ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130156
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HICKORY, N. C.
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
Tina Raine almost let a deal get away.
The pair of burgundy leather hatboxes she spotted at the Boyles showroom would look perfect - perfect! - atop the wall unit she bought for less than half-price earlier that day. She picked them up, carried them to the counter. But then she wavered.
"God, do I need to spend more money?" she agonized, looking first at the boxes, then at her calculator, where she had figured up the sale price. The rest of her group was waiting outside, ready to drive to the next furniture outlet. She had to make a decision. She took a deep breath.
She emerged into the May sunshine 10 minutes later, triumphantly waving a receipt. Her fellow travelers cheered.
"You go, girl," said tour leader Kate Gladchun. "You make me proud."
The Hickory Furniture Mart, where top-quality furnishings sell for 50 percent or more off retail prices, is a bargain-hunter's mecca. And Gladchun's girls - she always calls them girls, despite the fact that most of them are at least 35 - are devout pilgrims.
Over the last few years, Gladchun has attained near-celebrity status in Hickory, a town of 30,000 just more than an hour's drive from Charlotte.
Tell the hotel clerk you're looking for Kate, and he leaves his post to personally escort you to her. Explain to the slightly haughty leather goods saleswoman that you're with Kate and she plies you with free tote bags.
"I'm with the group from Michigan" has become Hickory's equivalent to "Open, Sesame."
You almost expect to see Hickory folks wearing "I [heart] Kate Gladchun" T-shirts.
Their regard for Gladchun, an interior designer from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is genuine. But they'll admit they're also fond of the money she brings to Hickory. Several years ago, she wrote "The Fine Furniture and Furnishings Discount Guide," a bargain-hunter's bible that raves about the furniture discount centers in Hickory.
And every spring and fall, she escorts a group of Detroit-area women to Hickory for a furniture-buying spree. Each pays about $400, which includes airfare, meals, lodging at the Holiday Inn Express - and Gladchun's expertise.
"Everybody here has probably saved more than they spent to get here," Gladchun said.
The Hickory Furniture Mart, once a market only for wholesalers and dealers, has been open to the public for about a decade. You can shop year-round, but the best deals - and the biggest crowds - arrive in May and November, during the sales that follow the International Home Furnishings Market in nearby High Point.
The 13-acre Mart is home to 70 showrooms and outlets, which carry 600 furniture and accessory lines. Another expansion will be complete by next summer. The High Point market, which showcases thousands of new products, is larger, but it's open only to wholesalers and dealers. The Mart gets more than 370,000 visitors a year, said marketing director Ann McGough. About 25,000 of those shoppers came for the Friday-through-Sunday spring sale.
The deepest discounts in Hickory can be found at the factory outlet stores, where manufacturers sell discontinued or overstocked furnishings and floor samples. At these stores, you buy furniture right off the floor, as-is, what you see is what you get. The four-story Home Outfitters factory outlet is attached to the Mart. Several miles away is the Furniture Clearance Center. Other outlets are scattered throughout town.
Most of the shops at the Mart, though, are galleries that carry first-quality furniture at discounts of 40 percent to 50 percent off retail. During the after-market sales, most showrooms offer additional 5 percent to 30 percent discounts - $20,000 entertainment centers selling for less than $10,000, $8,000 couches for $3,000, $200 wallhangings for $98.
These galleries seem more like regular retail showrooms than discount houses. They concentrate on custom orders rather than off-the-floor sales. Knowledgable salespeople, many of whom are designers or members of local furniture families, help customers choose upholsteries and wood finishes and styles.
Little wonder, then, that the Hickory Furniture Mart, with its estimated $86 million in annual sales, is regarded with little affection by many furniture manufacturers and retailers. Some manufacturers, seeking to protect their full-price dealers in other markets, forbid discounters to have 800-numbers, or to quote prices over the phone, or to advertise outside their own geographic regions.
Gladchun herself has been the target of harassment by several Michigan retailers, who have accused her of taking money out of their pockets by promoting North Carolina discount centers. One retailer even sent spies into Gladchun's furniture-buying class, to find out what she was teaching consumers.
But Gladchun isn't fazed by the criticism. Furniture at retail stores typically sells for two to three times its wholesale cost, she said. "Somebody is making a chunk of money," she said, "and consumers are starting to retaliate."
Stories of shopping trips past have taken on the flavor of legends for Gladchun's group.
They love to tell how Clara Marks bought a new house, and, over the course of three days in Hickory, proceeded to drop $50,000 on a houseful of new furniture. Her credit-card company, alarmed at the charges, had her husband paged at work to ask him if his card had been stolen.
Then there was the woman who had just built a 6,000-square-foot house in Lake Tahoe and went to Hickory to buy furniture. The first day, she timidly spent just $10,000. "The next day," Gladchun said, "we didn't see her at all." She furnished the whole thing for just - just! - $35,000.
By this time next year, Gladchun likely will be telling stories about Raine, who paid just $4,900 for a seven-piece wall unit that retailed for $16,500. Or, perhaps, Nancy Lombardi-Wilkie - who joined the group halfway through the weekend.
"I live in fear that there'll be a better deal somewhere else, and I'll miss it," she confided. Over lunch, she pulled out a notebook crammed - in an organized sort of way - with pictures of the furniture she already owned and the furniture she wanted, along with upholstery swatches and room measurements and receipts.
"I just carry this around in my trunk, in case of an emergency shopping spree," she said.
She was the first to leave the lunch table. "OK, ladies, back to power shopping," she said.
"You go, girl," said Gladchun. "Now there's a woman on a mission."
If you don't know what you're looking for when you go to Hickory - and if you aren't an almost obsessively disciplined shopper - you may become so overwhelmed by the acres of furniture and all the deals that you freeze up and can't buy anything.
Or, a more likely outcome, you may wake from your upholstery-induced daze a week later and discover that you bought everything you saw - the tasteful green-and-burgundy striped wing chair you fell in love with, the disco-era black-velvet-and-faux-fur couch you could barely stand to look at.
Gladchun tells her girls - and anyone else who asks her - to do some homework before going to Hickory. Make a list of what you have and what you need. Take photos of the rooms you want to furnish. Bring swatches of the fabrics you have to match. Measure your empty wall spaces, measure your doorways.
Do some comparison shopping at your local retailers. If you don't know what the store down the street is charging for a Henredon couch, you won't know whether the deals you see in Hickory are worth the shipping expenses, which start at around $50 per hundred pounds of furniture.
When the girls gather for hors d'oeuvres and wine - courtesy of the Mart, of course - in the hotel's Walnut Room Friday night, they practice their homecoming mantra:
"Oh, honey, I saved more than I spent."
It's not such a stretch, really. Clara Marks paid $775 for a $3,337 chest at Century. Brenda Goethals bought a $1,000 bench for $500.
They'll head back north the next day, after a few more frenzied hours of shopping. By the time they leave, they'll have spent $108,000 on furniture that would retail, in most stores, for $251,000.
They've done Gladchun proud. "You go, girl," she exclaims.
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. The Hickory Furniture Mart offers 13 acres ofby CNBfurniture and accessories at prices up to 80 percent off retail. The
Mart is in the midst of another expansion, which will add four
showrooms to the building. color
2. MEGAN SCHNABEL One of Kate Gladchun's missions was to find a
server for her foyer. The deal on this one just wasn't good enough,
she decided. "You gotta shop around," she said, rolling up ger tape
measure and heading for the next gallery. color
3. Amy Peasch (right) bargains with a salesperson at Clayton Marcus.
She recently had a 3,000-square-foot addition onto her home near
Detroit and is looking for furniture to fill it. color< 4. This
gigantic velvet-and-faux-fur black sofa -complete with paisley
cushions - was one of Henredon's leftovers. It won't fit into just
any living room, admits saleswoman Marie Eckard. color