By Susan Dickenson

TWO NEW MOE’S HOME Collection stores are set to open: one in Fremont, Calif., and another in FederalWay,Wash., a Seattle suburb.

The 20,000-sq.-ft. Fremont store is located just north of San Jose and marks Moe’s first retail venture in California. The Federal Way store, the company’s second retail location in Washington, will bring the company’s total number of stores to five.

The stores, according to owner Moe Samieian, have the same look and feel as the Moe’s Home Collection showrooms in High Point, Atlanta and Las Vegas, but carry a wider range of product including inventory from other vendors.“We’re expanding our accessory lines tremendously so we’ve reached out to other wholesalers for categories we don’t carry… like The Phillips Collection, Three Hands, Surya and a couple of overseas suppliers that mix well with our
product,” Samieian said.

The company also just joined the Costco Home roster of brands in Kirkland,Wash.“We placed Moe’s product in the store a month ago and now they’ve asked us to stay on for a while,” Samieian said.

Retailing is nothing new to Samieian, who opened his first store, a rug store, in 1985 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Eventually he added furniture to the
mix, and began buying from wholesalers in High Point and at international shows.

In about 1999, he decided to bring some of his furniture acquisitions into the U.S. market, which led to the Moe’s Home Collection wholesale operation. Three and a half years ago he opened a second store in Vancouver at approximately 40,000 square feet, and followed it a year later with a 30,000-sq.-ft. store in downtown Seattle.

Moe’s retail division, like the wholesale side, is overseen by the Samieian family members, including Moe’s wife, Faye, daughter, Sara, and son, Moe Jr. “We’re involved in all aspects from manufacturing to consolidation to wholesale to

retail,” said ” Sara, who admitted to “pretty much” working a 24/7 schedule. “It’s because I love the product, and I believe in the product.

Samieian said the company’s retail experience gives him and his staff a better understanding of their retail customers. “We’ve been there. We know what it takes, what you should do, what you should mix, what can get you growing, so on and so forth. Our mixed container programs help smaller retailers who are more restricted in their buying. And our products can mix and blend in with existing product to fill the whole store.”

Heather Hanley, a retail buyer interviewed in Moe’s LasVegas showroom this past market, attested to the success of the program. “I have two stores—one is contemporary and one traditional. The traditional store is almost five years old and the contemporary store just opened.We’ve purchased three or four containers from Moe’s, worked it into the traditional store, and based on that response we started the other store.”

So what happens when Moe’s sets up shop near its retail customers?“We do not undersell our clients’ prices,” Samieian said. “In Vancouver we have many clients that know we have the store and they still buy from us. They know we maintain our prices and that our margin is the same as theirs.”

“And The Tin Roof (Hanley’s store), for example, is in Washington, close to our store,” Sara Samieian added. “They sell the same products and do very well with it.”

Samieian said Moe’s retail stores will continue to grow and thatMoeJr. is thinking of opening 15 more locations in the next few years — but only if “the look” can be maintained. “Our product requires a certain presentation—the concrete floor, the broken brick walls, the music, the backdrop for the look of Moe’s and what makes it so distinct and different.

“Our Seattle store is my vision of an outstanding retail store — exposed posts and beams, skylights, concrete floor, and I brought a few old planes from China and hung them from the ceiling,” Samieian said. “Everybody who comes to that store says it’s so beautiful. I wish every Moe’s store could be like that.”