Gene Gau sat with his laptop at the end of a long table in Herman Miller’s store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District one afternoon this week. For half an hour, the design associate for the luxury furniture brand saw no customers, except for one man who briefly occupied one of its best-selling $8,000 lounge chairs and then left.
On the other side of the street, much the same story was playing out at RH’s 90,000-square-foot furnishings flagship. Only a dozen shoppers could be found browsing the high-priced items set out over five floors of premium retail real estate.
Across the US, companies catering to the households that can afford a $12,000 couch or $4,000 coffee table are reporting a similar phenomenon: wealthier Americans are reining in their discretionary spending.