One Belk store in Raleigh will carry furniture, appliances in new partnership

In addition to the department store’s usual offerings of clothes and small home goods, one Raleigh Belk location will now cater to shoppers’ much larger home needs, including furniture.

Belk has partnered with Conn’s HomePlus, a Texas-based retailer of home goods such as furniture, appliances and consumer electronics, to launch “Conn’s x Belk,” a store-within-a-store model that will provide Belk customers “with access to Conn’s complementary home product categories,” as well as “white-glove, next-day delivery” on the store’s products.

The Conn’s x Belk stores will feature “a name brand assortment of all major Conn’s product categories including furniture, home electronics and appliances.” The stores “range from approximately 10,000 to 25,000 square feet depending on the Belk location.”

An announcement released Tuesday said the new store-within-a-store models have launched and are now open in five Belk locations across the Southeast, including at Triangle Town Center (7500 Old Wake Forest Rd., Raleigh).

Another North Carolina location of Conn’s x Belk is open at Charlotte’s Northlake Mall (7115 Northlake Mall Dr., Charlotte), and other locations are open in Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina.

The five Conn’s x Belk pilot locations, including the Raleigh location, will host grand opening celebrations on Saturday, August 13, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The events will include “giveaways, treats and music,” the announcement said.

Additional Conn’s x Belk locations “are planned to open throughout the summer and early fall of 2022,” and an “eCommerce experience” of the partnership will launch on Belk.com this fall, according to the announcement.

“We’re thrilled that our first five Conn’s x Belk concept stores are open with more coming soon, giving us the opportunity to introduce new customers to Conn’s key differentiators, including our high-quality product assortment, white glove next-day delivery and in-house repair service,” Chandra Holt, President and CEO of Conn’s, Inc. said in the announcement. “This is an important step in our journey to scale, reimagine and strengthen our business.”

North Carolina shoppers are very familiar with Belk. The department store launched its first store in Monroe in 1888. Today, the store has nearly 300 locations in 16 states across the Southeast.

The company previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year before backing out of the filing a day later.

“We’re excited to create this new experience for our customers,” Don Hendricks, Interim CEO of Belk, said in the Conn’s x Belk announcement. “The great part about this partnership with Conn’s is that our customers now have access to products we didn’t sell in our stores. It’s a fantastic opportunity for them to get everything they need for their home in one convenient location.”