5 minute read
Changing With the Times
One Stop Decorating finds its niche in Shawnee.
Story by Kari Williams |
Photography by Sarah Reeves
One Shawnee-based business survived the big-box retailer boom, expanded its services throughout the Kansas City metro and has nearly quadrupled its staff in the process.
One Stop Decorating—owned and operated by the Roellchen family since it opened in 1995—has remained sustainable largely due to its “good old-fashioned customer service,” says Brandon Roellchen, the company’s president.
“Taking care of customers. Seeing them as guests. Seeing them vital to our business,” he says. “We focus very hard every day on making sure that we’re building relationships, not processing transactions. The box stores can process transactions very easily. They do it every day, all day long. But they don’t have any magic.”
Becoming One Stop Decorating
Steve Roellchen started the business, at 12611 W. 62nd Terrace, after leaving his two-decade corporate career with the now-defunct retailer Venture. Though initially planning to make the site a Tru Value Hardware store, Brandon Roellchen says they pivoted to paint and wallpaper after signing on to carry a full line of Waverly F. Schumaker wallpaper.
“We also were part of a buying group that sold window coverings,” says Roellchen, whose family is originally from the Kansas City area. “So by getting in the paint and wallpaper business, we were also kind of in the window covering business too.”
In addition to the Waverly items, One Stop Decorating offered place mats, napkins, chair cushions, and other home decor items. This too before big-box stores such as Michaels and Hobby Lobby came along.
“My mom was able to exercise her design legs with working interior design through the business, and my dad was able to exercise his retail knack for working retail stores, and at that time we just had this one location here in Shawnee,” Roellchen says.
The first iteration of One Stop Decorating had six employees—all family except for one woman who used to work at the ceramics store Roellchen’s grandparents owned. Now the company employs 23 people.
Navigating the Big-Box Boom
As the store grew, a local Hunter Douglass representative “saw an opportunity,” according to Roellchen, and partnered with One Stop Decorating to offer Hunter Douglas blinds and shades.
“They kind of stood out as our go-to brand,” he says. “So window coverings started to take over more and more and more of the business.”
With consumer tastes shifting away from wallpaper, Roellchen says that by about 2005, One Stop Decorating “completely morphed” from a paint and decorating store to window coverings. At the same time, its brick-andmortar locations increased—to Lee’s Summit in 2000, the Northland in 2001, and Overland Park in 2007.
“Box stores came along and essentially kind of cannibalized our business,” he says. “We got out of the paint business because Sherwin Williams continued to grow, Benjamin Moore continued to grow. And then, of course, your home centers started offering full lines of paint, paint mixing, etc.”
The same happened after a shift to home goods, when craft and home decor stores such as Hobby Lobby and Michaels gained traction, Roellchen says.
A 2009 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org/papers/w15348) found that most negative effects of the increase in big-box retailers were due to closures of smaller stores “rather than reducing the scale of their operations.”
But in retail, Roellchen says, losing sales in one department means growing them in another. So the Roellchens devoted time, effort, and resources to window coverings—an avenue he says was unique.
“Window coverings have to be sold one at a time. They’re all custom. They fit people’s windows exactly,” he says. “You’re able to utilize interior design because you have to choose color, you have to choose pattern, you have to choose style. You have to be an expert in function and how they work and what needs (we need) to fulfill in someone’s house.
“So we were able to continue to do shop-at-home appointments to a point of really growing the business to going in almost 300 homes a month with custom window coverings—and at that time, we had five or six designers.”
Family First
One Stop Decorating is unique, Roellchen says, because not only is it a family business, but his mother, brother, and he all are window-covering designers.
Over the past 28 years, clients have hired One Stop Decorating because, he says, they enjoy working with the company.
Heidi Meyers has been a One Stop Decorating employee for two years and in that time has moved up from showroom associate to general manager.
“It’s been a great experience, really,” she says. “It’s been really rewarding to work for a company that appreciates growing people to their potential.”
Meyers says she was drawn to the company by its brand recognition and that she wanted to get involved in the home services market.
“Brandon recognized that in me, kept giving me more to do,” she says.
Meyers says she enjoys the family aspect of One Stop Decorating and that the Roellchens “really care” about their employees.
“They really take their hiring decisions very seriously,” Meyers says.
While the late 1990s and early 2000s saw small businesses living “in fear of big box encroachment,” according to the 2015 IRI report, “The Changing Face of Retail,” in the aftermath of a recession, “momentum has shifted away from ‘biggest box’ retailing” (www.iriworldwide.com/iri/media/ IRI-Clients/IRI-The-Changing-Face-of-RetailMay-2015_1.pdf).
“Across the majority of retail subindustries, shoppers are increasingly shifting their purchases to smaller-format locations, with traffic to malls and big-box retailers declining by more than 28% since 2011,” the report states.
And though One Stop Decorating closed its Northland location in 2014, Roellchen says the company has expanded its digital footprint— especially since the lockdown era of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For More
One Stop Decorating
12611 W. 62nd Terrace
Shawnee, KS 66216
913-631-0088
www.onestopdecorating.com
