Bigger store sets sights on teens

Librarian Betsy Kill stands in the two-story Pottery Barn store at Lenox Square, fixated on two neatly fluffed and styled cream and lavender twin beds. Around her are all manner of upholstered chairs, drapery, rugs, lighting and accessories, but clutching sheets to her chest, she’s lost in thought as she takes in the muted bedscaping.

“I’m overwhelmed with information,” she says, explaining she’s not sure which toile bedding to buy —- black or brown.

It’s easy to lose yourself in retail repose in the supersized Lenox Square Pottery Barn space that the store moved to in July, between Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus. After all, at 33,000 square feet it’s the home furnishings giant’s largest store. Add to that the country’s largest Pottery Barn Kids store, and now the first-ever PBteen store opening this Saturday (together in the original Pottery Barn site opposite Bloomingdale’s), and Lenox Square is becoming the Pottery Barn mecca.

Pottery Barn’s emergence as one of Lenox’s most prominent retailers comes at a time of slow growth and declining profits for Williams-Sonoma Inc., which owns the home furnishings retailer. The move to create a new store concept for PBteen, which debuted in catalog and Internet form in 2003, comes as Pottery Barn tries to spur growth in its overall brand. After it posted solid sales increases in 2005, sales in existing Pottery Barn stores were down in each of the past two years, according to the Williams-Sonoma’s most recent annual report. Sales in existing Pottery Barn Kids stores, which had been a bright spot, also declined last year.

Pottery Barn officials point to Atlanta’s young population of families and college students as a compelling reason to test its first-ever PBteen retail outpost at Lenox Square. Williams-Sonoma president Laura Alber said the teen brand, characterized by snappy hot pink and ice blue colors and iPod-compatible furniture and accessories, was born out of growing demands from core customers who felt the Pottery Barn Kids’ offerings were too youthful for their maturing children.

Further, the retailer had the space to test PBteen within the new 11,700-square-foot Pottery Barn Kids’ store. The PBteen store-within-a-store will occupy 1,800 square feet.

Pottery Barn officials declined to give specifics on the company’s sales figures in Atlanta, but Alber said the metro area has long been a key market for the retailer. In addition to Lenox, the chain has shops in Marietta, Alpharetta, Norcross, Buford and Dawsonville.

“People love their homes so much there,” she says. “They’re very loyal” to the brand.

But what is it about Pottery Barn’s laid-back contemporary furniture that appeals to Atlantans, long known for a traditional taste embodied by camelback sofas and heirloom silver collections?

Jennifer Boles Dwyer, Atlanta-based author of the interior design blog The Peak of Chic, says its popularity speaks to the changing face of Atlanta’s shoppers who are casting off the South’s period-piece past and slipping into something a little more casual-comfortable.

“Atlanta has become such a melting pot —- it’s really not such a Southern city anymore,” says Dwyer, also a contributing editor for House Beautiful. “There are so many different looks that we’re embracing now, and it’s not just traditional.”

Dwyer continues that with an influx of young families and working professionals, Pottery Barn provides design dilemma relief to the time-crunched.

“For a lot of people it’s really safe,” she says. “They can go there and not think about it because the work is done for them.”

Indeed, from cribs to bunk beds to queens and kings, Pottery Barn shoppers can stroll through Lenox Square’s Pottery Barned halls and see perfectly coordinated vignettes for their home, no matter the age of its occupants.

And knowing it “goes with everything” is part of its appeal, customer Kill of Marietta explains.

“I just love their style, their colors because it’s simple and easily accessible and affordable,” she says. “It’s like the home version of the Gap.”

So back to the vexing question: Toile bedding in black or brown toile? For Kill, there’s only one way to be sure. She purchases them both.

—- Joe Guy Collier contributed to this report.