Hooker Furniture Creates General Manager Post for Opus Designs

Furniture World Magazine

Hooker Furniture has named Bruce Cohenour to the new position of General Manager -- Opus Designs. Effective immediately, Cohenour will set the overall direction for the youth furniture specialist Hooker acquired in December of 2007. "Since we first contemplated the acquisition, we believed Opus Designs could help us become a preferred youth bedroom vendor and provide a platform to reach a younger, slightly less affluent consumer than our core Hooker Furniture customer through the lower price points and more transitional styling Opus offers," said Paul Toms, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Hooker. "Six months after the acquisition, it has become clear that to fully maximize the opportunity Opus represents to expand our business, we need to have one person with overall responsibility for that area of our company." Cohenour will be responsible for setting the product direction, pricing the product, targeting key accounts, product ordering, managing inventory, assuring on time delivery of quality product and "making sure Opus is a healthy, growing and profitable business," Toms said. Cohenour joined Hooker in a new senior management position of Senior Vice President of National Accounts and Business Development in March 2007. He will handle his new responsibilities for Opus in addition to his ongoing role in business development of national accounts. Prior to joining the Hooker management team, Cohenour was a sales representative for Hooker in Northern Texas and Oklahoma for twelve years. Before he joined Hooker, he was a regional sales manager for La-Z-Boy, responsible for the central region of the U.S. He began his career in retail management, serving as general manager of a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery store for 12 years. Ranked among the nation's top 10 largest publicly traded furniture sources based on 2007 shipments to U.S. retailers, Hooker Furniture is an 84-year old residential wood, metal and upholstered furniture resource. The Company's principal customers are home furnishings retailers who are broadly dispersed throughout North America. Major wood furniture product categories include home entertainment, home office, accent, dining, bedroom and bath furniture sold under the Hooker Furniture brand, and youth bedroom furniture sold under the Opus Designs brand. Hooker's residential seating companies include Cherryville, N.C.-based Bradington-Young, a specialist in upscale motion and stationary leather furniture, and Bedford, Va.-based Sam Moore Furniture, a specialist in upscale occasional chairs with an emphasis on cover-to-frame customization. Please visit our websites at www.hookerfurniture.com and www.bradington-young.com and www.sammoore.com and www.opusdesigns.com.