Photos: ©2015 jason jones photography. www.jasonjones-photo.com

In the beginning, Yard Art was not synonymous with elegant casual furnishings. The first store had a smattering of patio furniture when it opened in 1994, but most of the inventory was of a sort rarely seen at a home with fine outdoor furnishings, then or now.

While the company’s main product line truly was made to withstand the test of time, the goods were not handcrafted, not available in a variety of colors and finishes, and fabric choices were nil. One isn’t offered those kinds of options in cast-concrete statuary, fountains, bird feeders, gazing balls, and other items only suitable for the likes of Hulk Hogan to lift.

L to R: Garrett, Butch and Geneva Wallace.

Butch Wallace had his tongue firmly in cheek when he named his store Yard Art.

Wallace began to rethink his business plan as he sold through his inventory during that first season, which also included a truckload of Winston sling.

“Lift enough 500-lb. pieces of statuary onto an 18-in. pedestal, and it doesn’t take long to figure out you need to be doing something different with your life,” he says.

Within two seasons the business transitioned to focus primarily on casual furniture, where it has remained ever since. Over the years the retailer experimented with other products, including playground equipment, trampolines, ponds, smokers and grills.

Fine outdoor furniture has remained the company’s core businesses, and Yard Art Patio & Fireplace has excelled at it. The retailer earned its first Apollo Award in 2004, followed by a second in 2010. The company, now with five Yard Art stores in the northern suburbs of Dallas/Forth Worth (DFW), earned its sixth Apollo nomination this year.

The company also operates Designer’s Patio, a to-the-trade showroom that caters exclusively to interior designers. Designer’s Patio in January will triple the footprint of its larger space when it moves into nearly 10,000 sq. ft. at the Dallas Market Center.

In an era that has seen so many independent casual furniture stores founder and fail, Yard Art’s ongoing trajectory of success makes the company especially noteworthy. There’s no arguing that Wallace’s decision to locate in the affluent DFW suburbs was brilliant, even if his initial choice of merchandise required rethinking. The area has only grown wealthier, with median family income in the towns of Plano and Colleyville topping more than $150,000.

“He’s gone to where the money is,” says Garry Hartness, a sales representative for Mallin and Jensen Leisure Furniture who services the Yard Art account.

Yet location alone does not ensure success, and Yard Art is up against formidable competition. Jacksons Home & Garden, Casual Living Patio & Fireside, and Sunnyland Furniture operate in the same market. No matter where one is located, earning the business of increasingly wary and picky consumers tests even the savviest retailer.

So, what gives Yard Art its edge?

Two long-time business associates say the credit goes to Wallace. He has an uncanny head for business, they say, is a keen observer and a great listener not afraid to take advice from trusted sources. Equally important is his experience in a totally unrelated prior career, they say, where he developed skills that keep Yard Art operating solidly in the black.

Colorful umbrellas line one of the walls.

Lessons from the Mall

Veteran mall rats from the 1980s will remember a chain called Chess King, which sold trendy apparel for teenage boys and young men. Butch Wallace was a regional manager for the company, which in its heyday had more than 500 stores.

“I come from the rag business,” Wallace says. “If you leave a shirt on the rack for too long, it becomes shop-worn. So you have to turn that stuff.”

What’s true for bell-bottoms and big-collared disco shirts is equally true for deep-seating, swivel rockers and firepits. Merchandise that stays too long on the showroom floor doesn’t earn its keep.

“If I have an investment of $1,000 sitting in a 10-by-10 square, and it just sits there with a $2,000 price on it, it does nothing for me,” he explains. “We’re real conscious of our inventory turn and what’s selling and what’s not.”

Ronald C. Ball, a sales representative for OW Lee, knows Wallace well. What started as a business relationship has become a deep friendship.

“Butch’s main strength is his operational expertise,” Ball says. “He’s the best I’ve worked with in controlling inventory.”

Wallace’s inventory regimen includes regular meetings with key staff to discuss and evaluate product performance. “Every month we sit down and talk about what’s earning it’s spot and what’s not,” he says.

Key players in those discussions are his children, Garrett and Geneva. They literally grew up in the business and have joined their father as co-owners and seasoned decision-makers in their own right.

The Wallaces are modest and don’t put much stock in titles. All three are fully involved in all aspects of the business, they say, though Geneva focuses a lot of her attention on Designer’s Patio.

The atmosphere in all Yard Art locations is directed by one theme: “We sell like we want to be sold,” Garrett says, which means “low to no pressure. “We’re here to help the customer make a decision, not to force a sales decision.”

Shoppers, as a rule, take time to get oriented to a store’s particular culture and environment. They have their guard up while they determine the manner in which salespeople will interact with them. When shoppers realize that the sales staff at Yard Art are not going to badger them, Garrett says, they visibly relax.

“We’ve all had that bad shopping experience where the salesperson will not leave you alone,” he says. “We give (shoppers) space and time.”

High ceilings contribute to the open, uncluttered feeling in the store.

Yard Art’s approach to sales is an indicator of the confidence that seems part and parcel of the company’s approach to business. This retailer isn’t afraid to do things a little differently.

Yard Art never succumbed to the temptation of container-direct purchases of lower-priced merchandise, branded or not. “Butch saw long ago that, for a retailer to be successful in this industry, it’s going to be on the medium- to high-end and up,” says Hartness. “And that’s where he has concentrated. He knows who he is and knows what he wants to accomplish. He doesn’t stray from it, and he’s raised Garrett and Geneva in that mold.”

Ball, the OW Lee rep, says, “Butch is an entrepreneur who studies business practices and isn’t afraid to apply them to his business. He’ll think out of the box.”

Take, for example, Yard Art’s advertising strategy. The only mass medium currently getting advertising dollars is radio. It’s an interesting choice considering that eye appeal is such an important part of the casual furniture shopping experience. But radio currently meets Yard Art’s goals.

“Our target market is women ages 30 to 55,” Butch says. “We’re trying to find a way to reach all over town, and radio is our choice.” Garrett and Geneva voice the radio ads.

The retailer buys time on the two stations whose listener profiles best fit the ideal target demographic. Yard Art buys no newspaper ads. Television ad dollars are reserved for buys on specific cable channels, such as HGTV.

Most of those professionally-produced television spots also can be found on the Yard Art website, where they seem more like infomercials than typical TV furniture ads. Currently the website features nine brief videos, all designed more to inform than sell. Topics include the benefits of various products and materials (wicker and aluminum, for example).

One video outlines the steps involved in planning an Outdoor Room and selecting the right furniture for it. The last step, the video says, is the purchase. The closing line: “Remember, when you buy, you’re buying quality. You’re going to pay more upfront, but it’s going to last you so much longer.”

Putting that sort of statement in a video is indicative of the confidence the Wallaces have in their business approach.

“We rarely get beat on price,” Garrett says, adding, “most of our competition is coming from other brick-and-mortar stores.”

Simple shelves hold a variety of sizes and shapes of pillows.

Yard Art doesn’t ignore the other channels offering casual furniture; instead, the retailer has positioned itself proactively to counter the competition.

Shoppers frequently come in armed with prices and product information gleaned from the Internet. The Yard Art staff meets any challenge head-on, pointing out the differences in materials, quality and service between the other product and their own brands.

Nor are catalog merchants seen as a threat. “We have most of those catalogs sitting on our floors,” Garrett says. “They are a great resource for ideas.”

Ultimately, he says, “People want to buy locally. If they have something go wrong, they want to have someone to talk to.”

Overhead Strategies

Yard Art forged a strategic relationship with Stacy Furniture, a full-line interior furnishings retailer, more than a decade ago. Butch Wallace describes Stacy as having a “mall concept” in locating its stores. Stacy Furniture secures a large property and acts as owner/manager, leasing out some of the additional space.

The store likes to cluster other businesses that draw the same upscale demographic around its showrooms. Examples include restaurants and child-care centers, operations with constant traffic that bring people to the proximity of the Stacy showroom. Sooner or later, Stacy figures, the passersby will venture into the Stacy showroom.

Yard Art is among the businesses to which Stacy leases space. The retailer has a showroom adjacent to three Stacy Furniture locations.

Each showroom has its own Yard Art signage and its own entrance, Butch explains. By all outward appearances, there’s no link between the two businesses. They have a symbiotic relationship, and Stacy, Butch says, “has been very generous with its leasing.” Stacy Furniture sends customers shopping for outdoor furniture to Yard Art, and Yard Art recommends that shoppers needing interior furnishings visit Stacy. Each benefits from the other’s traffic.

Relationships matter to the Wallaces. Butch, says sales rep Hartness, “is extremely loyal to his manufacturers,” keeping the majority of his floor stocked with “old line” brand names such as Brown Jordan, Winston, Tropitone, Mallin and Lane Venture.

Yard Art occasionally will take on a new line, but only after carefully studying the line’s performance, checking with other retailers, and incessantly quizzing the sales rep about quality, delivery and service.

That was the case with Jensen Leisure. “Once Butch gets it on the floor and once he believes in it, he works it to perfection,” Hartness says. Yard Art “turned (Jensen) into a very good line. His numbers have grown exponentially over three years.”

A large glass storefront allows natural light to flood the store.

To the Trade

Designer’s Patio opened in 2006 to better serve the healthy interior design market in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Yard Art had cultivated a good business with designers, Geneva says, but some asked for a dedicated showroom where they could take customers and select merchandise without price tags. This is standard practice in designer showrooms and allows the designer, who resells the furniture to the consumer, to shield margins.

Designer’s Patio features the same brands as Yard Art, but “with a lot more of the pieces available in each collection,” Geneva says.

Designers typically will select merchandise from three or four different manufacturers when shopping for a client, she says. The average ticket is about $9,000, compared to about $3,500 for a typical Yard Art purchase.

Tickets of five figures and more are not uncommon. “We have done some that are upwards of $100,000 for just one house,” Geneva says, letting slip the name of a well-known Texas sports figure.

Designer’s Patio shares a 1,500 sq. ft. showroom in the Outdoor Living area, which is part of the Dallas Market Center complex. A second showroom of about 3,000 sq. ft. in Irving will be vacated in January when Designer’s Patio will move into nearly 10,000 sq. ft. on the Dallas Market Center’s prestigious ninth floor.

The new showroom, Geneva says, will enable Designer’s Patio to set aside a specific area for products aimed at the contract market. The grand opening is slated for January 14. Designer’s Patio plans to hire a full-time sales associate and a full-time assistant to service its expanded presence. The smaller showroom in the Outdoor Living building will continue as well. “We still want to grab folks that come in there,” she says.

Designer’s Patio doesn’t wait for new business to wander in. Geneva or her sales associate regularly make cold calls on interior designers who are not yet clients.

“We go in, introduce ourselves and let them know who we are,” she says. “We try to do at least five per week.”

Jordan Bars is in charge of the company’s advertising and marketing efforts.

In-house Media Guru

Yard Art and Designer’s Patio brought the majority of their advertising and marketing efforts in-house early in 2013, when Jordan Bars joined the company. She manages the online presence for both brands, which means taking care of Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, as well as the company’s websites.

The company subscribes to SnapRetail, an online service that helps manage social media posts with a calendar, suggested topics, reminders, canned artwork, and automated postings. Bars uses original copy, photos and artwork to customize posts and keep them consistent with the company’s image. The SnapRetail system “keeps it all organized,” says Bars, who handled similar tasks for a fine jewelry store and a Maserati dealer before joining Yard Art.

Instead of selling, she says, “My focus is more on branding and information.” For example, she may post a seasonal recipe and mention in passing that Yard Art sells grills.

Yard Art has a photo album attached to its Facebook page with Outdoor Room pictures submitted by clients. “Everybody loves looking through those,” Bars says.

Posts go up six days a week, she says. Sometimes she creates special promotions designed to engage the store’s Facebook friends and followers. The fall pro football season brought a campaign called The Breezesta Bowl. Each week Bars selected a pro football game and selected two Breezesta chairs in colors matching those of the NFL opponents. She added other football motifs, appropriate logos, and a competition was born.

She asked Facebook friends to “like” the page, vote for their favorite team, make a comment and share the photo with friends. The Breezesta Bowl is cross-promoted on Google+ and Twitter, driving Web traffic to Yard Art sites and raising its prominence online.

Under Bars’ direction, Yard Art invested in Facebook ads for a limited period. Like Google ads, Facebook ads can be targeted to pop up on the Facebook pages of users in certain locales and with certain interests. “We went from 332 likes to more than 2,500 likes in just under two weeks,” she says. “I spent a couple of hundred dollars. It’s really worth it.”

Bars also produces an annual magazine for Yard Art. The full-color 2014 edition was printed and mailed to more than 20,000 homes. The content is a mixture of general and product specific casual furniture information; some products are accompanied by prices, while others are not. Additional copies of the magazine are passed out in Yard Art’s stores, and PDF versions of the 2013 and 2014 editions may be downloaded from the website.

The company dabbled in social media before hiring Bars, Garrett says, but its online material was “heavily ignored. I never felt very good about tweeting something. Once she came on board, she took control of it and is doing some really great things.”

The addition of Bars fits a pattern of growth that likely will continue. “Personnel is always challenging,” Butch says. “Fortunately, we’ve been able to find the right people.”

Sooner or later, there may be more Yard Art stores in the DFW suburbs. “We’ve got a couple of areas where we feel like we could benefit from being,” Butch says. “But we haven’t found the right locations.”

Bars will probably break the news on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest when the time comes.

Yard Art, she says, “is a great company to work for. They are always thinking of the next thing.”

Yard Art Patio & Fireplace, Lewisville, Texas.

Store Name: Yard Art Patio & Fireplace

Locations:
Texas: Allen, Colleyville, Grapevine, Lewisville, Plano, Warehouse/Corporate Office

Owners: Butch Wallace, Garrett Wallace, Geneva Wallace

Key Executives: Butch Wallace, Garrett Wallace, Geneva Wallace

Year Established: 1994

Web Site: www.MyYardArt.com     

E-mail: garrettw@myyardart.com

Phone: (972) 594-4800

Number of Stores: 6

Number of Employees:
Full Time: 35
Part Time: 10

Gross Annual Sales: $10M+

Av. Sq. Ft. of Building Space:
Showroom: 10,000
Warehouse: 32,000
Outside Area: 2,000

Brands Carried:

Patio: OW Lee, Mallin, Hanamint, Lane Venture, Ancient Mosaics, Patio Renaissance, Pride Family Brands, Tropitone, Breezesta, Casual Cushion Corp., Designers Trading Company, Gensun, Jensen, Summer Classics, Treasure Garden
Barbecue: Gensun, Alfresco
Hearth: Hargrove, Golden Blount, Dagan, Stoll, Uniflame

Advertising % of Gross Revenues: 2%

Advertising: Radio 22%, Newspapers 0%, Magazines 5%, TV 8%, Direct Mail 18%, Other 47%