COON RAPIDS, Minn. — For Top 100 retailer HOM Furniture, the opportunity to acquire fellow Minnesota retailer Hennen Furniture checked a lot of boxes.
For one, the acquisition, which will close Dec. 31, adds another legacy family brand to the Coon Rapids, Minn.-based retailer’s portfolio to go along with its acquisitions of Gabberts Design Studio & Fine Furnishings and Seasonal Concepts.
For another, it comes with owned real estate, which is something HOM prefers vs. leasing space.
And then, adding Hennen, which was established in 1967 by Bob Hennen, creates a larger presence in the St. Cloud market with the ability to reach deeper into Central Minnesota and the Lakes Region.
Carl Nyberg, president and CEO of HOM, told Furniture Today that there are a lot of synergies between the brands. They both have family roots, there are similarities in assortment, and they go the extra mile for their employees and customers.
See also:
“Most better regional furniture retailers are still family businesses. If the ownership is active, that means something to the employees,” Nyberg said. “Hopefully at the end of the day you’re delivering better results to customers.
“We’d like to use our size and scale and add value to Hennen’s. I don’t need to bring their people up in standards in terms of how to treat a customer. That part of the transaction is easy,” he continued. “The hard part is the nuts and bolts — computer system, leverage with key vendors operations — that will all work itself out. If you have good employees that care about their customers, that makes transitions like this easier because you share the same kind of values.”
As part of the deal, HOM intends to operate the Hennen Furniture brand preserving the company’s local heritage and customer relationships. Once it is complete, HOM will take over Hennen’s 218,000-square-foot building and its established operations serving Central Minnesota communities.
“We like to own all our properties, and, in this case, they have a large facility. One of the big attractions was the building the Hennen family built and kept up,” Nyberg said.
It will continue operating its current showroom in St. Cloud, but Nyberg noted that it is HOM’s smallest, so having the larger space will enable it to better showcase its full assortment. Also, Hennen’s distribution center enables HOM to better service customers in Central Minnesota and beyond. He said that would save delivery teams a minimum 60-mile trip to service those customers from the Twin Cities.
“A lot of Twin Cities residents own second homes in the Lake Region. There’s a reasonable amount of rural population, good, small communities who feed into the St. Cloud market. In that market, that’s going to allow us to have better regional distribution and provide better service to that entire region.”
And Nyberg said the St. Cloud community, the legacy Hennen employees and the Hennen family should rest assured that the nearly 60-year-old brand will be in good hands.
“Their name is on that building. That was the same when we bought Gabbert’s,” Nyberg said. “I had no problem reassuring Jim Gabbert, and I told the (brothers Tim and Greg Hennen) the same thing, that you don’t have to worry that your family name isn’t going to be taken care of. You’ve got a good brand reputation and we’re going to maintain that.”
