City Furniture to Open Orlando Stores, Now Hiring for All Positions

 

ORLANDO, Fla. — City Furniture, one of the largest home retailers in Florida, is opening its first store location in the Orlando area this November.

The new store will be located in Ocoee, where the retailer is immediately hiring about 60 employees for its showroom and distribution center including warehouse associates, drivers, and sales associates. Many more positions are expected for the other two locations, located at Millenia and Altamonte Springs.

The Ocoee store will be located at the industrial and office park, the Park @429, near three major highways with store frontage on Florida State Road 429.  The Park @429 location will primarily serve as a distribution center and will also include an 85,000-square-foot City showroom expected to open in November, similar to that of its South Florida flagship store.

The furniture retailer also has plans to open two more Orlando stores within the next year — a two-story 120,000-square-foot store across from the Mall of Millenia and a 114,000-square-foot store in Altamonte Springs, both set to open in 2019.

City Furniture’s President Keith Koenig said they had been working on the Millenia and Altamonte locations for years. While the retailer originally did want to open three stores with the hopes of one in a south Orlando suburb with an attached warehouse — but the project was too risky due to pricey estimates, according to Koenig. It wasn’t until the Ocoee opportunity fell into their lap just this year — and now it’s opening before the other projects to serve as their distribution center.

 

Rendering of the City Furniture store at The Park @429

 

“As we prepare to open retail stores in Millenia and Altamonte Springs, we needed a distribution hub that could easily serve those stores, along with our stores in The Villages,” said Ryan Cronin, Vice President of Real Estate with City Furniture.

The Orlando locations will feature the improvements and new features used in the retailer’s flagship store’s recent renovations in Tamarac, including a café and wine bar and a home accents sub-store.

The new Orlando projects are part of an on-going aggressive growth strategy that Koenig referred to as the largest capital expenditure period in the company’s history.

“We’re going into the biggest expansion phase in our history,” Koenig said. The three-store Orlando market expansion plan is still greater than the company’s growth when it acquired Ashley Furniture HomeStore franchises in 2004, according to Koenig.

City Furniture operates 12 Ashley HomeStores stores throughout South Florida, including hybrid stores that combine City Furniture and Ashley Furniture. The Millenia and Altamonte Springs locations are projected to be the retailer’s largest City-only stores in the company’s history.

While the precise investment in the overall expansion strategy is unknown, it is already clearly a multi-million-dollar plan.  According to a recent report from the Real Deal, a South Florida real estate news source, City Furniture paid $11.3 million for one of its Orlando properties.

“We’re blessed,” he said. “Our e-commerce business is rocking. Our overall sales are very solid, and the team is managing the business very well. I’ve got a young team. They’re smart and hungry and having fun, so it’s time to take the next step.”

Apply to one of City Furniture’s newest job postings here.