Power shopping spree

Jennifer Shubinski

Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2006 | 7:59 a.m.

Dave and Cyndi Harkness, owners of Harkness Furniture in Tacoma, Wash., spent Monday in Las Vegas walking mile after mile and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But they weren't hitting blackjack tables on the Strip or visiting designer stores at the Forum Shops at Caesars.

They were buying beds, couches, chairs and tables at the World Market Center.

Up early and at the center by 8 a.m. and working well past 5 p.m. to buy the inventory they will be selling at their store later this year, the Harknesses are representative of an industry that is firmly rooted in tradition and still fueled by family-owned businesses.

The new Las Vegas Market could be cutting into some of those long-standing traditions. The Harknesses, like many in the industry, have long been going to the largest and oldest furniture market in High Point, N.C.

But the Las Vegas Market -- easier to maneuver and to reach -- has shaken loose a few roots that kept the industry entrenched in High Point and already has caused a smaller, long-running furniture market in San Francisco to scale back and focus away from furniture.

"People are tired of the perception of getting ripped off in High Point," Dave Harkness said of the well-known practice of jacking up prices for everything from hotel rooms to food during market times. "Las Vegas can absorb 60,000 to 70,000 people with no problem.

"Las Vegas is the only city that could build a market from scratch and be successful -- because it's Las Vegas."

By 10:30 a.m. the Harknesses and their sales manager, John Opland, checked out their fifth showroom. They looked at and ordered curio cabinets and entertainment centers.

The group squeezed its way through a showroom overflowing with buyers, all trying to look at wooden tables, chairs and dining sets.

Dave Harkness was not convinced that one of the exhibitor's new lines of furniture -- rough-hewn country style -- would work in his store.

Buying furniture that his customers will like -- not just items that he and his wife like -- is part guessing game, part intuition, part science.

In Dave Harkness' briefcase, emblazoned with the Seattle Seahawks' football team logo, were pages of data on what customers have bought -- what style, how fast items sold and how long inventory sat on the floor.

Harkness said that while wholesale furniture buyers and manufacturers' sales staffs are mostly men, the consumers who buy the products are 35- to 55-year-old women.

"It's the opposite of what it should be," he said, adding that he often relies on his wife's opinion.

By 11:30 a.m. the group made its way down a series of escalators from the ninth floor to the fifth floor of the center for a meeting with a big mattress manufacturer. While it was good to see and test the mattresses, there was a better reason to visit at midday.

This particular company offers up the best lunch, Dave Harkness said.

Sitting with their company representative, dining on clear plastic plates and feasting on roast, chicken, sandwiches and carrot cake, the talk turned from mattresses to the future of Harkness Furniture.

The Tacoma retailer is a third-generation operation, started in 1920 by Dave Harkness' grandfather. Dave and Cyndi Harkness' daughter has no interest in the company: She recently graduated college and is now teaching kindergarten. But their son, a junior at Ohio State University, has started to express an interest in the family business, and has even gone so far as to take some business classes.

While it's not certain whether he will take over the reins someday, it's clear the prospect would please his folks.

The conversation turned back to business as the plates were cleared away and the group headed off to the next appointment.

At one of their longest appointments of the day, the Harknesses and Opland toured a showroom floor, taking in the beds and dining sets and coffee tables. Before the buying began, Dave Harkness walked back and forth with the salesman, looking at different pieces and discussing the cost of shipping products from the overseas manufacturer and then from the port.

At the next stop Dave Harkness asked to see a dining room set that other dealers have said are flying off showroom floors. The salesman informed the group that a competitor with a store down the street from Harkness Furniture already had placed an order for the set.

As they left the showroom, Dave Harkness' brow was furrowed.

"Sometimes you have to walk away from (products) that might be salable because a competitor could sell it cheaper than you," he said.

By late afternoon, the group was beginning to tire, having walked what felt like the entire World Market Center's 1.3 million square feet -- equivalent to the space of 27 football fields.

At what will be the final stop of the day, the Harknesses and Opland settled into some leather couches and moved to leather chairs, swapping back and forth so each tried the most comfortable one and the chair that is "just for looks."

"We schedule our chair appointments at the end of the day," Dave Harkness said.

By 5 p.m., they moved from chairs to desks and wrapped up their purchase order. They visited 13 manufacturers in nine hours -- and still have four days to go.

At the end of the day, they planned to wind their way down the escalators with thousands of other buyers and board a bus to the Flamingo, their home base for the week.

And to get up and do it all over again every day through Friday.

Jennifer Shubinski can be reached at 259-8832 or at js@ lasvegassun.com.