CITY Furniture is changing its name to CITY HOME as the Florida retailer expands beyond furniture into appliances, kitchens, closets, flooring and home technology.
The move follows a broader expansion aimed at customers moving into new homes. Before the pandemic, about 40% of CITY’s customers were moving or building homes, according to the company, and many needed furniture, appliances and other products at the same time. CITY responded by adding categories that often required separate trips to appliance dealers, kitchen suppliers and other retailers.
“What we’re finding is our customers are asking for more,” Chief Executive Officer Andrew Koenig said. “We’ve always been asking, how can we help? The shopping experience to move into a new home or build a new house is really difficult.”
CITY HOME includes appliances, kitchens, closets, bathroom vanities, fitness equipment and smart-home technology, with flooring expected later this year. The company is also expanding services, including interior design, custom cabinetry, connected-home installation and trade services for builders and designers. CITY also plans to handle delivery and installation with its own teams, allowing customers to coordinate more of the process through a single company.
Expanding into those categories required a significant increase in inventory and suppliers.
“We probably doubled our vendors and doubled our SKU count,” Koenig said. “It was a huge lift,” he added. “It’s a lot of work to bring on these partners, these experiences, these SKUs, these new services.”
Much of that work centered on Plant City, where the first CITY HOME location is operating alongside the company’s 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center. Koenig said the warehouse gives CITY room to stock appliances, televisions and other products that were not previously part of its business.
From Plant City, the company plans to expand the concept across Florida over the next nine months. Sarasota, Wesley Chapel and other Tampa Bay locations are expected to convert by mid-August, followed by Orlando later this year and the rest of the state through the first quarter of 2027. The company said the CITY HOME concept already has debuted in Plant City and Clearwater.
Koenig said customer demand, not Florida’s population growth, drove the expansion.
The broader lineup also has brought brands including Samsung, GE and Whirlpool into CITY’s stores. Those relationships already have helped expand the company’s charitable work, Koenig said, pointing to a recent project in which CITY helped an assisted-living facility serving children with Down syndrome obtain about $350,000 worth of appliances, televisions and other products.
“We’re going to do more good than we’ve ever done as a company,” he said.
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