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California-based Living Spaces has opened a new outlet store and warehouse in a 695,000 square foot space in Humble near Deerbrook Mall. It is the first store in the Houston market, but the company has 30 locations spread across several states.
California-based Living Spaces has opened a new outlet store and warehouse in a 695,000 square foot space in Humble near Deerbrook Mall. It is the first store in the Houston market, but the company has 30 locations spread across several states.
California-based Living Spaces has opened a new outlet store and warehouse in a 695,000 square foot space in Humble near Deerbrook Mall. It is the first store in the Houston market, but the company has 30 locations spread across several states.
California-based Living Spaces has opened a new outlet store and warehouse in a 695,000 square foot space in Humble near Deerbrook Mall. It is the first store in the Houston market, but the company has 30 locations spread across several states.
For their 30th store opening, California-based furniture store Living Spaces chose Humble where CEO and founder Grover Geiselman has been planning a hybrid outlet store and warehouse combination, the first in his foray into the Houston market.
Geiselman, a Houston-native, earned his entrepreneurial chops under possibly the greatest retailer in the city, Jime “Mattress Mack” McInvale.
He says he owes a lot to the furniture giant for his success after learning the business from him.
“I grew up here in Houston. Went to elementary, middle and high school here in Houston then off to college at University of Texas,” he said.
Following graduation, he moved back to Houston and moved into a house he was renting with a friend and they need a set of furniture.
“I went to Gallery Furniture and knew they delivered quickly. Bought a bedroom set and literally made one stop on my way home, and the truck was waiting for me when I got home. That was great service, but being my first-time buying furniture, I thought, ‘This is how it always must be,’” he chuckled.
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A few years later he found himself out in the Bay Area in California to go to business school at Stanford University and had a horrible experience buying furniture.
“In 2000, I sent an email to the team at Gallery and told them they should come to California!” he said.
A year-and-a-half into his business school degree and he was tasked with writing a business plan as a project for his entrepreneurship class.
His first idea fell flat and was a disaster, and then he thought of McInvale.
“I thought he seemed to have a different model and I’ll stop by and ask him if he would allow us to study what he’s doing,” Geiselman reasoned.
He found Mack at his usual post in the front of the store and he agreed to allow him to talk to his people and study what they do.
“The more we dug in, the more we realized Gallery really does something different. They have this huge footprint, they keep everything in stock, deliver immediately, have aggressive prices, excellent service, and they’ve really differentiated themselves in the market,” the young student thought.
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It was the motivation he needed to go back to California with his friend Sharm Sherman to try out the business model on their own.
Geiselman offered McInvale a proposal to allow him and his friend to work for Gallery.
“You don’t have to pay us,” he said. “We just want to study what you do. And we’ll give you an interest in our business when we open in California. He told us he would think about it and to call him in a week,” Geiselman said as they waited on pins and needles for a response.
They had the same conversation with McInvale every week for four months.
“We graduated from business school, and I called Mack and told him I was packing up my suburban and going to drive down to Houston. We’re going to start working for him on Tuesday,” and Mattress Mack agreed.
Geiselman said there’s no official apprenticeship program.
“It’s basically he put us on a team, with people who mostly spoke Spanish, but this team would get there at 6:30 in the morning, unload trucks until about noon. We’d shower up, go get on the sales floor, sell furniture ’til about eight or nine at night. And then we’d get the keys to a delivery truck and go do one last run of deliveries and finish up around midnight,” he said, exhausted with the thought.
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There was no background on the IT systems or marketing approach.
“It was strictly you need to learn how to sell it, move it around in the warehouse and learn how to deliver it. That was the best thing that we could have done,” Geiselman said.
For four months they worked the frontlines of Gallery then moved out to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., to give their dream a try.
“We found an old Costco building and we put a showroom in the front and a warehouse in the back, trying to replicate Mack’s model of storing it there and offer immediate same-day delivery service,” he said.
They opened in August of 2003 and immediately realized they were opening amid the biggest housing boom the country had ever seen.
“We were not good operators when we first opened up, but high demand covers up a lot of mistakes. Within two years, it was hard to keep up with the business in that location. We opened our second location, in May of 2006,” he said.
Even through the Great Recession of 2008, they continued to open stores in San Diego, Phoenix, the Bay Area, Vegas, and Texas. The entrepreneurs now boast 30 stores and multiple warehouses.
With as many locations as they have, they have remained similar to the Gallery model, but it became difficult with their Texas entry into the market.
“We build into our logic a two-week buffer for that extra time that it’s taking getting goods through the ports. California and here in Texas, we have our own transportation, our own cabs, container chassis, trailers, so we own our transportation, and we can accelerate it moving into our buildings,” he said.
There are differences in that Living Spaces is developing product exclusive to the business with factories in the U.S. and overseas.
One of the unique features is a Design Center with more than 120 fabric options that allows guests to customize a variety of upholstered collections. They also boast one-of-a-kind elements found from around the world.
They have also cultivated partnerships with different celebrity designers Joanna Gaines and her Magnolia Home line, Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent, and Drew and Jonathan Scott with their Scott Living brand.
Geiselman said he originally intended to avoid Houston out of love and respect for McInvale, only opening stores in Austin, San Antonio and Dallas.
“After we were opened, the truck rates from California to Texas absolutely went through the roof. We started realizing we’re going to have to start shipping a lot of containers through the Port of Houston. If we do that, we really need an industrial facility here. And if we put an industrial facility here, we really need a store,” he said.
He didn’t make that commitment without first approaching McInvale.
“I went to Mac with hat in hand and said, ‘You know I never wanted to open here. I don’t want to step on your toes. But it would be very helpful if we can open an industrial facility in Houston and open some stores in Houston,” he said. The two came to an agreement.
The Humble facility is 695,000 square feet of distribution center combined with an attached outlet that carries their full line of furniture.
They do have additional stores planned in the market including a Katy store that’s under construction across from Bass Pro Shop they hope to open in September or October. Grover said it will have four full-sized homes in the store: a modern farmhouse, modern Spanish, industrial home, and a pure modern home.
“We’ll also have a bar and café and a kid’s area with about 2,500 square feet with a movie room and a giant play structure. You can check your kids in, leave them in a supervised playroom while you shop, or you can stay in there with them if you’d like to.”
They plan another store in Conroe late next year with similar amenities to Katy.
For more information, visit www.livingspaces.com.
David Taylor is the reporter/photographer for Houston Community Newspapers / Houston Chronicle and writes news, sports and investigative pieces. He is a member of the Texas Press Association and has won numerous state awards.
He attended Rice University and the University of Houston and has led the news rooms of several newspapers including The Sentinel Newspapers, The Pasadena Citizen, The Examiner Newspapers, and The Observer Group.
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