A Catalogue Comes to Town

Design Within Reach is now more within reach.

The five-year-old San Francisco-based company is known primarily through its glossy catalogue of modern furnishings, including iconic pieces by 20th-century designers such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Charles and Ray Eames. Now, as part of a move into brick-and-mortar outlets, the company has opened stores in Bethesda and Georgetown.

Well, not really stores. Shoppers can sit on the chairs and sofas, rearrange the sectionals, touch the leather, check out the fabrics. But the Design Within Reach "studios" are for display purposes only. Like to-the-trade-only showrooms, they don't stock inventory or sell off the floor. But customers can consult with staff and order merchandise while on the premises. Or they can go home and order through the catalogue or Web site (www.dwr.com). Only rarely will the studios sell a sample off the floor.

"For years, we heard the complaint, 'I want to see the product and touch it before I buy it,' " says Michael Corcoglioniti, who runs the Bethesda branch, which opened last week. "This gives the public a chance to check it out before ordering."

Furnishings, however, come to your door a lot faster than going through an interior designer or an architect. Instead of making customers wait weeks or months, as often is the case when ordering home furnishings, Design Within Reach ships merchandise directly from a warehouse in Hebron, Ky. According to a company spokesman, about 93 percent of the products are kept in stock and sent out within 24 hours.

Among the newest of 22 retail locations around the country, the Design Within Reach studios in Bethesda and Georgetown display about 250 products from the company's inventory. They range from modern classics, such as Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair (called the Pavilion chair now so as not to step on an early trademark) and George Nelson bubble lamps, to high-style contemporary furniture made in Italy, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

The Bethesda store -- previously a diner-style Johnny Rockets hamburger joint -- displays more beds and outdoor items, including a bright red planter called the Top Pot ($595), Coro lounge armchair ($675) and Philippe Starck's plastic Bubble Club Armchair ($507).

"The studios are filled with our most popular items," says Christopher Longo, manager of the Georgetown branch, while assembling an orange modular shelving unit from Cubitec ($175). Among the bestsellers, he says, is the Sliding Sofa, an Italian couch that flips opens to a bed and costs $2,795 in fabric, $4,350 in leather.

Clearly, for the average household, these are not designs within reach. But the company, which reported $3 million in profits last year and said the average customer order was $917, is betting that traditionalist Washingtonians in their center-hall Colonials and Federal-style townhouses will spend $1,095 on an Isamu Noguchi sculptural glass coffee table and $2,850 on an Angela Adams geometric rug.

"We already have lots of customers in the D.C. market," says Mark Major, marketing and communications director. "We really think that there's a lot of opportunity to expand appreciation of modern design in D.C."

(As if to prove his point, five people walked into the Bethesda Design Within Reach during this reporter's interview -- several days before the shop was even open.)

Tapping into Washington's affluence is part of a larger strategy to expand the company and take it public. Launched in 1999, Design Within Reach is the brainchild of Rob Forbes, a potter with an MBA from Stanford. Prior to starting the company, he worked as a marketer at Williams-Sonoma, Smith & Hawken and the Nature Company, and started a catalogue business for Selfridges in London.

After becoming frustrated by the lengthy process of ordering furnishings for his own San Francisco apartment, Forbes founded Design Within Reach based on the idea of providing easy access to modern design classics that were available only through designers.

To help him manage his fledgling business, Forbes enlisted a former Williams-Sonoma colleague, Wayne Badovinus, to sign on as CEO. The two developed a business strategy to sidestep typical retailing expenses by relying on sales from catalogues, Web sites and meetings with architects and interior designers.

In 2000, after moving its headquarters to Oakland, the company converted its main office in San Francisco's design district into the first retail studio, then opened a second one in Palo Alto.

By the end of 2003, Design Within Reach had 16 studios and sales of $81.1 million -- an increase of nearly 42 percent from the year before. Its upscale modern furnishings began appearing on the television hits "Trading Spaces" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

In March, Design Within Reach filed an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, outlining its past earnings and future business plans. According to the IPO, the company intends to use some of the proceeds from stock offerings to finance the opening of 13 to 16 additional studios this year and next .

Can a Virginia location be far behind?

Forbes and Design Within Reach executives aren't talking, awaiting the SEC's decision, but Major says the next location will not be at Tysons Corner.

"We don't have a mall expansion strategy where everything is the same," he says. "We look for unique locations, to bring our designs to where the people are."