Crate & Barrel Gets Things Just So for Opening of Furniture Store

When Orange County’s first Crate & Barrel furniture store swings open its doors to the public Thursday, each piece of merchandise will be situated just so, the culmination of months of planning and dizzying attention to detail.

Working from blueprints that show where to position every overstuffed chair and distressed wood table, workers have been scrambling to ready the store for its debut since Thursday, when five moving vans rumbled up to the new South Coast Plaza store, which has taken over Robinsons-May’s former anchor spot at the former Crystal Court.

“Every single piece of merchandise in the store is placed on this,” designer Terry Burns said, displaying her drawing. “We’ve got it down to a science these days.”

To prepare for the opening of Southern California’s largest Crate & Barrel furniture store, the Northbrook, Ill.-based retailer enlisted more than 130 employees, including a team of designers who have been working 12-hour days and new hires who have pitched in to stock shelves, make beds and apply touch-up paint.

And they’ve been taking their duties seriously.

“I can’t get all the lumps out,” customer service representative Piper Tarver said, after fussing repeatedly with a white quilted bedspread on a cherry wood bed.

Crate & Barrel, which for most of its 37-year history sold only smaller household items, now has 20 furniture stores nationwide, including two other West Coast stores, in Pasadena and Palo Alto. Today, furniture accounts for about 30% of the company’s overall sales, Chief Executive Gordon Segal said.

The company selected the Costa Mesa location for a variety of reasons. Its much smaller South Coast Plaza houseware store has had strong sales, Segal said. And the demographics were great, with so many “well-traveled, sophisticated, educated customers” outfitting so many homes.

The new store features wood floors, lots of white paint and plenty of light. The lower floor is stocked with smaller houseware items while the upstairs is devoted to furniture, with contemporary styles on one side and a more country look on the other.

The collection will change twice a year, in February and September, Segal said.

By tonight, the store will be picture perfect for a pre-opening charity event, Segal said. “It comes together like clockwork.”