The I.O. Metro way

I.O. Metro founder and CEO Jay Howard, 28, has proven 'different' works for this Bentonvilleborn success story.

By Jeff Mores

Posted: July 28, 2009 at 7:37 a.m.

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LOWELL — Most people who pass Jay Howard on the street don't peg him as a chief executive officer.

It's Monday morning and Howard, founder and CEO of the eclectic furniture store I.O. Metro, is leaning against a door frame in the main hallway of thecompany's corporate office in Lowell, chatting with an employee about her weekend. Howard is wearing a trendy, white, button-down shirt, blue jeans, a pair of black flip-flops and a smile on his face. Tomorrow will bring much of the same - maybe a different color of flip-flops, but what you see is what you get. And to top it all off, he's just 28 years old.

"I started this company swimming upstream," Howard said. "I didn't want to do what others were doing. We do things differently here."

Four years later - the majority of which the nation has been knee-deep in a recession - there are more than a few signs that "different" has worked for I.O. Metro, which bills itself as a specialty lifestyle furniture company. What started as a single store and warehouse at 3511 S.E. J St. in Bentonville has grown to 15 thrivingstores in eight states, including locations in Bentonville; Rogers; Fayetteville; Little Rock; Jonesboro; Tulsa, Okla.; Oklahoma City; Columbia, Mo.; Kansas City, Kan.; Jackson, Miss.; Birmingham, Ala.; Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Memphis; and a pair of locations in Dallas. The company outgrew four warehouses - three in Bentonville and one in Rogers - before settling into its spacious new corporate campus and distribution center at 316 Commercial Ave. in Lowell last year.

If that's not enough to grab your attention, take into account that I.O. Metro has shrugged off the national recession, posting an 80 percent increase in sales in 2008 and bringing in excess of $15 million. That marksthe largest sales increase reported in Furniture Today's "Beyond the Top 100" annual list of independent furniture stores, published in June. According to Howard, I.O. Metro has plans to add a couple of new stores in 2009, as well as up to three locations in the Atlanta market in 2010.

"Recession is not in our vocabulary at I.O. Metro," Howard said. "Wecome to work with a positive attitude, creative spirit and drive to succeed. Our goal this year is to offer consumers more unique furniture and improved quality at the same value price they have come to enjoy."

One might assume Howard, who cut his teeth working for a retail supplier in Jonesboro that served both Wal-Mart and Target, has always had a passion for furniture.But the fact is the concept was born out of opportunity first and developed into a passion.

"When I moved to northwest Arkansas, I went looking for furniture for my new apartment and got really frustrated," Howard explained. "It seemed to be the same thing, store after store. Same stuff, same sales pitch and normally someone pushing financing down my throat."

The gears in his entrepreneurial mind started turning.

"Go into a big furniture store sometime," Howard said. "Nine out of 10 don't have any music playing. And if they do, it's funeralparlor music. It's a dead environment."

Step inside an I.O. Metro, and the music is as eclectic as the variety of product inside. If you frequent the stores, you've also noticed there's something new almost every time you return. Howard said I.O. Metro floors reset regularly - the product continues to revolve as quickly as it walks out the door. That, along with allowing the customer to leave that day with the items they purchase, rather than having to order and wait a couple of months, are key ingredients to I.O. Metro's success.

"My thought was if you come into I.O. Metro and see something on the floor, you better be able to take it home that day," Howard said. "It's about offering a great price everyone can afford without sacrificing quality and delivering instant gratification. It's a lot more work, the way we do it, but I think it makes more sense."

That logic has proven successful for Howard. But despite I.O. Metro's rapid growth, this young CEO said he's not interested in becoming everything to everyone. In fact, he doesn't plan to expand any farther from his home base in Lowell than Atlanta.

"We've trucked along at a pace we could handle," Howard said. "Interest has been shown out east and west -California, New York, Phoenix - but I feel very strongly about keeping our company in one office, here. So much of what we do that's different is in the buying and product development. It's what happens in our distribution center. The day I'm not able to be a part of the buying process or can't see what's going in or out is the day I'm not here."

Anything Howard has seen come into his warehouse or onto his sales floors has gone. More times than not, it's gone in a hurry. That has been the case from day 1.

"I can remember when we first got started," Howard said. "I opened that Bentonville store and was planning to keep my supplier job. That changed quickly. On (Razorback) football game weekends, we'd have all these people from Little Rock driving up from the game in Fayetteville to Bentonville. They'd buy us out. There were weeks 80 percent of our product would sell."

He knew he had something.

"Six months later, we opened in Little Rock," Howard said. "It didn't make sense for people in Fayetteville to come all the way up to Bentonville all the time, so we opened in Fayetteville. Then, I had customers from Dallas driving with trailers to our Little Rock location. So Dallas made sense. To this point, it's been pretty easy to decide where we go next."

News, Pages 1, 7 on 07/28/2009

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