blacklion’s merchandise diversity and
scope give it, and its tenants, a huge competitive advantage. “Retailers have limited
funds to buy, and some merchandise just
sits there,” Bob said. “We’re able to offer
incredible selection, variety and creativity.
But we couldn’t do it if we had to carry all
that inventory.”
The Emorys and their management
team often serve as advisors and mentors to
retail veterans and newcomers alike. If a
display, an assortment or a pricing decision
isn’t working, they’ll act as counselors,
drawing on 20 years as sales representatives
continued on page 20
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‘We’ve taken all the un-fun stuff out’
A Matter of Taste has 15 eclectically decorated spaces in
the main store, all of which are transformed into a Christmas
Wonderland as the holiday season approaches.
This story was published in Home Accents Today and is reprinted with permission from the publication.
August 2001 Home Accents Today
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as well as their Blacklion experience.
Blacklion employs 35 salespeople for
in-store customer service so the individual
retailers and designers can get out of the
sales management business. In some cases,
this has actually put an entrepreneur in the
retail business. “We call Blacklion an
entrepreneurial incubator,” Bob said. “It
gets people into retail that would never
have been able to do it otherwise.”
The store that almost wasn’t
The story behind Blacklion is itself a
study in entrepreneurial persistence.
Without it, this successful and growing
operation would never have opened the
first store.
Veterans in the wholesale trade, Bob
and Nita Emory operated a representatives showroom in Atlanta from 1980
until January of this year. Among the
companies they worked with are Radko,
Buyer’s Choice and Virginia Metalcrafters. Bob also had retailing experience
with Blackwelder’s Furniture.
While in Atlanta, Bob had seen an
upscale antique mall that intrigued him. For
years, he’d been visiting retailers and wondering, “Why don’t they do this or try
that?” And he kept driving by the empty
Kmart building in Charlotte, his hometown.
It all clicked in 1995. He negotiated the
lease, gutted the interior, put in carpeting,
painted the ceilings black. Everything was
going beautifully. Then he went to the bank.
Bob never questioned the banks’ willingness to back him. He’d been a sound
investment in the past. “But they all
laughed at me,” he recalls. “I couldn’t get
a loan, couldn’t pay the contractors and I
had 40 tenants signed up.” The Emorys
were looking at selling everything to pay
the bills and pull the plug.
“We were comfortable for life with our
showroom business — we didn’t need
this,” Nita said. “Now, we were about to
lose everything.”
But Bob was sure the concept was
sound. Although she was not originally
enthusiastic, Nita recognized the depth of
his commitment and agreed to go for
broke. They took out a home equity loan
on a paid-off house, extending themselves
to the hilt. They tell a Keystone-Cops-style
tale of the day the loan almost didn’t close.
But it did. And the store opened with 70
tenants in June 1996.
“We opened in the black and have been
in the black ever since,” Bob said. “We
paid off the house again and never borrowed another cent.”
The second Charlotte store opened at
Lake Norman in the summer of 1998,
fully leased with 50 tenants, the third in
the new Concord Mills shopping mall in
1999 with 125 tenants. The Charlotte
stores now span 100,000 square feet.
Last year, the developers of Concord
Mills persuaded the Emorys to join
them in the Opry Mills mall in
Nashville, where they signed up 129
tenants for a 22,000-sq.-ft. store. Bob
says they’ve been somewhat leery of big
mall venues, but they’ve done well.
“You can’t beat the traffic — 10- to 14million visitors a year,” he says.
The fifth and latest Blacklion recently
opened in the Boston area with 50,000
square feet and 230 tenants. The Emorys
continued on page 24
Shopping at
Blacklion
From the female shopper’s standpoint, Blacklion is
sheer heaven. The store’s merchandise and look are
changing constantly. There are many visions, all styles
and endless choice.
“Wow” is the usual first-time shopper’s reaction,
Nita Emory said. The startled expression is so pronounced that the concierge stationed near the front
door has little trouble spotting it. She will offer a simple welcome, along with a “Blacklion Want Card”
and pencil, and let the newcomer catch her breath.
The entrance area is intentionally spacious and open.
“The decompression zone,” as Bob Emory calls it,
“gives them a chance to take it all in.”
Returning customers, who are legion, head right
for the shopping carts and the fully carpeted aisles
that offer a panorama of products they can snatch
right out of the display. No placing orders here. It’s
instant gratification at Blacklion, and whatever you
may think about shopping carts, they make those
urges much easier to indulge.
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Home Accents Today
August 2001
Trumpet Vine’s romantic look is showcased in two spaces in the main store and one
at Lake Norman.
Veteran Blacklion shoppers also know — and
advise their friends — that if you see something you
like, you’d better grab it, because there’s a good
chance it won’t be there next week.
Group shopping excursions to Blacklion are a
major form of entertainment around the Charlotte
area. “Instead of going to Carowinds, they’ll come
here for the weekend,” Bob said. “And it’s not just
women. Guys think of this as an adventure, too.
Everybody loves a find.”
But an excursion to Blacklion isn’t like a trip to a
North Carolina discounter or an outlet mall. “We’re
not a markdown store. We counsel our tenants to
price fairly, and we don’t negotiate prices with the
customers,” Bob said. There are items at Blacklion
from $1 to $14,000, including some large furniture
pieces, which command “higher margins than anywhere else,” Bob said, because here they tend to be
“spontaneous buys ... perfect for a certain spot.”
Shoppers are not pursued down the aisles by salespeople, yet there’s always one nearby if you need help.
On request, they’ll take any item to the “hold table”
while you keep looking around. You’ll find it up front
near the checkout counter and the Blacklion Deli.
With so much to see, shoppers typically need a
break. But to make sure they resume shopping after
lunch or a snack, Blacklion keeps them on premises
with an in-store cafe. Also independently owned, the
deli serves up gourmet sandwiches, salads, soup and
desserts in an old-fashioned atmosphere complete
with antique counters and bistro tables.
There’s also an independently owned garden center
with a lush assortment of plants catering to the
upscale green thumb. The center is partly housed in
an attached greenhouse and partly outdoors, with a
soaring stone gazebo as its eye-catching centerpiece.
When shoppers are ready to check out, they roll their
carts up to a large four-sided counter manned by up to
six cashiers. All of the smaller items are individually
wrapped in paper to prevent damage — a nice touch.
You have 24 hours to take items home on approval, and
on your credit card. After that, all sales are final.
At checkout, customers are typically asked if they’d
like to make a contribution to a charity, fund, team or
event that Blacklion supports, reflecting a commitment
to local activism that the Emorys feel strongly about.
It’s good for the community and good for business.
In addition to supporting local programs,
Blacklion has a spacious seminar room at the back of
the store that’s available for community-based meetings at no cost. Local women’s groups and real estate
agents gather there on a regular basis. It’s no coincidence they end up referring their friends, family,
clients and new home buyers to Blacklion. o
This story was published in Home Accents Today and is reprinted with permission from the publication.
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The power
of black &
white
Blacklion’s name — inspired by a
town in Ireland — and its distinctive
logo were selected because the name
is the same as the image. “It burns
into your brain,” says Nita Emory,
who’s in charge of creative and
advertising.
One of the retailer’s most powerful campaigns was as simple as its
logo. It consisted of a series of billboard ads with just a few words in
white on black. An example:
“Upscale, not uppity.”
“The billboard company thought
we were crazy,” Nita said. “They
told us we wouldn’t get any
response. Well we got so many
calls.” And so did the billboard
company, from local businesses
wanting to do the same thing.
The black lion has a high profile
around Charlotte. He’s featured
bigger than life above the doors at
Blacklion stores, on shopping bags
and prominently in all advertising.
The store has fun with the lion —
“Come prowl the aisles” is a familiar tag line — and has done some
surprisingly high-impact image ads
with their mascot. Sometimes he’s
wearing a festive splash of color —
a red bow at Christmas, a green one
on St. Patrick’s Day.
“People talk about the lion all
over town,” said Nita, who’s sure
his simple silhouette will win the
same
recognition
wherever
Blacklion goes as part of its national expansion. o
Country French is a favorite at Craven Interiors, with three spaces in the main Blacklion store.
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Home Accents Today
August 2001
This story was published in Home Accents Today and is reprinted with permission from the publication.
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return to Atlanta this November with a
26,000-sq.-ft. Blacklion opening in the
new Discovery Mills mall. What’s next?
The sky’s the limit, they say.
The National Brand Plan
If Bob and Nita Emory’s growth plans
become a reality — and there’s every reason to believe they will — retailers and
would-be retailers in cities around the
country will have the opportunity to try
the Blacklion concept for themselves.
In preparation for moving out of the
entrepreneurial phase and into national
marketing, the Emorys assembled a
national management team. Steve Cook,
a Blacklion veteran, is vice president of
leasing. Bob’s brother Walter Emory is
vice president of development and facilities. Jim Fulks recently came on board as
chief operating officer. A controller will
be the next hire.
“We’re all hands-on oriented and want
to stay that way. We don’t want to lose
that entrepreneurial spirit,” Fulks said.
“Part of Blacklion always has to be local.
It’s a balancing act — picking the right
people and empowering them, but keeping
the spirit.”
The typical big company management’s
problem, he said, is “losing sight of where
you started, who you are.” And losing
touch with what’s happening in the trenches. “At HomePlace, somebody lost touch,”
he said. “The focus was on opening locations, not on satisfying the customer. We’re
not going to make that mistake.”
The team’s plan is to open three to six
stores next year. Cities under consideration
include Denver, Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas
and Houston. Upscale resort cities are also
candidates. Multiple stores in each city are
a goal. “That’s the best way to capitalize on
the full marketing potential,” Bob said.
“The stores feed off of each other.”
The plan also includes developing a
core of retailers who will go with them to
every new location, as some are already
doing. But national tenants will never outnumber the local and regional ones. “It’s
important to maintain that local character,” Bob said. “In most malls, you don’t
have a clue where you are. They all look
the same. We’re not The Gap. We’re
poised to offer something fresh.”
It’s no surprise that home accent vendors are among Blacklion’s biggest fans.
Squeezed for margins by volume outlets
and faced with retail attrition, they’re
rooting for the company’s success on a
national scale. It’s also possible some vendors will themselves become tenants.
“There’s huge vertical marketing
potential here for manufacturers to get a
full mark and control over the retail presentation,” says Bob, who adds that this
idea is being explored with caution.
Blacklion’s team is unanimous in its commitment to putting independent retailers,
especially local ones, first. o
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Home Accents Today
August 2001
BLACKLION PROFILE
n Owners: Bob and Nita Emory
n Founded: 1996
SALES BY
CATEGORY
10%
Furniture
n Headquarters: Charlotte, N.C.
20%
Gifts
n Number of stores: Five, with
sixth opening in Atlanta in
November
10%
Holiday
items
n Locations: Charlotte (Pineville,
Lake Norman and Concord
Mills), Nashville (Opry Mills)
and Boston (Westborough).
10%
Art &
antiques
40%
Home
accents
n Selling space: 68,000 square feet
in the Charlotte flagship store;
7,200 at Lake Norman; 22,000
at Concord Mills; 50,000 in
Boston; 23,200 in Nashville.
Atlanta will be 26,200.
n Niche: Upscale gifts and home
decor in a “shopping entertainment” environment
n Typical customer: 21- to 70-
year-old females in middle to
upper income brackets
n Staff: 145 in all locations
n Sales growth: Doubled every
year from 1996 to 2000; 2001
projected to be even with 2000
due to a slow economy; projecting 20% to 25% annual growth
based solely on new store openings starting in 2002
n Sales per square foot: $200 to
$300 if based on gross square
footage (includes aisles, common
areas, storage); $400 to $500 if
based on net square footage
n Frequency of ordering: Daily –
over 300 separate retailer tenants, all doing their own buying
n Average age of accent mark-
downs: Varies by tenant
n Major home accent categories
carried: Lamps, wall art, mirrors, accent furniture, pillows,
permanent botanicals,
pottery/ceramics, wall
brackets/decorative plates, children’s furniture and accessories,
garden planters and statuary
5% Interior
design
3% Garden decor
2% Juvenile items
n Retail price range on home
accents: $1 to $14,000
n Number of home accent
sources: Thousands
n Category constituting largest
share of home accent sales:
Lamps
n Major sources: Christopher
Radko, Cooper Classics in
Wood, Dept. 56, Pulaski,
Barcalounger, Vera Bradley,
Marge Carson, Tracy Porter,
Chelsea House, Virginia
Metalcrafters, Sadek, Stylecraft,
Howard Miller, Wilton
Armetale, Aromatique, CBK,
Florita Nova, NDI, Raz, Vietri,
Henkels, Pacific Rim, Yankee
Candle, Crabtree & Evelyn,
Boyds Bears, Caspari, Bob
Timberlake, Thomas Kinkade
St. Patrick’s Day dollar-bill
giveaway); two sale events
per year, winter and summer,
with optional tenant participation
n Design services: About 10% of
tenants are interior designers
n Visual strategy: Individually
decorated spaces themed by the
tenants themselves
n Keys to a successful home
accent program: Creative
atmosphere and displays;
variety of product with new
items arriving daily; access
to huge inventory; imaginative
advertising; knowledgeable
staff; exceptional word of
mouth
n Secret weapon: High-energy,
multi-tasking staff
n Trade shows attended: Atlanta,
New York
n Advertising: Daily newspaper,
cable TV, local magazines,
brochures, billboards
n Special events: Monthly
events with seasonal theme
(in-store Easter Egg hunt,
n Growth plans: National expan-
sion underway with three to six
new stores opening in 2002
n Honors: “Best of Charlotte” in
several categories; 22nd fastest
growing company in Charlotte
in Business Journal’s “Fast 50”
privately held companies
This story was published in Home Accents Today and is reprinted with permission from the publication.