HOME LEISURE IS HIP AGAIN By Keith Loria COVID-19 has rocked our industry but the good news is that people seem to be shopping in record numbers and many are turning to billiard and gaming tables, plus other fun activities. Perhaps Gunnar Graven, president of Louisville, Kentucky-based C.C. Steepleton said it best when he noted “home leisure is hot” and it’s expected to remain strong through the holidays and into 2021. “We’re finding that once the pandemic began, people started investing and spending money in their homes like never before,” he says. “They are finishing basements, creating man caves, putting new additions on, and the cherry on top of all that are the fun products we offer that they want to fill them with.” The store had to close down at the beginning of March, but kept its webpage operating and saw an influx of interest from those shopping online.
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“We have everything on our web page that drives them into the showroom to purchase, and my customers come in knowing exactly what they want and get in and out of the store quickly with the top items,” Graven says. “We closed the showroom for two weeks, but thanks to online and working the phone, we were able to make special appointments and still sell before we opened back up.” C.C. Steepleton is also seeing strong sales from the outdoor leisure category, with everything from playsets to basketball nets to trampolines selling well. But it’s the billiard, ping-pong and gaming tables that have really skyrocketed. “I believe all the money we are seeing spent in our space is what people would have been spending on travel, I truly believe that,” Graven says. “In the past five years, what has hurt our business is that people have decided to go to Disney or take a cruise instead of buying game tables. Now, all that money is coming back to us.”
