AllHome Corp., the Villar-led retailer, said it saw a spike in furniture sales, a pattern seen across the home improvement industry due to the pandemic.
“AllHome has always pushed to elevate the Filipino’s experiences. It is in the brand’s DNA to elevate the design sensibilities of all our customers,” Camille Villar, the company’s vice chairman, said.
Euromonitor International is projecting a 9-percent compounded annual growth rate for furniture and homeware, driven by home-bound Filipinos paying closer attention to adjusting their spaces under the new normal and work-from-home setups.
“More than providing them comprehensive convenience in a single store, we want to open up their minds to all of the possibilities available to them when they furnish their homes” she said.
“We believe that the home is where their stories start, and we want to enable them to really make their homes and the way they live beautiful. This was an AllHome objective made even much more important when the pandemic made people from all walks of life truly connect with their homes.”
Villar said the company is expanding on its options, “sourcing far and wide”, and is also pushing for the development of its own in-house brands to match global design trends and standards.
AllHome carries over 250,000 SKUs (stock-keeping unit), or the barcode on each type of product that can be scanned, across the chain, with more than half comprising the soft categories.
It also carries 42 in-house brands, including Urban Reluxur, Bed and Beyond, Pixie Dreams, Grab and Go and Kreativ.
For furniture alone, AllHome carries over 20,000 SKUs with 33 percent of these are in-house brands, ranging from classic, traditional, modern and even Scandinavian furniture designs, the company said.
“At the heart of the merchandise mix of the soft categories for AllHome is our own philosophy of providing as many furniture ideas as possible for our customers,” Villar said.
All Home said it managed to adjust to the mobility restrictions as it developed its own online commerce platform, while its furniture offerings are also present on major third party platforms such as Lazada and Shopee.
The hard categories, such as construction materials, contributed 43 percent of its total revenues while soft categories, such as homewares and linens contributed 57 percent in the first half.