Ashley Furniture Industries has announced that they are adding outdoor furniture to their home furnishings line-up. The new Outdoor by Ashley collections will debut this summer at the Las Vegas Market.

“After exploring the opportunity in this category for the past few years, we feel the timing is right for us now," says Todd Wanek, Ashley CEO. “Outdoor furniture is a rapidly growing category and the outdoor room is a room we want to fill with both fashion and value."

For the kick-off in Las Vegas, Ashley will feature 15 room settings with a mix of dining, seating and fire pit chat sets. All will be fabricated with high performance outdoor fabrics.

“Our customers can take advantage of our USA logistics network to maximize their sales and limit the risk of excess inventory," says Wanek. "We feel we can make a huge difference in a seasonal business.”

To focus on this new category, Ashley has hired industry veteran Andy Sokol to lead the Outdoor by Ashley team. Sokol’s career has spanned 33 years in senior management at both retail and manufacturing, and he has held key positions with Fortunoff and most recently, Agio. He also initiated the launch of the outdoor furniture division at Macy’s. Sokol’s new position is merchandising vice president – outdoor furniture, and he will report to Al Matthews, senior vice president.

“We are thrilled to welcome Andy to the Ashley family and are excited to bring an exciting category to market," says Matthews. "Our customers have been asking for outdoor for a while. Now that we are launching at the summer market, we expect the demand to be substantial from Las Vegas right through the October High Point Market.”

(Source: Casual Living)