Paula Deen furniture endures
It’s selling well, say independent retailers, including in state
After Paula Deen admitted in federal court in the spring that she had used racially offensive language in the past, the celebrity chef became a pariah almost overnight. The Food Network dropped her, and marketing agreements on her lines of food, kitchen tools and countertop devices were severed by WalMart, Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney and others.
But her lines of furniture are faring well in independent stores and regional chains, including those in Arkansas.
Deen on occasion makes local television ads for her furniture.
She made one for Hank’s Fine Furniture, in which she emphasizes the long, Southern pronunciation of the second word in the store title, just as owner Hank Browne does.
Hank’s, which is based in Little Rock and has 14 stores in five states, reports that Paula Deen sales have been up across the board.
“Chainwide, her sales have gone up since the controversy,” said Mary Browne Allen, president of Hank’s. “We’ve had a lot of customer comments” in support of the chain not dropping the Paula Deen line. Only 2 percent of store customers and comments on the company’s website and Facebook page have been negative, she said.
Paula Deen furniture is made by High Point, N.C.based Universal Furniture International. President and Chief Executive Jeff Scheffer assured retailers in a letter dated July 24 that “after careful consideration, we have decided to move forward with the Paula Deen brand, adding that “we have
heard from many of you expressing your passionate support for Paula,” who has “acknowledged saying some hurtful things but she has also apologized.”
“Other retailers have removed Paula Deen banners, tent cards, hang tags and the like from their floor displays — effectively de-branding the line,” Scheffer wrote.
Kevin Miller, director of marketing for Universal, declined to release a list of all the stores that carry the Deen lines.
At least one major retailer outside the region, Boston-based Jordan Furniture, whose phone message identifies it as “the official furniture store of the Boston Red Sox,” still carries Deen lines, according to Heather Copelas, public relations manager.
The Nebraska Furniture Mart has dropped the Deen line, according to a sales clerk who did not identify himself. The Paula Deen line was not on the Nebraska retailer’s extensive list of brands on its website.
The Omaha-based retailer, which is owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, has a 420,000-squarefoot store in Omaha and a 1.1 million-square-foot retail and warehouse facility in Kansas City and plans a 560,000-square-foot store in The Colony, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Another Berkshire Hathaway chain, Houston-based Star Furniture, which has 10 stores in Texas, has retained the Deen line, according to a statement relayed by the assistant to Chief Executive Bill Kimbrell.
A Deen banner hangs prominently from the ceiling in the section of the Hank’s at 1000 S. Bowman Road in Little Rock.
Allen said Deen “furniture is the best bedroom and dining-room furniture money can buy in that price range. It’s just an outstanding product.”
She said Deen sales in her stores have gone up since it became known, from a deposition in federal court in Georgia last spring, that Deen admitted that she had used racially derogatory language in the past.
A civil lawsuit accusing Deen and her brother of race discrimination and sexual harassment was dismissed last month by U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. in Savannah.
The Deen-brand loyalty is a reflection of the feeling “that she got a bum rap, that the media blew this out of proportion,” Allen said.
Curtis Ferguson, owner of Ferguson’s Furniture in Benton, said sales of the Deen lines are equal to those of a year ago.
Leon Duvall said the adverse publicity has been nothing but good for sales of Deen furniture at his store, The Rack, in Russellville.
John E. Gnuschke, a professor of economics at the University of Memphis, noted in an email “the old marketing rule that even bad news is sometimes good.”
“Paula Deen is more well known now than before this controversy and, like Martha Stewart, she may generate a totally new series of success stories,” Gnuschke said.
Stewart served f ive months in federal prison regarding an insider stocktrading scandal while she was head of her Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia empire, whose board she returned to after the terms of the federal conviction were fulfilled.
“People who buy Paula Deen products are not agreeing that what she said was right,” Gnuschke said. “They do so because the Paula Deen lines of merchandise have become better known and may have a better quality/price tradeoff than other options.”