Home Center Chain Has Membership Plan
Is the crowded Los Angeles area home center market really ready for yet another store? Robert J. McNulty, one of the founders of HomeClub Inc., Fullerton, believes it most emphatically is and he’s putting his--and his investors’--money on the line with another opening.
The ninth store in the chain opened last weekend at 8341 Canoga Ave., just north of Roscoe Boulevard in Canoga Park.
Like its eight predecessors (Norwalk, Fountain Valley, Las Vegas, Fullerton, two stores in San Jose, San Bernardino, and Sacramento), the Canoga Park outlet has about 100,000 square feet of floor area, operates on the warehouse principle and requires membership like Gemco, Fedco and Price Club general merchandise stores.
McNulty, 38, claims that HomeClub, incorporated in 1983, is the first home and garden center to operate on the membership plan; membership costs $15 a year, with special group rates of $10, he said. Non-members can shop in the stores, but they must pay 5% more than members, he added.
In addition to the 100,000-square-foot main store (the size varies from store to store, but is in this range), the stores have 10,000 square feet of garden and landscaping selling space, he said.
“We employ more than 100 people at each store, have eight departments and handle about 25,000 items, including lumber and hardware,” McNulty said, adding that the stores are open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
“We offer special orders, installation, custom paint mixing, lumber cuts, key making and custom glass-cutting. Our customers can expect day-in, day-out savings of 15% to 40% compared with conventional home center operations.”
All this must make the people at National Lumber, Angels, Ole’s, Builders Emporium and Lumber City delighted. Especially Neiman-Reed’s Lumber City, where McNulty served as president in 1982. A high school dropout at 16, Los Angeles native McNulty began his home center career at National Lumber and has worked for all the centers mentioned above except Builders Emporium.
Nine more HomeClub stores are planned for California this year, including San Diego, Fresno, the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Gabriel Valley and Gardena. All will be more than twice the size of the typical home center.
How low are the prices? I asked McNulty for his prices for a Black & Decker 1 1/2-horsepower router, Model 7614, an In-Sink-Erator Badger I garbage disposer and a Kwikset entry lock No. 400BX3, and compared them with prices in a Lumber City advertising flyer. The results: $44.97 HomeClub and $50.87 Lumber City for the router; $29.97 HomeClub and $35.38 Lumber City for the garbage disposer and $8.87 HomeClub and $12.94 Lumber City for the lock set.
William Peterson will teach a $135 course on “Kitchens and Baths of the ‘80s” beginning at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Santa Monica Interior Design Center, 1918 S. Main St., Santa Monica. The course is sponsored by UCLA Extension and is intended to help designers and homeowners learn the latest developments in kitchen and bath design and remodeling.
Topics of the six-week class--every Tuesday through Aug. 20--include types of kitchens, equipment, surface materials, color, lighting, functional and aesthetic considerations and cost, Peterson said.
