A national contemporary furniture retailer with a showroom in Western New York

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Buffalo Headed: Advance Furniture has become the destination for high-end design in western New York State.

BUFFALO, NY. - September 1, 2001 -- Ask people to name cities in which they’d expect to find the best resources of high-fashion contemporary home furnishings, and it’s not likely that Buffalo, NY would top many lists.

But shoppers in western New York State (and for that matter, the Northeast region) know better. When in the market for fine quality European and Scandinavian furnishings with a contemporary bent, they head for Advance Furniture, located just north of Buffalo in the suburb of Kenmore. Here, housed in a 10,000-square-foot showroom is a collection of sophisticated contemporary looks that rival any SoHo, South Beach or San Francisco hot spot.

“There are a lot of retailers that specialize only in Scandinavian design, and many with traditional and contemporary furniture mixed in, but there are not very many stores that present a full-fledged, European contemporary, modern and Scandinavian aesthetic, all under the same roof,” says John Kenyon, managing partner of Advance. “In fact, there are probably only a couple of dozen dealers anywhere in the country with a product mix that resembles ours.”

Such wasn’t always the case however. When Advance Home and Garden opened for business in 1955, the store offered the usual mix of hardware, appliances and traditional furnishings normally served in suburban America. But it wasn’t long before founders Franklin and Roy Pusateri recognized a hunger in the marketplace for a flavor more exotic than vanilla, and in 1966, the largest contemporary and Scandinavian furniture store in western New York was born.

Today, Kenyon describes Advance – now owned and operated by Franklin Pusateri’s offspring, Kenyon’s wife Christine, and her brother John Pusateri – as an art gallery where furniture is appreciated for its great design. “People shop here because the pieces are so unique,” he says. “When you walk into a room full of furniture like this, you say, ‘Wow! This is awesome!’”

Certainly, that’s the response the majority of customers have the first time the visit Advance. “We’ve had a couple of instances in the last few years in which customers actually built additions onto their homes to accommodate pieces that they fell in love with,” Kenyon says with a laugh. “They were just so turned on, they had to own them.”

Kenyon attributes such enthusiastic reactions to the Pusateri family’s decision five years ago to boost price points and product offerings across the board. “We decided to step on the gas pedal and make our store even more upscale and unique, because we felt that it was the only thing that could save us,” Kenyon remembers.

At the time, many would have thought the strategy to be a risky proposition considering Buffalo’s depressed economic conditions and predominantly conservative tastes. “There were a lot of older, family-owned, better-end furniture stores going out of business in this market,” says Kenyon. “One by one, in an effort to survive, they began lowering their prices along with the quality of their products.”

Initially, says Kenyon, these retailers attracted more traffic to their stores. “But in the long run, cheaper furniture and neutral styles did nothing for their images,” he notes. “First they began to lose their better-end customer base and then they found themselves beaten up by larger, mid-priced chains with high advertising dollars like Raymour & Flanigan. They couldn’t make any money and they closed their doors.”

Their legacy may be a valuable lesson for others. “When times are tough and consumers are holding on to their cash, most retailers aren’t willing to stick their necks out and experiment with new trends, colors or styles,” Kenyon says. “Instead, they play it safe and stick to the products that have historically been good sellers for them.”

Still, few would have dreamed that a high-end contemporary store would thrive in Buffalo’s depressed marketplace. And therein is another lesson. “The higher-end in general, and specifically the high-end, European contemporary category, is underestimated by retailers in our industry,” Kenyon says.

Clearly, the category appeals to a plum demographic. The typical Advance customer is an educated, well-traveled professional with a combined household income exceeding $100,000. As such, “they don’t swing as hard with the times,” Kenyon says. “Higher-end/higher-income buyers are less apprehensive about the economy, and continue to spend, because they don’t think they are going to lose their jobs.”

Generally speaking, Advance’s customers are also “art lovers, interested in the theater, and a little more cultured overall,” Kenyon says. “And we find that many of them are in the architectural field or education.”

They also surf the Net and often arrive pre-sold, thanks to an encounter with www.contemporaryfurniture.com, the store’s aptly named website. “I bought the URL four years ago, “Kenyon says, “but we didn’t do anything with it for three years because nobody here at the store saw any value in it. Essentially, everybody in the family said, ‘We’re so darn busy, what do we need that for?’”

Eventually, the search for an alternative to the high costs of advertising in Buffalo – (“On average, we paid twice that of retailers in more populated cities like Baltimore to reach half as many people.”) – convinced the team that the Internet might be worth exploring and that there might be something to that address.

“Given that there isn’t another store like ours within a couple of hundred miles, we thought people might be more willing to make the trip from 45 minutes away if they could sample us online,” Kenyon says. “They’d know that they wouldn’t be disappointed when they got here.”

And they weren’t. “Almost immediately, we began to see more and more 35 to 40-year-old executives in search of higher-style, contemporary furniture,” he reports. “Many of them were looking for the Scandinavian styles they grew up with. Their parents’ furniture may have been teak, and they buy cherry or maple, but it’s a Scandinavian influence they’re after.”

Advance’s business is growing accordingly. “We’re reaching a broader audience now, achieving a national reach,” Kenyon says, “even though we do very little conventional advertising. The Internet is giving a lot of people access to things they never had access to before. And when they develop a taste for something, they just have to go out and find it.”

CONTACT:
John Kenyon
Advance Furniture
(800) 477-2285

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