Crate and Barrel
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| Crate & Barrel | |
 |
|
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1962 Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Headquarters | Northbrook, Illinois, USA |
| Industry | Retail |
| Products | Housewares, furniture. |
| Website | www.crateandbarrel.com |
Crate & Barrel is a chain of American retail stores, based in Northbrook, Illinois, specializing in housewares, furniture (indoor and out), and home accessories. Gordon and Carole Segal opened the first store in 1962, on Wells Street in the then-bohemian Old Town neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Today there are over 145 stores in the United States. Crate & Barrel has two sister stores. CB2 is geared toward young adults, and The Land of Nod is for children.
The first store opened in response to a flourishing of world trade in home furnishings due to the early 1960s round of talks about the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The Segals sought out small European companies that were not represented in America and negotiated direct purchases from these factories that could be sold to the consumer while avoiding a wholesaler's markup. To this day, a majority of Crate & Barrel's products are direct imports from Europe, though Thai, Mexican and Indian glass and textiles can also be found in their stores.
The Segals derived the company name by the materials that they originally used to display items in their Chicago store. They turned over the crates and barrels that the merchandise came in, let the wood excelsior spew out, and stacked up the china and glass. This helped emphasize their strongest selling point, that their products were direct imports.
Although locally managed, the controlling stake of Crate & Barrel's stock is now owned by Otto GmbH.
The Segals were originally going to call their company "Barrel and Crate", but a friend suggested that they reverse the order of the words.
[edit] International Expansion
On April 4, 2007, Crate and Barrel announced that it will be opening a store in the fall of 2008 at Yorkdale Shopping Center in Toronto, Ontario. A new 2 story 35,000 square foot building, similar to other newly opened Crate and Barrel stores in the USA, will be constructed on this site. According to the Crains Chicago Business, future international expansion in Canada and possible other countries is also planned. [1] [2]
