If you love HomeGoods, you will really love HomeSense, a sister store from Canada, which has started to arrive in the U.S. I had the pleasure of visiting the Sawgrass, FL store on its Grand Opening Day with my SeekAndFindDesign partner earlier this week. It was simply fabulous . . . Mostly because it is much, much, much larger than the average HomeGoods store with many of the same goodies! But also, because it brings an even wider variety and inventory level of lighting, furniture, and carpeting . . . some from high design brands like Natuzzi (if you are interested in that sort of thing). These three inventory categories were the most well-stocked items versus the HomeGoods experience, and the aisles were wider and longer, consistent with the larger footprint. For example, while you might see one long rack of hanging carpets, at HomeGoods, there were four of these racks at HomeSense. And there seemed to be a lot more staff on the floor to help you find what you are looking for. . . but we’ll have to wait and see if the staffing was just a Grand Opening phenomenon.
You can still find those unique HomeGoods items at HomeSense, at the same quantity of a typical HomeGoods inventory experience. Many of those items that we saw seemed to be the same. We were visiting just prior to Halloween and the selection was the same as that from the HomeGoods store we visited just a mile away. It will be interesting to see if both brands will co-exist so close to each other. Our retail background says probably not, since there is something that the bigger footprint didn’t seem to provide when compared to the smaller HomeGoods store. And that’s the intimacy and idea sharing that occurs with other shoppers unlike any other retail store. We rarely see shoppers networking and asking for opinions in a typical retail store, but we almost always do in HomeGoods. Hopeful that this is not lost over time!
Ruth C. (Co-founder Seek and Find Design)
