Retail chain At Home is pressing ahead with expansion plans, including the Long Island megastore that will open this month, while sales of household goods generally decline amid consumer concerns about rising inflation and an impending recession.
“Our business has continued to evolve with store expansion and improved product offerings. We are a value player and companies like us with a low-cost structure will be winners in this economic environment,” a spokeswoman for @home said.
At Home, which entered the Long Island Market in April with a new store in Bohemia, plans to open its second local store at 4000 Jericho Tpke. in Huntington Square in East Northport in late October, said retailer Plano, Texas.
Jerry Wilkes, president of Wilco Realty, a New Rochelle-based real estate firm, said the new home goods store will occupy part of the former Sears space, and the former Dressbarn space in the shopping center.
A spokeswoman for @home said the 73,000-square-foot store will employ about 25 people.
At home, a discount store that describes itself as a large home décor store, has been growing rapidly in the past few years.
It has 256 high-volume stores, including about 30 that have opened since the retailer resumed its expansion in February 2021 after a pause linked to the pandemic.
A spokeswoman for @home said the chain has a long-term potential to expand to at least 600 stores.
According to its website, the company, which was acquired after it was acquired by private equity firm Hillman & Friedman for $2.8 billion in July 2021, has six more new stores planned in various states this year.
Meanwhile, sales of home goods at At Home and other chains are down, and some retailers, such as Bed Bath & Beyond and online store Wayfair, are struggling.
Pandemic-related quarantines in 2020 and 2021 helped spur a boom in sales of household goods as consumers stuck at home spent more money to beautify their homes.
Sales are now down in part because consumers who shopped for their homes last year don't have a need to replace these items yet, said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData.
“The other thing is also that people don't have money now. They don't have the confidence to buy expensive items, like furniture.
Inflation and consumer concerns about a looming recession have prompted them to scale back discretionary spending, said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Bed Bath & Beyond, which said in August that sales in stores open for at least one year fell 26% in the second quarter, announced that it would close another 150 stores.
At Home has its own challenges, too.
The retailer "burned cash during the first half of the year" and has a heavy debt load, according to a September report from S&P Global Ratings, a Manhattan-based credit rating firm.
Shipping costs significantly impacted At Home's profitability in the second quarter, and that's among the reasons S&P downgraded the issuer's credit rating, an independent opinion on the institution's creditworthiness, from B to B- in September.
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