Recent retail openings (and openings soon to come) are bringing area shoppers greater selections in affordably priced linens; comfortable, classy furniture in a friendly Merchandise Mart atmosphere; bigger digs and more contemporary designs from an established and long-trusted name; and a hardware store that looks a lot like it is in the furniture business.
Restoration Hardware
Everything from dustpans to jazzy drawer pulls to a Mission-style table can be found at the Restoration Hardware store that opened two weeks ago in the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie.
Among the feather dusters and mops are Mission- and Arts and Crafts-style furnishings, and owner Stephen Gordon’s knack for play. A windup toy Zeppelin Airship ($12.50) is at home near colorful ostrich feather dusters ($12 and $15), the Russian Forever Flashlight ($10), the Ultimate Big & Mighty stainless steel dustpan ($15), drawer pulls ($1 to $14.50) and a cherry Mission double bookcase ($1,650).
If you are in a browsing mood, slide into the Maggie leather sofa ($2,895) in the book room, check out the lesser-known Ansel Adams prints ($20) and enjoy the 1940s jazz sounds that fill the store.
The 45-year-old Gordon, whose most recent job was as a psychologist with a social service agency in California, stumbled into this business almost 16 years ago when he and his wife, Christine, began restoring a Queen Anne Victorian home in Eureka, Calif., in hopes of going into the bed-and-breakfast business.
“We finished the house, but we never did the bed-and-breakfast idea,” says Gordon. They took a pass on the business plan because Gordon found a niche that was becoming more profitable and fun for him.
When Gordon began restoring the home he was unable to find period hardware and lighting fixtures at the hardware store and relied on “obscure sources” from around the country. He realized others involved in refurbishings had the same restoration needs. He started to collect items and sold them to others out of his home. The psychologist-turned-retailer’s inventory soon outgrew his home, and he opened his first store in 1981 in Eureka.
The Skokie location is the first in the Midwest, and brings the total number of RH stores to 11. But this number is expected to be 20 by the end of the year; nine new stores are planned across the country.
“We’re a home furnishings store with an emphasis on hardware, cabinet fittings and gardening,” says Gordon, who selects all the merchandise in the store. “It may sound corny but we’re about the `finishing touches.’ We’re not a hardware store in the traditional sense.”
Nancy Gaile, Restoration’s Midwest district manager, adds: “We’re more like a creative hands-on museum of ideas that you can bring home with you.”
Restoration Hardware, Old Orchard Shopping Center, Golf Road and Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Call: 847-568-0012.
Marshall Field’s Home Stores
For the 128 years that Marshall Field has been a department store, it has sold everything from overcoats to candied sweets to items for the home.
This time, the store is narrowing its focus, concentrating on home furniture design at its Marshall Field’s Home Stores, scheduled to open in August in Oak Brook and Schaumburg.
These free-standing furniture stores will be near the Marshall Field department stores in the Oakbrook Center shopping center in Oak Brook and Woodfield Shopping Center in Schaumburg.
Unlike the traditional designs that Field’s is known for, the new stores will specialize in contemporary lines. Designers will be at each store.
Design lines will include the Alexander Julian Collection, Dakota Jackson for Lane Furniture Co., Modern Statement from DIA furniture company, and the Michael Vanderbyl Collection for Baker Furniture Co.
With these two new stores, Field’s joins Carson Pirie Scott in the free-standing furniture store business. (Carsons has two home furnishings stores, in Wilmette and Schaumburg.)
But this concept is not new to Field’s parent company, Dayton Hudson. There are three Dayton Hudson furniture stores in the Minneapolis area.
Don Swanson, the divisional merchandise manager of furniture for Dayton Hudson, says furniture will continue to be sold on the eighth floor at Field’s State Street store; furniture clearance is on the ninth floor. But expect a more contemporary look here too, says Swanson.
Until opening day, information about the new stores is available at Field’s State Street store’s home furnishings department, 312-781-1000.
Thomas Job showroom
Few places can be as intimidating as the Merchandise Mart’s furniture showrooms, where shoppers who aren’t accompanied by an interior designer are not generally welcomed.
Not so at the nearly 7-week-old Thomas Job showroom. Here, shoppers without design professionals can feel comfortable while browsing leisurely. (Purchases still must be made through professional designers.)
The friendly atmosphere is courtesy of Job and his staff, who give visitors room to roam and offer assistance when needed.
“We want people to feel free to come in and see what we’re offering,” says the 43-year-old Job, the former national vice president of sales for KnollTextile, the upholstery division of The Knoll Group furniture company.
The showroom’s look and feel is luxurious, comfortable, classy and cool. This mix is done with a graceful and fashionable hand, thanks in large part to the major presence of California designer and manufacturer Nancy Corzine’s work. Corzine puts shapely curves and lines into her armoires, cabinets, chairs, tables, sofas, beds and knock-out mirrored vanity dressing table.
The Corzine name shares side-by-side billing with Job’s across the windows of the glass-enclosed corner showroom in the Mart.
“I want the showroom to be a workshop and a forum to display new talents,” says Job. “I want to give Chicago- and other Midwest-based people a place to show their product.”
Job’s 9,000-square-foot showroom has designs for homes and commercial spaces. In addition to Corzine, there are designs by Automatic Inc., Ted Boerner Furniture, Color Wash Canvass, Cozzen Workshop, Kileen & Co., Catherine Lang, Douglas Murray, Norbert Shimkus, Phoenix Day Lighting, Rugs by Vicki Simon, Renaissance Stone, Textus Group, Yoma, and Souveran Fabrics.
The Thomas Job showroom is in Suite 1636 in the Merchandise Mart, 350 N. Orleans St. Call: 312-822-9944. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Strouds The Linen Experts
With the opening of its 25,000-square-foot store in the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie two weeks ago, Stroud The Linen Experts brought its number of area locations to five.
This store is the largest in the area and is the only one that sells tabletop designs.
There is much to see in this store. Going up the two-story-high escalator to the second-floor store, shoppers immediately are immersed in color springing from the bedding, bath and tabletop wares.
Strouds, based in the City of Industry, Calif., has a standard 16,000-square-foot layout for its chain of stores, which already includes suburban Chicago stores in Bloomingdale, Naperville and Schaumburg.
The Lincoln Park store, which opened in January, and the Old Orchard store are large, spacious and brightly lighted. Beds are used to display pillows, ribbons and other attractive accessories, as well as a variety of sheet sets.
“We’re very competitive,” says Lincoln Park assistant store manager Shakira Douglas, noting that the store will match the price of competitors and then take off 5 percent.
The top bedding line that’s carried at Strouds is Home Treasures from Italy. The sheet is 280 thread-count Egyptian cotton. The flat queen sheet sells for $379; fitted queen, $319. Selections also include lower-price brands, such as Wamsutta’s 250 thread-count, all-cotton sheets, which sell for $27.99 each for fitted and flat.
Strouds The Linen Experts’ newest area stores are at Old Orchard Shopping Center, Golf Road and Skokie Boulevard, Skokie, 847-673-5620; and 2633 N. Halsted St., 312-929-3464.
Old Orchard store hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Lincoln Park store hours: 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
