Home improvement retailer hopes to build success in Santa Monica

Santa Monica’s profitable and economically important home improvement industry will get a new fixture next year when PIRCH moves into town offering high end home design and furnishings on Santa Monica Blvd.

PIRCH will be opening at 2520 Santa Monica Blvd. in the former Goodwill building early next year and CEO Steve Smith said it’s a perfect location for his company as it continues to expand into the Los Angeles market.

“We are thrilled to bring the PIRCH experience to the heart of Santa Monica. Our goal is to provide the best service possible to discerning consumers and trade partners, knowing that they are shopping for the appliances that they – or their clients – will live with for the next 10 to 20 years. The new showroom will present the top brands in kitchen, bath and outdoor in an immersive, interactive and thoroughly educational environment never before seen on the Westside of Los Angeles,” he said.

He said PIRCH customers break down into three categories, home builders, interior designers and homeowners themselves with all three heavily represented in the Santa Monica area.

“We are designed to basically service the luxury homeowner and trade customer with kitchen, bath, outdoor environment and hardware for their home,” he said “The thing that makes us unique is that we basically create vignettes and put our products in what I call emotional merchandising. So it’s designed to be inspirational displays that allow the luxury homeowner to envision themselves in that environment and see what’s really available to them and create the desire to want to do that.”

Part of that sales philosophy includes working appliance models that allow the company to actually cook in an outdoor kitchen for the potential client and Smith said the service level for his company is part of their reputation.

“You’ll be greeted by one of our concierges and they’ll offer you as a customer a beverage or coffee, latte, whatever they’d like. And then they will partner them up with one of our sales people if they want that or if they just want to wander around and look then we’ll check in with them periodically and see if they want any questions answered. So we tried to really make the shopping experience a experience that’s tied to the level of the product that they’re purchasing,” he said.

The store draws from a select group of brands and has exclusive offerings from several.

Smith said he expects the Santa Monica store to draw from a wide zone in Los Angeles that will bring more revenue into the immediate area. The home improvement market is one of the city’s largest sales tax generators with three existing businesses ranking in the City’s top 20 sales tax generators.

Nationally, home improvement spending has been on a roller-coaster.

According to a recent report by Constructioncoverage.com, after falling by an inflation-adjusted 24% from a high in 2006 to a low in 2011 as a result of the Great Recession, home improvement spending growth got back on track between 2012 and 2019 as the housing market recovered. However, spending then grew sharply during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic before plateauing in 2022. According to loan-level data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the number of single-family home improvement loans originated climbed to nearly 750,000 in 2022, up from approximately 550,000 in 2021.

Smith said the boom in home improvement during lockdown has actually persisted for his customer base.

“The luxury homeowner spent less time in their homes than other people did pre-COVID because they traveled more and they ate out and all of those things. So when they were inside their homes, I think they realized what parts of their home they didn’t really like when they had to use them for five days a week,” he said. “They also looked at their home as being their safe place to entertain and all of a sudden they find out they don’t have the facilities inside from their own home to entertain the way they wanted to. So there’s a huge amount of demand created by that and I don’t think that’s going to change.”

The Santa Monica store will be the eighth location for the Southern California luxury home appliance retailer and will open in early 2024. Other PIRCH showroom locations include: Costa Mesa, Glendale, La Jolla, Laguna Design Center, Mission Viejo, Rancho Mirage and Solana Beach. WestEdge attendees get a sneak preview at the PIRCH Culinary Pavilion during the WestEdge Design Fair. For more information about PIRCH, visit www.pirch.com or call 1-858-966-3600.

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