Tag: Nebraska Furniture Mart

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Commentary Nebraska Furniture Mart

Commentary: Buffett’s Got the Inside Numbers on Softening Consumer Demand

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Warren Buffett probably knows the current state of the economy better than anyone else in the United States. After all, at any moment he knows how cars are selling at Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, how homes are selling at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and how much goods and commodities are shipping at BNSF Railway.

BNSF Railway’s total carloads for 2019 are in a downward trend as compared to 2018 due to a major decrease in intermodal shipping, which is down 5.53% from 2018.

And we already know from Ford’s and General Motors’ earning reports that car sales fell in the second quarter.

Buffett also knows that consumer demand for furniture and home goods continues to soften, as the numbers at his retailers: Nebraska Furniture Mart, Jordan’s Furniture, RC Willey, and Star Furniture show.

In its latest SEC filing, Berkshire Hathaway reported that its sales and earnings from its furniture business were down 3% from the same period in 2018.

“Soft consumer demand,” along with poor weather in parts of the country, were the reasons cited.

Berkshire’s pre-tax earnings for home furnishings for the first six months fell a dramatic 23%, due to higher operating costs and lower sales.

Home furnishings, which include furniture, appliances, rugs, table and chairs, and other home décor, decline in sales when consumers cut back on discretionary spending, delay upgrading, and avoid adding large purchases, as their consumer debt grows.

Berkshire’s Jordan’s Furniture, which is the leading furniture retailer in New England, is already offering 72-month interest free financing in order to prop up sales.

Strong consumer demand, which has long propped up the economy, and kept the longest economic expansion in U.S. history chugging along, may finally be weakening. And Warren Buffett certainly knows it better than anyone.

© 2019 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Hawksearch Powers Nebraska Furniture Mart’s Online Ecommerce

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Berkshire Hathaway’s furniture retail chain Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) is using Hawksearch, a site search platform that utilizes advanced machine learning and pattern analysis to deliver the best search experience for website visitors.

NFM needed a search and merchandising engine that could support their online ecommerce growth.

Choosing the platform-agnostic Hawksearch tool, the new NFM website includes:

• A powerful search tool that customizes the site search experience
• Large number of filters available for NFM’s wide assortment of products
• Ability to support region based pricing and availability for their stores
• Ability to build and merchandise product landing pages
• Specific SEO requirements in terms of filters and landing pages so they have the ability to rank their landing pages for long tail searches
• Ability to build dynamic widgets that are capable of returning:
o Top Brands
o Top Products
o Top Categories
• Sync functionality that allows merchandisers to preview and test their changes before publishing them to production
• Ability to leverage the search tool in each store on tablets that NFM sales representatives use

NFM utilizes Hawksearch in very unique ways. The entire content on their site, from the homepage to the product detail page, is driven using Hawksearch Merchandising features. Hawksearch allows NFM to tailor the content displayed on the website, depending on the region and other factors about their users. The new site has an extremely clean filter design and includes an intuitive website experience that allows visitors to easily find the products they’re interested in.

Hawksearch CTO Shreyas Kamath said, “We’re proud to provide the powerful Hawksearch tool to Nebraska Furniture Mart. We’re continuously looking to further streamline the site search experience for our customers in order to increase their conversions and sales, allowing for a truly remarkable and productive user experience.”

NFM is one of the largest home furnishing stores in North America selling furniture, flooring, appliances and electronics. They were founded in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska and acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 1983. Nebraska Furniture Mart has locations in Omaha, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Dallas.

© 2019 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.

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Commentary Nebraska Furniture Mart

Commentary: Berkshire Hathaway Shows How to Do Retailing Right

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Nobody seems to have told Berkshire Hathaway about the “death of retailing,” which is ever present in the headlines.

With Sears having filed for bankruptcy in October, and Toys R Us, Mattress Firm, hhgregg, Bon-Ton Stores, and Gymboree among the bankruptcy filers in 2018, it’s easy to think that no one can succeed at retailing these days.

On the contrary, Berkshire Hathaway’s retailing division, which includes selling home goods, furniture electronics, and appliances through Nebraska Furniture Mart, RC Willey, Star Furniture and Jordan’s Furniture, is showing robust growth.

In the first nine months of 2018, Berkshire had a 3.8% increase in retailing business revenues to $11.404 billion as compared to $10.986 billion in the same period of 2017, with gains at its home furnishings businesses.

Berkshire reported an increase in pre-tax earnings from retailing to $572 million from $513 million.

In its recently released quarterly report, Berkshire’s revenues from its home furnishing business increased 5.4% in the first nine months.

Berkshire credited its rise in retail revenues to “higher volumes in certain geographic markets and the effect of a new store, which opened in 2018.”

Berkshire’s Utah-based RC Willey, opened a second location in Sacramento, California, in January 2018.

Over all, Berkshire Hathaway’s furniture and home good business is ranked 7th on Furniture Today’s Top 100, and had estimated 2017 furniture, bedding and accessory sales of $2.01 billion.

What is the secret to Berkshire’s success in midst of all the retailer struggles? It’s simple. They invest in retailing.

In the spring of 2015, as other retailers were closing stores and slashing investments, Berkshire opened its largest Nebraska Furniture Mart ever at The Colony in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.

The store boasts a 1.9 million-square-foot facility featuring a 560,000-square-foot showroom. And the whole Nebraska Furniture Mart chain, which consists of only four stores, generates almost $2 billion in annual sales.

With its newest Nebraska Furniture Mart, Berkshire was out to prove that going into a retail store could be an experience still worth doing, even in the era of Amazon.

Berkshire situated its Dallas-Fort Worth Nebraska Furniture Mart in its own Texas-sized development called Grandscape.

The Berkshire development is a 400+ acres “a city within a city,” featuring more than 3 million square feet of retail, entertainment, dining, residential, office and attractions.

By going bigger and bolder, Berkshire Hathaway is taking the online retail challenge head on, and is showing that there is still customer interest in the in-store experience.

© 2018 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Nebraska Furniture Mart to Move Des Moines Store to Larger Location

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Nebraska Furniture Mart will move its Des Moines, Iowa store.

The current 44,000-square-foot-store, which is actually in the town of Clive, will close and the furniture and appliance retailer will move to a site currently occupied by an empty former Dahl’s Food grocery store.

The new location is also in Clive, and will enable Nebraska Furniture Mart to feature more merchandise in the renovated 65,000-square-foot-building. The current location opened in 1993.

The new 65,000-square-foot location will still be small when compared to the company’s mega-store outside of Dallas, Texas, which clocks in at a massive 560,000-square-feet and is the largest store in the state.

Ryan Blumkin, vice president of Nebraska Furniture Mart, told the Des Moines Register that the new location will enable the retailer to increase its focus on retail customers. The Des Moines location has had a heavy emphasis on selling to contractors.

The opening is scheduled for spring 2019.

© 2018 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.

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Commentary Nebraska Furniture Mart

Commentary: Death of Retail? Grandscape Says Not So Fast

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“Retail is dead,” proclaims just about every financial headline these days, but Berkshire Hathaway continues to prove that wrong as it builds out Grandscape, a 400+ acre development featuring over 3 million square feet of retail, entertainment, dining, residential, office and attractions.

Anchored by Berkshire’s Nebraska Furniture Mart, which alone takes up 100 acres and has a 560,000 square foot retail showroom, Grandscape continues to use the bigger is better philosophy.

It’s a philosophy that’s attractive to other retailers that don’t want to simply bemoan the death of the bricks-and-mortar retail experience as a casualty of the internet.

The latest retailer to break ground at the development is SCHEELS, which is constructing a two-level, 331,000 square foot building that will be the largest All Sports Store in the world.

“After more than 10 years studying the Texas market, we found a great location to build our largest store yet,” said Steve D. Scheel, SCHEELS Chairman of the Board. “This one-of-a-kind retail adventure will attract sports enthusiasts, outdoor explorers and shoppers seeking a wide variety of fashion, footwear and homegoods. We are excited to bring our expertise and enthusiasm to Texas for the first time.”

In keeping with the trend to make shopping more experiential, SCHEELS will have a 65-foot, 16-car operating Ferris Wheel, a 16,000-gallon saltwater aquarium with more than 600 fish, and a wildlife mountain. Shoppers will get the chance to try out interactive arcade games and sports simulators.

Berkshire continues to believe in the retail experience, even as it is forced to evolve from the days of strip malls and malls with department stores as anchor tenants, and its $1.5 billion investment in Grandscape shows its putting its money where its mouth is.

© 2018 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Nebraska Furniture Mart Tops Big Box Retailers on Hot 100 List

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STORES magazine’s Hot 100 Retailers, the annual list ranking the nation’s fastest-growing retailers by year-over-year domestic sales growth, has Berkshire Hathaway’s Nebraska Furniture Mart topping the Big Box retailers rankings.

As proof that retail isn’t dying if you do it properly, Nebraska Furniture Mart was listed at #48 with 8% growth in 2016.

The Home Depot came in at #56; Lowe’s at 78; and Menard’s was on the list at #90.

STORES is the magazine of the National Retail Federation.

© 2017 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart Special Report Warren Buffett

Nebraska Furniture Mart Celebrates 80th Birthday

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These days when a company lasts a decade everyone pops champagne, but for Berkshire Hathaway’s Nebraska Furniture Mart this August marks the 80th anniversary of the company’s founding in 1937.

Founded in Omaha by Rose Blumkin (affectionately known as Mrs. B.) the company started in the basement of her husband’s pawn shop with $500 borrowed from relatives.

Mrs. B., despite being only 4 feet 10 inches tall, was legendary for her toughness and work ethic.

Her escape from Russian persecution at the dawn of WWI, when as a passport-less, 23-year-old, store clerk from Minsk she crossed the Chinese-Siberian border by promising the guard she would bring back a bottle of fruit brandy, and her six-week voyage on a peanut boat could in itself be a movie.

Unable to speak English, and as an immigrant unable to get a bank loan, she prided herself as over the years she toppled Omaha’s “Big boys.”

As NFM grew to dominate the Omaha furniture market, Warren Buffett took notice and in 1983 Berkshire Hathaway bought the store for $60 million without even doing any formal due diligence. It didn’t stop Mrs. B. from working seven days a week, and she continued to oversee the store until age 103.

Along with NFM, Berkshire owns three other furniture retailers, including Jordan’s Furniture, R. C. Willey Home Furnishings, and the Star Furniture Company.

Today, NFM is the largest home furnishing store in North America selling furniture, flooring, appliances and electronics, doing volumes with only four mega-stores that put furniture retailers to shame. Make that every other furniture retailer to shame.

The chain has four stores in Omaha, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Dallas, and a valuation of well over $1 billion.

Day-to-day operations are overseen by Tony Boldt as the president and chief operating officer, with Ron Blumkin and his brother Irv Blumkin as chairman and CEO respectively.

While all the stores are large, none is larger than the store in the Dallas area, which opened its doors in March 2015.

The newest Nebraska Furniture Mart in The Colony in Dallas, Texas, was an immediate success and adds roughly $600 million a year to the furniture chain’s revenues, which already had the highest per-store volume of any furniture retailer in the United States.

Boasting a 1.9 million-square-foot facility, and featuring a 560,000-square-foot showroom, the new Dallas NFM dwarfs even the chains other megastores.

The Dallas store is the anchor to Berkshire’s $1.5 billion Grandscape development, the first of its kind for Berkshire. The development is a 400+ acres, 3.9 million square-feet mix of retail, entertainment, dining and attractions that won’t be fully built-out for another decade.

The elaborate Grandscape complex will feature a $45 million boardwalk-themed restaurant district, a hotel and spa, a recently announced 16-screen luxury movie theater, and 1.5 million square feet of residential and office space that is billed as the lifestyle center.

It’s all a long way from Mrs. B.’s basement, and the fact that Grandscape will be another decade before its completed just means that it will be done in time for NFM’s 90th anniversary.

© 2017 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Star Furniture Names New CEO

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Houston-based Star Furniture has chosen Bob Price as its new CEO.

Price had been senior vice president of merchandising and inventory management at Art Van Furniture, and has more than four decades of experience in the retail sector, including 30 years at JC Penney.

“Bob is the right person to lead Star into its second century. While we conducted a nationwide search to fill this important position, it became clear that Bob met every criterion for this position,” said Irv Blumkin, Star’s Chairman of the Board. Blumkin is also CEO of Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Founded in the early 1900s by several men that pooled their money to purchase a horse and wagon to deliver furniture, Star Furniture became a retail store in 1912. The company currently has 11 stores, and is currently ranked fourth in the U.S. in furniture sales.

The company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 1997.

© 2017 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Home Furnishings Forecast Means Positive Outlook for Berkshire’s Furniture Retailers

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Berkshire Hathaway’s furniture retailing companies, which include Nebraska Furniture Mart, Jordan’s, and R.C. Wiley, will benefit from strong projected growth in the home furniture market.

Home furniture includes beds and mattresses, tables and table tops, desks, chairs, storage cabinets, sofas, and other furniture that are used to make a house or building a comfortable place to live.

In a new report from Research and Markets, “Home Furniture Market in the US 2017-2021,” the global luxury furniture market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.14% during the period from 2017-2021.

According to the report, one driver in the market is improving residential construction market. The real estate industry in the US is expected to drive the home furniture market in the next few years. This will be due to the increasing number of people engaging in household formation. There has been a significant rise in the number of women joining the workforce and living independently. As a result, there is a rising need for service apartments and single story houses.

© 2017 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.

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Nebraska Furniture Mart

Berkshire’s Furniture Retailers to Benefit from Growth in Luxury Furniture Market

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Berkshire Hathaway’s furniture retailing companies, which include Nebraska Furniture Mart, Jordan’s, and R.C. Wiley, will benefit from projected growth in the luxury furniture market.

In a new report from Research and Markets, “Global Luxury Furniture Market 2017-2021,” the global luxury furniture market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.92% during the period from 2017-2021.

The report notes that one of the strongest trends demand for eco-friendly and green furnishings.

“Consumers are currently showing more preference toward eco-friendly furniture such as those made from Moso bamboo, which is harder and more durable than oak. These materials also allow designers to obtain an aesthetic look for their products.”

© 2017 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.