SARASOTA, FLORIDA

 

By the Herald-Tribune

The Robb & Stucky brand has officially returned to Sarasota with the reopening Monday of its flagship store.

 

The 68,000 sq. ft. showroom at 7557 S. Tamiami Trail is the furniture retailer's third and largest store since the brand was bought out by a new company. Its opening comes amid a housing market recovery that is lifting the furniture industry as well as the real estate and construction industries in Southwest Florida.

 

Southwest Florida furniture stores sold $41.67 million worth of home furnishings in December 2012, according to the most recent data available from the state's Department of Revenue.

 

That was a 15 percent jump from the same month in 2011 and was larger than any monthly gain since the start of the Great Recession in 2007.

 

Robb & Stucky International is controlled by Taiwan's Samuel Kuo family, which acquired the Tamiami Trail property for $7.4 million from a unit of General Electric Commercial Business Property after the original owners succumbed to bankruptcy in 2011.

 

The GE unit had paid $10.5 million in April 2006.

"Robb & Stucky will celebrate its 99th anniversary (next year.) And yet, it's really a whole new day for the company," said Steve Lush, president of Robb & Stucky International. "Over the past two years, Robb & Stucky has been reinvented with new people, new products and new ideas that are in step with how people live today."

The revamped Robb & Stucky brand will focus more on American-made products and custom furniture pieces and will offer a wide range of price points. For example, sofa prices will range from $999 to $3,000 and up.

The new Sarasota store employs 30 people, including designers, customer service associates and delivery experts.

"Every new store breathes new life into the company. Sarasota is just a perfect example," Lush said. "We can't wait for shoppers to see it. It's one of the finest furniture stores in the country."

Robb & Stucky's new owners opened stores in Fort Myers in January 2012 and in Naples in January this year.

 

Visit the website. 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

 

Melody.

Soundcast Systems today announced that it has been named an International CES Innovations 2014 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its new Melody by Soundcast Portable Bluetooth Speaker System in the Portable Media Players and Accessories product category.  

A preeminent panel of independent industrial designers, independent engineers and members of the trade media judged products entered in this prestigious program across 29 categories honoring outstanding design and engineering in cutting-edge consumer electronics.

Melody's omni-directional 360-degree, 8-speaker design delivers high-quality sound perfection with deep bass and 20-plus hours of uninterrupted use with its internal rechargeable battery system, making it the perfect portable outdoor entertainment companion. The compact and highly stylish weather-resistant system is equipped with the latest v3.0 Bluetooth and AAC / Apt-X codecs allow users to stream high performance CD Quality audio from their music library, or from apps like Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, iTunes®, TuneIn and others, from Apple or PC devices alike.

Soundcast's president Mike Weaver says, "The entire Soundcast team is honored beyond measure to receive the prestigious 2014 Innovations Honoree Award for our new Melody portable Bluetooth speaker system."

WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

From the National Association of Homebuilder

Sales of newly-built, single-family homes rose 25.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 444,000 units in October, according to data released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The government also reported that new-home sales fell 6.6 percent in September. The release of both the September and October reports were delayed by the partial government shutdown in early October.

"The October sales numbers show that there is clearly a demand for new housing and the recovery remains on track," said Rick Judson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Charlotte, North Carolina. "However, the recovery continues to be slowed by political uncertainty in Washington and ongoing constraints builders face with regard to tight credit conditions for consumers and the availability of labor, lots and materials."

"The strong October results return us to the sales levels we saw earlier this year and negate the pause caused by the sudden jump in interest rates," said NAHB chief economist David Crowe. "We expect sales to continue to rise as pent-up demand is released and first-time home buyers creep back into the market."

All four regions posted double-digit sales gains in October. Sales rose 19.2 percent in the Northeast, 34 percent in the Midwest, 28.2 percent in the South and 15.2 percent in the West.

The month's supply of new homes fell to 4.9 due to the quicker sales pace in October, and the inventory of new homes for sale also edged down to 183,000 units.