Marling’s Home Furnishings To Install Advanced Showroom Lighting

Furniture World Magazine

Service Lamp Corporation to update its 40,000 square foot Topeka showroom. The Kansas retailer operates two other stores including a Thomasville store in Shawnee and a Marling’s Home Furnishings in Lawrence. The work now in progress includes design and a complete, lighting system update. "We have a 64 year tradition of offering our customers the finest shopping experience." says Mark Marling, President of Ed Marling Stores, Inc. "Improving our showroom, the way we present merchandise to them, is part of that process." Service Lamp, a New Jersey distributor of lighting products, provides related services to Thomasville Furniture Industries and Ashley’s HomeStore Division. According to Monte Lee who will manage the project from Service Lamp’s High Point office, "The difference between the Marling’s project and our other work is that we started with a blank sheet of paper and client objectives. We provide fixtures and lamps for Thomasville stores and we do lighting plans to compliment Ashley HomeStore designs. This is a major evolution in our ability to serve the furniture industry." Mike Dunn, Marling’s Vice-President of Marketing, spearheaded the project, more than two years in the making. "We knew we needed a change and we knew we needed something special for certain product lines like Bob Timberlake." The answer was to showcase the collection in a full-sized, log cabin complete with an artificial skylight. Ed Marling’s, as the Topeka store has been known since 1936, offers Lexington, La-Z-Boy, Broyhill, and Thomasville lines, among others, as well as a full service appliance center and a Serta & Masterpiece sleep center. Once the Marling’s team decided to begin the project and got their first quote it was clear that additional proposals from other sources were necessary. "We even considered doing just parts of the store, over a longer period of time, and asked Service Lamp to quote it that way. When I saw the direction they took, and the affordability, we decided to go for the whole package." Mark Marling’s comments not only address store appearance but operating costs as he added, "This project will pay for itself over two years and will give us an even better position in our market." Service Lamp, like Marling’s, is a third generation business. The company has an exhibit in the NHFA Retailer Resource Center (IHFC-M12) during the High Point market. Service Lamp meets the lighting needs of independent member stores in the Southern and Florida Home Furnishings Associations, as well as retailers on the industries "Top 100" list.