Restoration Hardware Renamed To RH & Will Remodel All Stores

[Alpha8472]

The chain is now known as RH. They are moving into services to furnish luxury homes and overnight accommodations. Is that sort of like a one night bed and breakfast?

All of their stores will be remodeled. With a name like RH you won't even know what the store does.

https://chainstoreage.com/rh-acquires-t ... all-stores

[Brian Lutz]

At this point I think they have pretty much completely abandoned the "restoration" in their name and have gone all in on luxury home furnishings, creating the type of place you don't so much shop at as you just give your designer a blank check to go furnish the new $15 million vacation home you might spend four days a year in. It's unfortunate because I seem to recall Restoration Hardware stores being interesting to browse around in to look for interesting items, but that's pretty much a thing of the past. It's rather telling that one of the items on their home page now is for their private jet and private yacht charter services. I'm pretty sure Ikea doesn't have those.

Luxury furniture places all seem to be off in their own little world. Stores like Ferguson (focused more on kitchens bathrooms and lighting but similarly expensive), BoConcept, Henredon & Schoener and others like that do technically sell furniture in retail stores, but most of the stuff is so ridiculously expensive that 95% of the customers who might walk in probably don't have enough money in their checking account on any given day to buy half the items on the showroom floor, and most of the ones who do couldn't tell the difference between a $200 dining room table and a $2,000 one anyway. The end result is a small but presumably lucrative target market of really rich people who want to show off, which seems like a good way to end up a creditor in a large number of high profile bankruptcies.

That said, as long as a store like that keeps overhead relatively low they don't need much volume to stay profitable, but there aren't a lot of places that provide enough volume. For that reasons those stores tend to stick to the most affluent areas, mostly LA, New York and maybe a few scattered stores in places like The Bay Area, Las Vegas, Miami and DC.

[buckguy]

Restoration closed their DC store quite a long time ago and have only one the suburbs plus an outlet (they seem to have lots of outlets). Showy stuff like theirs is less DC or Northeast and more Sunbelt or Southern California where they have a lot of stores. As mid-priced furniture has gotten more expensive and less well made, there is a market for people who are willing to drop a lot of money for a few good pieces, although not necessarily all at once. For example, Thos. Moser (more DC or Northeastern style than HR) can be worth the money if you get markdowns or buy clearance/sample items---I have a couple of their pieces. Mitchell Gold+Bob Williams is has good value if you pick the right sale (there's a different one every month). In the past, when everything in their store was beige, Restoration seemed to be trying for that kind of market, but the quality of their furniture wasn't there. Bo Concept and the ironically named Design Within Reach are more for young people with money.

[BatteryMill]

Seriously... why is this corporate minimalism so popular, especially in retail? Dunkin' Donuts to Dunkin', Lumber Liquidators to LL Flooring, Weight Watchers to WW, and now this. I don't know what benefit it's supposed to have other than to seem trendy. Hope this trend turns around.

[ClownLoach]

I think the trends RH has been pushing for the last decade or so are dying out. Painting everything gray, the mid century modern, the barn wood etc. At this point everyone else has copied the same trends all the way down to Bob's Discount Furniture. If they don't cook up a new theme and find a way to get all the home influencers and TV shows to adopt it to get customers to buy it then they are going to be in trouble. Hearing a lot of the trends right now are about as anti-RH as you can get - bright colors of paint are selling big, dumb things like people removing all their kitchen cabinets and replacing with open shelves are stopping too (can you say DUST? that is why you keep this stuff in cabinets with doors!). Everything is trending bright, colorful and natural which is not what RH has stood for the last decade or so.

Also furniture has been the most impacted by the supply chain issues - this last fall I noticed the semi annual Costco furniture event had some really weird things happening. Lots of accent chairs that looked like they were sized down to "back row of coach airline width" and no arm rests to get the box size down. In fact you could see that the prices were more based on the cubic volume of the box than what was in it. So whatever RH and all these other companies do - they need to find ways to make the boxes smaller or their margins are going to continue to be destroyed by high shipping costs. I found every furniture place to have seen price inflation far beyond any other category of consumer goods this summer and fall except for Ikea. Ikea maybe went up 10% across the board because of their model of flat packaging and worldwide manufacturing in places like Lithuania and Peru. I think we will see lots of thin cushions and narrow seats being pushed. Whether it will sell or not is another matter entirely.

[rwsandiego]

"RH" (why don't they just use a symbol like Prince did?) used to be a fun place to shop, just like BBB, Macy's, and other retailers too numerous to name. Then they decided to hike prices and, as you said, made everything gray. It was depressing. If you look at authentic mid century modern furniture, you see it was colorful. RH just didn't get the memo.