It’s something that no retail store owner likes to see: his best-selling product line appearing on the pages of a popular, nationally distributed catalog.
That’s what is happening to Sawbridge Studios, a two-store retail operation that has carved out a lucrative niche in River North and Winnetka, selling handcrafted furniture and decorative items.
Sawbridge’s top-selling line of furniture is made by Charles Shackleton, a Vermont craftsman whose expensive cherry pieces have a loyal, elite following.
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Now Shackleton’s handmade furniture may find a wider audience. Several pieces, including a $3,400 sleigh bed and a $4,500 armoire, are featured in a two-page spread in the October Coming Home catalog from Lands’ End.
“No retailer is thrilled when they see their goods elsewhere,” admits Bill Hiscott, one of Sawbridge’s three co-owners. Still, he wonders how many people are going to plunk down that kind of cash without seeing the furniture in person.
That’s what Lands’ End would like to know, too. “That’s the challenge we face every day of the week. People can’t touch and feel our products in person,” said Rob Hayes, general merchandise manager for the Coming Home catalog.
But Hayes isn’t worried about the furniture’s high prices, because he knows Lands’ End customers will pay for quality; it can cost $1,000 to make a bed with Coming Home’s premium 340-count cotton sheets.
Early returns are looking good. Only five days after the catalog was mailed, Lands’ End had received 100 telephone inquiries about Shackleton’s pieces. A few already have been sold.
Shackleton, who employs 35 in a former woolens mill in tiny Bridgewater, Vt., concedes there’s a risk in partnering with a retail giant like Lands’ End: “It’s a gamble, because I’m not interested in making millions of beds. They might sell millions.”
But he says it’s worth it because he is learning about marketing through direct mail and gaining experience about working with a large company.
Sawbridge’s Hiscott says the store isn’t planning to change the way it displays Shackleton’s items. And he’s trying to look on the bright side: The catalog will expose hundreds of thousands of new people to Shackleton’s philosophy and furniture. “He deserves a shot. We may even learn something from it ourselves,” he said.
Too much caffeine: Chicago is a Starbucks kind of town. The company’s 90-some stores in the Chicago area do twice the sales of an average Starbucks. So it takes a lot of courage to try to muscle in on the Seattle chain’s biggest Midwestern stronghold.
Yet here comes Caribou Coffee. The five-year-old Minneapolis chain already has opened several stores in Chicago and plans to have 17 by year’s end.
Caribou knows that Starbucks is the 600-pound gorilla in this market. But there’s room for two players, said CEO John Puckett, 33, who founded the company with his 32-year-old wife, Kim Puckett, five years ago. “People like a choice,” he said.
The Pucketts believe Caribou has a relaxing feel that will appeal to harried Chicagoans. And they believe their only viable strategy is to enter Chicago in a big way. Operations with 3 to 10 stores will find themselves in trouble, predicted John Puckett.
With 100 stores in Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis, Caribou must be doing something right.
Let the coffee wars begin.