Caroline Hipple has been named Chief Creative Officer of Hooker Furnishings, a new role with the company. In addition, Jeff Behmer has been appointed Executive Vice President of Merchandising for Hooker Casegoods. The two positions support the company’s newly announced strategic evolution for its legacy brands – Bradington-Young, Hooker Furniture, HF Custom, M, Sunset West and BOBO Intriguing Objects.
Leveraging the combined strengths of these brands, the strategic shift was designed to drive creative excellence through all functional areas of each business unit to deliver a more integrated and aspirational whole-home presentation of its products to its customers.
Reporting to Jeremy Hoff, CEO of Hooker Furnishings, Hipple joins the executive leadership team, responsible for executing a collaborative merchandising approach across the company’s legacy furniture brands that integrates case goods, import and domestic upholstery, outdoor furnishings as well as lighting, accessories, and décor.
As the newly named Executive Vice President of Merchandising for Hooker Casegoods, Behmer will oversee merchandising for Hooker Furniture’s casegoods division, ensuring products align with the collaborative direction of the company’s legacy brands. He will report to Hipple.
“Over the decades, Hooker Furnishings has been well-known for its adaptability and willingness to evolve to drive the business forward,” said Hoff. “Our strategic acquisitions of Bradington-Young in 2002, Sam Moore in 2007, Shenandoah Furniture in 2017, Sunset West in 2022 and BOBO Intriguing Objects in 2023, position us as we enter our 100th year in business, to evolve once again – this time, into a truly whole-home, consumer-centric resource for our customers.
“To achieve this, all areas of our legacy organization must be headed in the same direction,” he added. “From operations to customer care to sales and marketing – and everything in between – our goal is to simplify the way we do business, both internally and with our customers. Through more intentional collaboration across our brands, we can better utilize the remarkable talent and resources we have across our legacy organization to build a foundation for growth and put ourselves in the best position to meet the needs of our partners and tomorrow’s home furnishings consumer.”
To support execution of the new strategy from an operational perspective, Anne Smith, Hooker Furnishings’ Chief Administrative Officer, who also previously led the company’s domestic upholstery group, will refocus her responsibilities toward reimagining the company’s corporate customer care policies and processes to deliver truly world class support for its customers. In addition to the customer care initiative, she will continue to lead the company’s human resources, leadership development and succession planning efforts across the larger enterprise.
“As we evolve our merchandising strategy, evolving our customer care efforts are equally – if not even more important – to ensure that we provide our customers with best-in-class service,” said Hoff. “I’m confident that Anne can help us achieve this vision.”
The strategic shift does not affect the company’s HMI division. HMI will continue with its focus on building its core business with its Pulaski, Samuel Lawrence, PRI and SLH brands.
About Hipple:
An industry veteran with more than 45 years of retail, sales, marketing, and creative merchandising experience, Hipple joins the company most recently from Norwalk Furniture, where she served eight years as president. Under her leadership, Norwalk experienced significant growth and became an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company in 2021.
Before Norwalk, she co-founded HB2 Resources with Dixon Bartlett where she spent 17 years consulting with industry-leading brands. Bartlett will also be joining Hooker Furnishings in a consulting role. Prior to that, she served nearly seven years as president of Storehouse Furniture, a retail chain based in Atlanta. She began her career at This End Up Furniture, a manufacturer and retail store chain based in Richmond, Va. During her 10-year tenure, she advanced to executive vice president of sales, marketing, and merchandising roles.
About Behmer:
Behmer has nearly 30 years of experience in the furniture industry, serving in executive merchandising leadership roles with responsibility for domestic design and global execution for casegoods, upholstery and accent products.
A creative leader, Behmer has been at the helm of the product development and merchandising divisions at several leading casegoods and upholstery global furniture manufacturers over the course of his career. Previously, he held Senior Vice President of Merchandising roles at Hickory White/Sherrill Furniture as well as A.R.T. Furniture. Prior to that, he was Senior Director of Casegoods Merchandising at Bernhardt Furniture for more than 10 years. He began his career at Broyhill Furniture, where he held a variety of positions including Upholstery Plant Manager, Corporate Director of Quality and Occasional Table Merchant.
