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Move over Bassett, Charter Furniture, and Pottery Barn, when it comes to the new Nebraska Furniture Mart in Dallas, Texas, Warren Buffett has high hopes. “I believe the store will do over $1 billion,” Buffett recently told CNBC.
Officially, NFM has been projecting that the new Dallas store will have annual revenues of $600 million, which is $200 million more than its Kansas store generates.
If the $1 billion annual sales goal Buffett spoke of can be reached, it will be roughly half of all the home furnishing sales in the Dallas area.
In order to generate that type of business, NFM has built a massive store with a 560,000-square-foot retail showroom and 58 acres of parking. The store’s massive loading area can load 120 cars simultaneously.
Over 2,000 people are staffing the new store, and if the Kansas store is any indication, the average furniture sales associate will sell some $1.1 million of home furnishings a year.
Big Stores for a Big Market
According to Furniture Today Magazine, 41% of all U.S. households have plans to buy furniture and mattresses, and it looks like a huge number of them will be doing that at a Nebraska Furniture Mart.
While the Dallas store is expected to draw customers from as far as 300 mile away, the reach of NFM is nearly nationwide, delivering to 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).
© 2015 David Mazor
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.