Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc., based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a full-service home furnishings retailer with over 120 showrooms in 17 states in the southern and Midwest regions. We provide our customers with a wide selection of quality merchandise in middle- to upper-middle price ranges.
James Joseph Haverty founded Havertys in 1885, and our stock began publicly trading in 1929. We have paid dividends since 1935 and have been profitable every year since World War II.
Today Havertys is one of the top 10 largest specialty furniture retailers in the United States, and our size allows us to command better pricing and delivery from our vendors. Our operating strategy is to offer quality merchandise selected, and priced to appeal to our target customer, displayed attractively in well located stores. We have shifted our merchandise to primarily proprietary products branded "Havertys" supplemented by a select number of other key brands in the bedding category. We believe that the quality of the merchandise we offer and our knowledgeable sales associates, coupled with the ability to deliver purchases within a short time-frame, are very important to our ability to maintain customer satisfaction.
Havertys' strategy for store growth has always been prudent but aggressive when special circumstances afford great values. During 2007, we entered one new market and expanded or improved our presence in five of our markets. Our plans for 2008 include strengthening our presence with a new store in Orlando, Florida, expanding our presence or relocating stores in three of our markets, and closing two additional locations.
We will continue to focus on opportunities in our current geographical "footprint" and the execution of this strategy is greatly enhanced through our distribution system.
We are invested in developing our capabilities for cross-channel selling by transforming havertys.com into an e-commerce website. We believe this will give us additional competitive advantages and more fully realize the benefits of our continuing investments in products and distribution systems. We believe that a direct-to-customer business will compliment our retail store operations by building brand awareness and as an effective advertising vehicle.
These changes, combined with our people and financial strength, provide significant advantages in the changing competitive landscape.
