Young America supplying furniture to Pottery Barn

ROBBINSVILLE, N.C. — Over the years, the Young America youth bedroom line has generated the lion’s s

Those continue to be its main channels of distribution, but recently the company also has started doing some private label business with a nationally known retailer not known for touting domestic case goods.


Pottery Barn has been selling a few case pieces on its PB Teen website that are made at Young America’s plant in Robbinsville. They debuted on the site in early January and are doing well, according to Glenn Prillaman, president and CEO of parent company Stanley Furniture.


The website doesn’t mention Young America by name. However, it does have a video in which Prillaman talks about Stanley’s rich heritage in North Carolina as well as other attributes the company brings to the table as a domestic manufacturer of youth furniture.


PB Teen calls the group Shelby. It identifies the products as U.S.-made and notes some of the quality and safety features including hardwood and English dovetail construction, silent self-closing drawer guides and drawer stops. The description also notes that the products are Greenguard certified, meaning they have very little chemical emissions.


PB Teen officials declined to comment for this story.


Prillaman said he is excited about the private label opportunity. It is expected to generate business for the Young America plant, whose product line represents about 40% of Stanley’s sales.


Prillaman also noted that the PB Teen site is selling the pieces at premium price points that are in some cases higher than typical retail prices at Young America. For example, a dresser on the site — which has its own design, but otherwise identical specs as other dressers in the Young America line — retails at $1,249. Prices for dressers posted recently on the Young America website range from $949 to about $1,049.


Consumers who see the prices on the Young America website are directed to local retailers that often sell for less than these posted prices.


As with the Young America line, consumers shopping the PB Teen site can choose from a variety of color options available on the Shelby pieces.


“It doesn’t matter whether someone wants to market it as Young America or as the PB Teen brand,” Prillaman said. “We just think the color choices, the safety features and Made in America are ways that a retailer can help a consumer trade up, instead of using cheap labor overseas to trade somebody down.”


Prillaman said Young America is seeing growth with independent retailers that are touting these features in the same manner as PB Teen.


“Even though we grew the Young America segment (in 2013), we obviously have some retailers we are shrinking with and some that we are growing with,” he said, noting that the difference often lies in who does the best job of promoting the features and benefits of the line, which ships in as little as two weeks from the time of order.


Prillaman said Young America’s relationship with PB Teen got off the ground when company officials visited the Young America showroom at the winter 2013 Las Vegas Market.


“They are smart business people that understand how to market as well as anyone,” Prillaman said, adding that PB Teen wanted to promote its own brand, not Young America.


Whether Young America produces more private label products for PB Teen remains to be seen. But based on early indicators, Prillaman is optimistic.


“We have the capacity to do a tremendous amount of more volume,” he said. “This shows the American consumer that it is worth a premium when you have these salient features.”­­­

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