Italian furniture retailer Natuzzi is expanding its presence in North America, with the opening of a new retail store in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The move is in line with the company’s planned expansion into the direct global retail marketing of its luxury home furnishings.
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Last year, Natuzzi announced its plans to open company-managed stores in high-traffic and prime retail locations.
Natuzzi global retail chief Nazzario Pozzi said: “The US represents a great market opportunity for our brand and we are continuing with the efforts to move quickly to expand our presence.
“These stores are being located and managed to deliver Pasquale Natuzzi’s vison of a new buying experience for our customers, through the careful coordination of whole room furnishings to the tools and training of our sales staff in assisting customers in the furnishing of their homes. Our efforts so far are proving very successful.”
Prior to West Palm Beach store, the company opened its flagship store in Paramus, New Jersey.
Natuzzi also plans to open three more stores in Philadelphia, California and Chicago later this year.
Natuzzi chief financial officer Vittorio Notarpietro said: “Through the first week of June of this year, we are seeing constant improvements in our direct retail results.
“Despite the widely recognised difficult retail environment in early 2017, like for like store volumes are up slightly, but when we include the new store openings in our network, which reflect more of the new store format, which is key to our strategy, direct retail sales are up over 38% over the same period last year, while the average ticket is up 15.6% over the same period last year.”
Natuzzi currently operates 70 direct retail stores in seven countries.
