A ‘Fine’ Time for Sellers and Consumers of Housewares

In a bygone era, fine housewares such as caviar servers adorned the tables of aristocrats trained in the etiquette of their use.

The elegant container, with an inner glass piece to hold the delicacy, came in sterling silver. The server’s special spoon was made either of horn or mother of pearl, to keep the fish roe from staining a hostess’ fine silverware and the silver from affecting the caviar’s taste.

That, of course, was before the days of Crate & Barrel, which offers its version of the item in glass for $24.95. The housewares mecca’s mother-of-pearl caviar spoon is $12.95.

Retailers say shoppers are snapping up those caviar servers, along with service plates, salt cellars, asparagus tongs, egg cups, toast caddies and a variety of other once-fancy housewares that are now attainable by the decidedly less-than-elite.

At a time when low interest rates and a strong economy are spurring sales of single-family homes to record levels, the late 1990s are proving to be a standout for a related business: fancy housewares, coveted by value-driven baby boomers who are upgrading their houses, and by the so-called echo boomers who are outfitting homes for the first time.

“It’s all based upon Donna Reed,” said Tom Tashjian, a retail analyst at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. “Whether it’s the postwar baby boomers remembering or the echo boomers watching ‘Nick at Nite,’ there is this image of how home is supposed to be that the U.S. consumer will borrow against their income to accomplish.”

In 1997, the last year for which complete statistics are available, boomer-led families making more than $70,000 a year spent almost $100 billion on home-related products, or about $2,000 annually per household--a figure that almost doubles for every additional $100,000 in income, NationsBanc reported.

Those expenditures are likely to increase in years to come, most industry watchers agree.

“You have the biggest, wealthiest part of the population now spending time at home,” said Gary Friedman, chief merchandising officer for publicly traded Williams-Sonoma Inc. “The home is becoming more important to more people.”

And as fast as Martha Stewart offers tips for maintaining the perfect abode, Williams-Sonoma and the like are supplying the necessary implements.

In a different time, that might have been disastrous for department stores, the traditional bastion of fine goods for the home. Although they have not experienced the sales growth of the specialty stores, analysts say, neither have the apparel-focused department stores been devastated by the competition’s success--so far.

“The demand of having both the baby boomers and the echo boomers moving into more aggressive nesting is growing the business so rapidly that everyone still can get a share of it and ride the growth,” said NationsBanc’s Tashjian. “However, [industry leaders], whether sophisticated like Pottery Barn or more mainstream-oriented like Linens ‘n Things, are capturing and becoming destinations for this type of merchandise.”

Fancy but affordable housewares are the byproduct of aging and educated consumers, eager to pad their nests but accustomed to getting the most for their money. They’ll shop the department stores and buy sterling silver during a sale, but until then are mostly happy to search out the next best thing at any of a number of trendy specialty stores.

The stores--which include Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware Inc., Cost Plus Inc. and Pier 1 Imports Inc. and privately held Sur la Table and Crate & Barrel--are eager to meet the growing demand. If your grandmother had it, these stores offer a close approximation.

“We’re always looking back and looking for things we can reinterpret that seem fresh again,” said Williams-Sonoma’s Friedman.

At Crate & Barrel, shoppers looking at individual spiral egg cups, wooden honey spoons and candle snuffers shop to swing music. Displays are decorated with additional nostalgia, such as an old L.C. Smith manual typewriter and a black rotary phone.

The reminders of days gone by are meant to evoke a time when eating and entertaining were more civilized affairs and people prided themselves on the beauty and individuality of their tabletop accouterments, said Bette Kahn, spokeswoman for Chicago-based Crate & Barrel. It is a formula that has been successful for the more expensive and less tabletop-focused Restoration Hardware, which saw holiday sales in stores open at least a year rise more than 10%.

“People are going back to those things because their lives are so frenetic; they’re trying to go back to a more comfortable time,” Kahn said. “Women in the workplace discovered that their lives weren’t balanced and they wanted to spend time with their friends and family as well as be a success at the workplace, so people have gone back to entertaining at home.”

Deborah Kagan, a 28-year-old small-business owner, understands that notion. On her bridal registry at Pasadena’s Sur la Table, she included porcelain “petite terrines,” 4-ounce dishes topped with lids shaped like ducks, rabbits and hens.

“I thought I might use them for brunches, to put either jams or margarine in, or for a dinner party, to put spreads in, or for dessert,” Kagan said. “I want to create a beautiful space for a meal where friends and family can gather and feel comfortable and feel special.”

For shoppers with less vision than Kagan, the stores set out display tables to demonstrate possible uses for their inexpensive, and sometimes obscure, wares. Most also offer descriptions in tiny print on the items’ price tags, to answer the inevitable question of what on earth one or another device or decoration is for.

The descriptions go a long way toward explaining an array of seafood implements offered by Sur la Table, a Seattle-based kitchen and housewares chain that recently opened its first Southern California stores. The stores--in Pasadena, Santa Monica and Newport Beach--offer a set of six catch-all seafood forks for $7.25 and individual escargot forks, cocktail forks, a lobster pick, oyster knives, clam knives and fish pliers. Each sells for no more than a few dollars.

There’s a set of six porcelain butter pots, to sit in front of each diner’s place, for $10.95; stainless steel asparagus tongs for $6.95; and a set of six porcelain knife rests shaped like loons for $8.95--to safeguard a tablecloth from sauce-coated flatware.

“We’re selling egg cups like crazy,” said Renee Behnke, Sur la Table’s executive vice president and a member of the family that owns the stores. The cups are made to present one soft-boiled egg in the top bowl, while keeping a second one warm underneath. “They don’t understand what the shape is for, but they’re buying it.”

The escargot forks, Behnke said, have been so popular at $1.75 a pop that she decided to have them reproduced in silver-plate. A set of six of the fancier forks, she said, will sell for less than $16.

Pottery Barn offers at least four kinds of service plates (also called chargers)--large, decorative plates that sit under a dinner plate for no other reason than to look nice.

And for those consumers who have or wished they had a formal bar, Pottery Barn offers an old-fashioned decanter for $25, a silver-plated jigger for $12, a silver-plated cocktail server for $14 and a set of four leather coasters for $25.

“Like any retailer, you sort of ignite the interest and if there’s enough there, you make sure you can dish it up,” NationsBanc’s Tashjian said.

Meanwhile, retailers on the higher end of the price spectrum are likewise enjoying the new age of entertaining.

Gearys of Beverly Hills, one of the older and more exclusive local purveyors of fine china, saw record-breaking January sales, said Senior Vice President Tom Blumenthal.

“I think people are looking at luxury goods as something they could not obtain 25 years ago, and now it’s obtainable--whether it’s the original or an imitation,” Blumenthal said.

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Nouveau Ritz

Booming sales have lifted shares of upscale housewares retailers such as Williams-Sonoma, although the market has been less kind recently to some newcomers, including Restoration Hardware. Weekly closes and latest for the stocks:

Williams-Sonoma

Wednesday: $35.19

Restoration Hardware

Wednesday: $20.13

Source: Bloomberg News

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WARE FARE

Some housewares that are seeing a sales resurgence:

Butter and jam terrines surrounded by porcelain knife rests offered at Sur la Table

Candle snuffers available at Crate & Barrel stores.

Asparagus tongs offered at Sur la Table.