Garden Ridge is evolving into At Home

Lots of big-box retail chains are exploring smaller concepts, but Garden Ridge still believes bigger is better just not when its painted orange.

After testing a couple of stores in Michigan and three in St. Louis, Garden Ridge is officially changing its name to At Home. It will spend $20 million this year to convert all of its 71 stores in time for the holiday shopping season, including six in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Its ditching its traditional orange signs for a gray, blue and white color scheme. And a house symbol stands in for the o in At Home, so theres no confusion about whats sold inside, CEO Lee Bird said.

The company plans to open 200 At Home stores by the end of the decade and has the potential to open more than 500, Bird said. Garden Ridge moved its headquarters from Houston to Plano earlier this year and changed its corporate name to At Home Group Inc. last week.

With an average store size of 120,000 square feet, At Home is as big as a Wal-Mart or Target, and the entire store is devoted to home decor.

Garden Ridge needed major changes and a new name in advance of a national rollout, Bird said. The brand is well-known in Texas, but in other states people would come in and ask, Wheres the lawn fertilizer?

While the retailer plans to build some stores from the ground up, its getting attention from shopping center landlords because At Home can work as a mall tenant in vacated department stores and fill big-box spaces in strip shopping centers.

Target closed nine stores last year, and we bought seven, Bird said. Weve opened a couple mall locations and may have more. Garden Ridge now occupies a former Dillards in Richmond, Va., for example, and mall space vacated by Belk in Hattiesburg, Miss.

The conversions from Garden Ridge to At Home are underway. The company is opening 16 stores this year, some in new markets, putting it in 21 states.First local conversionThe Lewisville Garden Ridge was the first local conversion, becoming an At Home store earlier this month. Stores in Plano, North Richland Hills, Mesquite, Fort Worth and Grand Prairie will be converted by September.

Carmen Tate, 48, of Lewisville said she thinks the store is now more organized. She came in for a $39.99 table umbrella and found a $19.99 solar lantern. I have a cottage-style house with a front porch, so I have found a lot of things here, she said.

Visit link:
Garden Ridge is evolving into At Home