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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
Southern Lifestyles has been a fixture in The Villages for years. Their retail spaces were beautifully laid out, giving customers lots of ideas. Their sales staff were well-trained and superb. Southern Lifestyles carried a wonderful array of middle-upper end brands. Their sales staff knew the layouts of Villages models like the backs of their hands. They wouldn't let buyers make the mistake of buying something that wouldn't fit.
Will City Furniture equal or better the products and services offered by Southern Lifestyles? The company's history up until the mid-1990's was as a chain in South Florida called Waterbed City. Since then they added other furniture, but it is all manufactured for them to their specs under their brand name, Kevin Charles, the name of the owner of the company Kevin Charles Koenig. You won't find common, well-known brand name furniture in the City Furniture stores, only their own branded pieces. And like many lower-end furniture stores, they sell financing as much as actual furniture. When "no payments until 2015" is featured in their advertising, I'm pretty sure I know the market segment they're targeting. Surprisingly, I don't think that's a good fit for The Villages. Nowhere near as good as was Southern Lifestyles.
So, will City Furniture equal or better the purchasing experience we've come to know from Southern Lifestyles? Speaking only for myself, I just placed an order for several large living room pieces from an interior design and furniture store in Altamonte Springs. We were familiar with their premium brands and their experienced designer visited our home and provided superb ideas and advice.
By the way, we stopped in to the Southern Lifestyles store in Lake Sumter for some comparison shopping. I don't know who owns or manages the store now, but my wife and I were given a pile of catalogs and told to "see what we could find". The sales person walked away to chat with another employee, leaving us with a pile of catalogs. We didn't look for very long before deciding to deal with the very nice store in Altamonte Springs.
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Babette's in Leesburg has many of the same brands, and especially
floor space to show the furniture and try it, instead of looking at catalogs and
guessing whether a chair or sofa is comfortable or not!
Also, Family Furniture across the street from Babettes has many of the quality, moderately-priced brands like American Drew and Legacy Classics that Southern Lifestyles had.
A former waterbed city store advertising no payments till 2015 definitely sounds cheesy.
And it's not too smart to take on the too-small store space Southern Lifestyles has been reduced to now, where there's not enough room to properly display furniture groups by room type.