Customization Movement
Hits Home Furnishings

October 27, 2004 -- When Jackie Heidinger decided to redo her kitchen, she wanted something simple, casual and nothing like the stuff she keeps seeing in her neighbors' homes. There was just one thing to do, she decided: design the cabinets herself.

The software sales director in Colleyville, Texas, found a custom cabinetmaker online and used its Web site to bring to life a look she'd been mulling for a couple of years. Now, her kitchen has two colors of cabinets -- some in a black antique style, others in a lighter brown "toast" color -- with wire mesh over the doors. "It's vaguely French country, but really a Jackie thing," she says.

A rug made of panels depicting family birthdays and pet portraits, by Stark Carpet.

The customize-me movement is in part a rebellion against the "disposable décor" of the last decade, when it seemed like catalog giants were all selling similar-looking trendy pieces at moderate prices. Meanwhile homeowners, emboldened by the do-it-yourself culture of Home Depot and TV shows like "Trading Spaces," are less intimidated by the idea of designing from scratch. Consumers are also getting a push from small furniture makers that are seeking a broader audience through the Internet and trying to compete with cheap imports. "This is a backlash by the Pottery Barn generation," says Birmingham, Mich., designer Stephen Knollenberg. "They don't want their homes to look like what you see on page 42."

Table lamp from Judi's Lampshades in Brooklyn, N.Y., made using a vintage silk kimono.

The customize-it-yourself business is growing. One big vendor, Stark Carpet, says sales of customized designs are up 20% so far this year over last. Los Angeles furniture maker Landon Cole says he opened a retail store three years ago to sell pre-made pieces -- but says about 70% of his revenues now come from made-to-order jobs. And Silk Trading Co., a fabric chain with seven stores across the U.S., says its custom business is up 50% over two years and now accounts for almost half of its business.

But not everyone's a designer, as Rob Wells discovered. "Anytime you're doing something custom, they're going to mess up," says Mr. Wells, who owns a brand-strategy company in La Jolla, Calif. He loved the bathroom motif he just chose -- white subway tiles interspersed with weathered "Roman" tiles -- and the "crazy green" granite from Brazil he picked for his kitchen counters. But the custom cabinets he bought for his kitchen were too short. And his design sense took a stray turn in his living room, where he tried matching a "really sexy" faux-malachite coffee table with a white leather couch. "It was retro meets modernism-eclectic. It's sweet," he says. "But no one sits on it."

China Challenge

Customizing is getting a particularly big push from small furniture manufacturers. U.S. makers are struggling to compete with cheap imports, as sales of furniture from China are up 70% since 2001, according to the American

Chair from Hickory Chair, which lets customers provide their own fabrics.

In North Carolina, 93-year-old furniture maker Hickory Chair recently started letting customers match a finish to a paint chip, request monograms or painted designs, or combine finishes (putting, say, a white hutch on a dark mink-colored base). The company charges a 10% to 25% premium for the service, but says sales have increased nearly 25% in the 18 months since it began the program. Next week, it plans to add 30 more pieces to one of its custom-finish lines. "We're an old dog learning new tricks," says company spokeswoman Laura Holland.

Not all furniture vendors are following suit. National chain Ethan Allen isn't letting customers use their own fabric or finishes -- in fact, to reduce costs, it has reduced the number of sofa colors it offers slightly over the past few years, to about 800. Crate & Barrel, on the other hand, says it will upholster furniture from fabric provided by the customer. It also lets buyers pick from any of the fabrics their manufacturers offer. It holds choices to about 2,000, it says, to keep from overwhelming buyers. "Customers appreciate the fact that we edit for them," says a spokeswoman.

Here is a look at what's available in custom-made home décor and furniture, at high-end and entry-level prices:

Rugs

THE HIGH END: At Stark Carpet, where a 10-by-14-foot rug typically costs $30,000 to $40,000 wholesale, a family recently ordered one with 35 squares, each with a different scene -- including family members' initials, their favorite sports and pictures of their pets. "We took pictures of their poodles to make sure it came out right," says President Stephen Stark.

THE ENTRY LEVEL: Home Depot, too, lets shoppers customize: Its Home EXPO division charges 5% to 10% extra for a rug dyed to the customer's specs. And Rug Rats, a Farmville, Va., manufacturer and retailer, will create a rug in any pattern -- made by cutting carpet pieces of various colors and shapes and fitting them together -- from any photograph or sample. Rug Rats recently made a 9-by-12-foot rug to match a client's wallpaper, creating a vine motif using 3,000 burgundy, green and pink pieces. The price: $6,500.

Furniture

THE HIGH END: Keith Fritz of Washington, D.C., builds dining-room tables with custom heights, shapes and inlays. For a customer in Nantucket, Mass., he incorporated a scalloped wood-grain that looked like a seashell. And for Senator Hillary Clinton he found a rare yellow yew wood for a table to match her New York dining room. Ten-seat tables run about $10,000.

THE ENTRY LEVEL: Often, entry-level custom furniture means taking a piece that's already in stock, then adding a custom finish. In Beltsville, Md., Mastercraft Interiors includes custom painting in the price of several of its lines. (For $3,500, the retailer recently painted climbing vines onto a four-post French Provincial bed, to match the buyer's drapes.) Retailer Brighton Pavilion/Jane Keltner Collection, meanwhile, says it plans to introduce $1,300 monogrammed chairs this month -- plus wastebaskets painted with the image of the customer's choice, for $259.

Cabinets

THE HIGH END: Perhaps more than any other room, kitchens are seeing a high degree of personalization. Designers say homeowners are increasingly picking cabinets in exotic woods like sycamore, pearwood and wenge, or creating mix-and-match cabinets in unusual or contrasting colors. Homeowners looking to craft a six-figure kitchen -- without appliances -- often order cabinets from Europe, from manufacturers such as Germany's Bulthaup or Britain's Smallbone, which specializes in highly stylized kitchens that evoke different international styles or historical periods. A typical Smallbone kitchen costs $120,000, and the company will fly a designer to the U.S. for a consultation.

THE ENTRY LEVEL: Home Depot's Home EXPO division offers nearly 30,000 different combinations in color, style and types of wood, and will also customize wood stain to any color sample customers bring in (it costs $300, plus a "color-match charge" of about 5% on the total order). To give the resulting cabinetry a lived-in look, the company lets buyers choose from a menu of "special effects," including dings, cracks and deep gouging.

Fabric

THE HIGH END: At the Madison Avenue fabric emporium Trade France USA, a pair of curtains handmade in New York can cost as much as $12,000, with customers choosing color, fabric and pattern. Custom sofas run about $9,000 -- but upholstering them with a custom fabric like mohair brings the tab closer to $18,000.

THE ENTRY LEVEL: Silk Trading Co. of Culver City, Calif., works from customer photos, paint chips or color samples, then uses mills in India or Italy to create silk fabrics ($26 to $120 per yard). Actress Anne Heche says she and her husband provided sketches to the company, and it made her a set of drapes in gold and cream silk, with grey and gold velvet birds. They also picked out a silvery gray silk to cover an antique Portuguese bench. "My husband and I are our own designers," she says.

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