Kurt Amico, President of MidCity Office Furniture announced today that J Suzan Ben has joined the company. J Suzan has been a prominent interior designer and educator locally for over 20 years. Her background includes interior design, space planning and education as a instructor at Villa Maria College.

“Our clients are no longer looking for products- they are looking for a complete solution, they want us to create a highly functional workplace that is very aesthetically pleasing,” says Amico. “J Suzan brings both of these objectives to the forefront.” Read more »

Cell phone chargers are scattered across the kitchen counter (one for each phone in the family). The computer sits on the dining room table, cords snaking around the ankles of anyone who sits down to work. No matter how tidy the bedroom, it still looks cluttered with electronics and personal papers overflowing the dresser.

Sound familiar?

Most home offices aren’t offices. We’ve carved out corners of space in dining rooms, dens and bedrooms, then filled the space with hand-me-down furniture — the cast-off desk from the kids’ room when their computer desk was installed, a spare kitchen chair, an old bureau-turned-filing cabinet — not to mention climbing over the treadmill to get to the computer workstation. Even if you’ve gone wireless, you still need a place to dock.

“Consumers are looking for home furnishings that make their lives easier,” says Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of the American Home Furnishings Alliance. “Hidden storage, connectivity, charging stations … these are all important innovations to the category shoppers are embracing. As long as their are new electronics and technology devices, there will be a demand for multifunctional home office solutions.”

Function, storage and organization are key elements needed in home office furnishings — without looking like “office furniture.”

The same is true in modular home office furnishings, such as Techline. “When people come in, they have a certain look in mind, but functionality usually wins out. People want wood veneers, they want nice-looking pieces, and they want the printer that fits in a cabinet with a pull-out shelf, the desk where they can shut down the laptop and slide it under and out of the way. They don’t want any stuff showing when they’re not working,” says Brian Nichols of Techline Studio in Waterloo. Read more »

Most motorists who want to replace their oil-leaking cars look for an auto mall, where they can try out models at several dealerships.

The Home Center Murrieta allows shoppers to have a similar array of choices when it’s time to replace the ratty, hopelessly out-of-style living-room couch.

The center, visible from Interstate 215 south of the Los Alamos Road interchange, is like a beefed-up version of the furniture row concept seen in most urban markets in the country. It’s an example of a retail cluster, suggesting shoppers make numerous stops before writing a check.

Home Center Murrieta contains some 20 stores. The center, which opened in 2005, has a mixture of small, locally owned stores and large showrooms of national chains.

Many managers say that Home Center Murrieta’s setup is good for all the merchants, as well as for shoppers, who in many cases would have to go to San Diego County or elsewhere outside the region to find some of its wares. Read more »

Online baby nursery furniture and accessories retailer SimplyBabyFurniture.com is pleased to announce the launch of their newly designed site with features that will enhance the customer shopping experience and enable consumers to “design” their own dream nursery.

The fresh new look for the site allows for easier navigation, product reviews by consumers, “seen-it-for-less” price matching capabilities, and the ability to browse by brand name, category, or pre-designed nursery room sets.

SimplyBabyFurniture.com’s signature offering however, and the key that differentiates them from other nursery furniture retailers online, continues to be offering the consumers the ability to choose their own nursery set. Expectant mothers and grandparents alike can browse baby cribs and their related nursery sets on the site or call in to have a specific, cross-brand furniture collection bundled just for them. Read more »