Costco Home stores to close

[Brian Lutz]

http://www.kirklandviews.com/2009/04/02 ... -kirkland/

For those of you who aren't famillar with this, Costco Home is basically a Costco warehouse store stocked entirely with furniture and home decorating accessories, plus some TVs and other home theater equipment. Only two of these stores were opened (one up here in Kirkland, and the other in Tempe, Arizona) but Costco has decided to close down these two stores due to expiring leases and low sales. They do not expect any layoffs as a result, as the employees can be transferred to other nearby Costco locations.

The Costco Home store up here in Kirkland was built in a warehouse building formerly occupied by a HomeBase store until that chain went under.

[Alpha8472]

Furniture stores today always seem to be empty. I can see why Costco is closing these stores.

I don't know how furniture stores can survive these days. I have seen furniture stores inside of Macy's, but they are just a single department inside of the store. There is one stand-alone JCPenney Furniture store in Concord, California. It is always empty. I don't know how it survives. I suppose the rent in the store is virtually nothing.

They should just move furniture sales into the main store instead of wasting an entire building on furniture.

What ever happened to Homebase? A long time ago, Homebase seemed just like a Home Depot clone. I thought their stores were quite nice.

[Brian Lutz]

If I recall correcly, HomeBase liquidated in either 2000 or 2001. I only visited the one here a couple of times while it was open, and it seemed like a so-so box store home improvement chain. They seemed to do fine on their own, but as soon as Home Depot and Lowe's began to move into their territory they seemed to suffer in comparison.

As for furniture stores, even in good times there seems to be a lot of fly-by-night places around here (especially concentrated around the Tukwila/Southcenter area, where there's plenty of cheap commercial space.) A lot of them seem to be the type of places that are making most of their money off of high interest financing.

[ieguy441]

For a short period of time, many former HomeBase locations were rebranded House2Home and featured furniture and a large selection of home decor items. These stores were around for about a year before they closed also.

[Brian Lutz]

And just to make things interesting, one of the two Costco Home stores has already been replaced by a (shockingly similar, according to this account) store known as My Home Wholesale. It is surprising how quickly the new store opened, especially Given the fact that Costco Home itself only closed on July 3rd. Apparently the new store requires you to sign up for a "membership" to shop there, but it's free.