Winds of shopping reality blow retailer in new directions

The store at upscale South Meadows opened just before the Christmas season in 2005 with a creative concept: it would provide all the fixin's for folks to design and finish the most creative pieces of furniture they could imagine.

But reality seldom lives up to imagination.

So Imagine That! owners Greg Hughes and Jake Gordon accepted the fact that most people just don't have that much imagination and changed their formula to suit the marketplace.

"We started with about 50 unfinished dressers," says Gordon. "But we've become more of a showroom."

They slimmed the inventory of 50 down to five already flaunting finishes to give shoppers an idea of how the finished piece could look. From that starting place, customers are able to make a small leap of imagination and choose a look from catalogs crammed with hundreds of colors and styles.

Then Gordon and Hughes see that the custom piece gets created and delivered. Beyond flipping pages in a catalog, the customer needn't lift a finger.

Another rethink: The furniture finishing room, once expected to house homemakers happily buffing and varnishing, isn't first choice for a fun time.

Rather, it's the upstairs meeting room offered free of charge that draws arts boards, book clubs, feng shui classes and even a birthday bash. Up to 1,000 people per month pass through the store en route to that room, says Gordon.

While customers may prefer to visit than varnish, Gordon and Hughes haven't lost their appreciation for the creative spark.

"We almost never finish the same piece the same way twice," says Gordon. "We've done some strange color combinations and two-tones. Every week there's another whole crazy batch of stuff coming out.

People bring in drawers and doors and tiles and all kinds of things. One lady brought in a bath brush and wanted us to match the handle."

Other ideas didn't work out as expected, either.

A wall of art is now a wall of mirrors.

"We did two art receptions, but found it hard to find a single local artist who could fill the whole wall," says Gordon. Plus, it took 12 to 24 hours and a forklift to install that much art. And the interest wasn't there. "We realized people were coming here looking for great big mirrors."

But while demand for art proved cool, demand for consumables at the free in-store bistro is hot. "Coffee, beer, wine; it's our advertising budget," says Gordon.

People spread the word about the free mocha bar like a virus, he says, when they hand out the discount cards they're given. While Imagine That! put 20,000 "virus cards" in circulation, says Gordon, "We haven't seen a lot of them come back."

What comes back, he says, again was the unexpected.

"The day after a holiday, people bring their whole visiting family into the store to see the crazy bathroom. We get big groups in here."