Score another big win for comfort the American value responsible, in its darkest excess, for the chain restaurant, the adult onesie, and the vehicle of many cup holders as La-Z-Boy Inc. starts work on a new $51 million, 200,000-square foot headquarters in Monroe, Michigan.
Comfort and quality are what make us unique in the marketplace today," said Karen Cheniae, CFO of a company that operates La-Z-Boy's galleries.
While actual laziness, the kind embodied by every sitcom dad, has rarely been held up for veneration in our culture, La-Z-ness is on an enviable run. Reporting annual sales of $1.2 million, the company distributes its furniture from Canada to Malaysia, calling on Brooke Shields to raise the profile of more than 500 North American Comfort Studios.
Sure, La-Z-Boy has ottomans and sectionals and whatnot; plenty of stuff the two Eds a woodworker named Edward M. Knabush and a farmer named Edwin J. Shoemaker could hardly have imagined when they fashioned their first wood-slat porch chair in the 1920s. Last year, the company unveiled a new store design offering a large selection of home accents and accessories to help customers create a complete look.
This new store embodies the La-Z-Boy Live Life Comfortably tagline, with a shopping experience as comfortable as our furniture, said executive Mark Bacon in a statement. Analysts tend to identify married moms as the target demographic.
But the spirit of La-Z-Boy will always remain the classic recliner, a manly piece of furniture introduced in 1929 and given its name over suggestions including the Sit-N-Snooze and the Slack-Back. The recliner came to represent an earned repose, the kind of comfort granddad used to enjoy in his leather rocking model the one he kept by the bookshelf holding the mostly complete works of Hemingway and a thick tome called the Job of the Congressman." It's the chair where a man could take comfort near the end of a good life spent defeating the Axis powers, pushing paper at the Census Bureau, scribbling poems, cheering for the Redskins, driving four grandchildren to the playground, and trading laughs down at a pub.