Restoration Hardware Expands Into Modern Furniture, Modern Doorstops

Restoration Hardware is a service that delivers free doorstops to people in wealthy zip codes. They apparently also sell furniture, and managed to thrive during the recession by selling pricey items to rich people instead of bothering to discount their products for the masses like other furniture stores. Now they’re launching a sibling brand, RH Modern, that you won’t be able to afford, either.

Restoration Hardware keeps doing things that are counter-intuitive in modern retail: they’re focusing more on their colossal catalogs than on e-commerce, and are building massive stores or expanding existing ones in urban areas at the same time that other retailers are scaling back their real-life sales operations. It’s working for them, though: sales and profits are up, and the company keeps opening more “galleries.”

Apparently, it’s time for the company to begin a spinoff. Super-modern furniture would be off-brand for Restoration Hardware, which sells more classic looks. The company’s solution is to start a sibling brand for homes that look more like an Apple Store than a Provençal country dungeon.

The logic behind the brand is apparently that members of the millennial generation are starting to buy houses, and they like iPhones, so they will probably prefer contemporary décor in their homes.

RH Modern will either have its own “galleries” in major cities, or a smaller space to itself in existing stores. We don’t know yet how many pounds its inevitable catalogs (sorry, “lookbooks”) will weigh.

Restoration Hardware is betting that Americans want even more $7,000 couches [Washington Post]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist