Morris Furniture Unveils Store Featuring Innovative Martin Roberts Design Elements


A unique new Morris Furniture Co., Inc. location in Cincinnati is holding a grand opening on Jan. 11, 2011, that will unveil new interior elements designed by Martin Roberts Design Inc., Stamford, CT.

The Morris complex features five separate, inter-connected stores that provide customers with unrivaled selection in an environment that’s easier to shop and reinforces the retailer’s expertise in mattresses, various categories of furniture and home theater.

Roberts devised the interior design, a number of innovative store concepts, interior signage and graphic elements for the 72,000-square-foot complex that is comprised of four main, separate elements: The Morris Home Furnishings showroom, The Better Sleep Shop, The Home Theater store at Morris and The Morris Outlet. The Cincinnati store, a $3 million investment, is at 11765 Commons Drive near Tri-County Mall. It is linked to the Fairborn, Ohio-based company’s Ashley Home Furnishings store, and it expands the company’s presence in Cincinnati. The company has operated stores in the Dayton area for 63 years.

Shoppers can enter any of five exterior entrances and visit all five showrooms that are inter-connected much like a shopping mall. Roberts designed a number of graphic elements and a system of signs to help shoppers easily find any product category they’re interested in, no matter how they enter the complex.

Roberts helped develop the concept for the Cincinnati store’s multiple entrance and the layout that gives the look of multiple home furnishings stores in a shopping center. Martin said the five-stores-in-one concept reflects a growing preference among shoppers for specialty retailers that combine a broad selection with product expertise focused on categories such as mattresses and home theater.

“I commend Morris Furniture’s management for its foresight in bringing together these five showrooms in a complex that answers the needs a broad variety of shoppers with focused solutions, unmatched product expertise and inviting, smaller-scaled spaces that make it easier for customers to find what they want quickly,” Roberts said. “Across retailing, giants like Wal-Mart are rolling out smaller stores and malls are opening up multiple, store-specific entrances in response to changing shopping patterns. Morris has always been a leader in furniture retailing, and this new store concept adds another innovative milestone to its long history of accomplishments.”

Morris President and CEO Larry Klaben said the company’s work with Roberts on the store concept began more than three years ago. “From the beginning of the process, Martin Roberts embraced what is meant by our guiding phrase, ‘More at Morris.’ With our new showrooms in Cincinnati, our customers are getting more selection, more values, more service and more choices. We’re very pleased with how Martin Roberts helped us deliver More at Morris.”

To making shopping easier, the showroom is organized into lifestyle environments, so a shopper looking for a category like casual furniture will find all of the store’s casual styles for each room in their home displayed together.

Unique elements of the new showrooms include the following:

A large fireplace and hearth near the primary Morris Home Furnishings entrances establishes a warm inviting atmosphere and serves as an attractive backdrop for the leather gallery that wraps around it.

An enormous movie screen showing classic films creates drama and establishes a comfortable mood for the recliner department.

In the The Home Theater store at Morris, multiple studio spaces display the perfect way to blend the latest electronics with beautiful furnishings ­­– sparking shoppers’ own ideas and introducing solutions that could work in their own homes.

One side of the Morris Home Furnishings is dominated by a vast mural that captures the excitement of the movies and helps lead shoppers into the recliner/Home Theater store.