- July 26, 2024
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In April, Bradenton-based Bealls Inc. announced it was launching a new chain of stores focused on home goods.
Now that chain is coming home: Its first Florida store will be in Fort Myers, at a new shopping center dubbed Daniels Marketplace, the company recently announced. The first Home Centric store opened in Cary, N.C., in May.
The Fort Myers Home Centric store will be 15,000 square feet. It’s expected to open in March 2019.
Within a year, Bealls plans to open five Home Centric stores. Germantown, Tenn., has also been named as a forthcoming location.
Before opening freestanding Home Centric stores, Bealls tested the home market in several existing Bealls Outlet stores. Bealls spokeswoman Karen Filips tells Coffee Talk the testing went on for a couple years, and included 18 store-within-a-store concepts.
“Before going into a new area, we perform a lot of market research to understand the population, median income and percent of income spent on specific merchandise,” says Filips in a statement. “In this case specifically on home products, our research shows that Fort Myers is an area that our Home Centric store will be a great fit.”