AURORA | A Texas-based retailer is betting on Aurora as it tries to bring its brand of easy financing on home furnishings to Colorado.
Conn’s Inc. opened two new Conn’s Home Plus stores in the metro area over the weekend, including one at 60 S. Abilene St. in Aurora.
The company, which has been expanding from Texas to other states in the south and west in recent years, is known for offering easy credit on home items from television sets to washers to mattresses.
Jamie Piper, chief marketing officer for the company based near Houston said about 90 percent of the sales at Conn’s more than 75 stores around the country involve some from of in-store credit.
That being the case, Piper said the company looks to expand in places with heavy concentrations of working-class families who might not be able to afford the home goods they need without financing them.
“For us, Colorado really had a lot of those areas,” she said.
Michael Guerra, the district manager of Conn’s Colorado locations, said the store’s credit offerings are what attracts many of their customers, especially those having trouble building their
credit.
“We definitely can help rebuild credit, establish credit for consumers who aren’t able to in other retailers,” he said.
Guerra, who came to Colorado from the company’s stores in El Paso, Texas, said the financing works like an installment loan, with set terms and set payments.
Piper said the company has a few tiers of financing, from a credit card down to a program that works more like a rent-to-own agreement. Because the company has its own internal credit company, they can offer credit to people where other retailers often can’t, she said.
During the recession, Piper said that easy credit allowed Conn’s to weather a rough economy because consumers who couldn’t afford products elsewhere were able to at Conn’s.
“We can extend credit to someone who would be normally turned down,” she said.
Piper said that with the recession behind them, the company is looking to expand in a major way in the coming months and years.
So far, the company has the Aurora store as well at 9555 E. County Line Road in Centennial. Another store is planned for Arvada later this year. In all, Piper said the company has plans for eight to 12 stores in Colorado.
The company has already grown from Texas to Arizona and Louisiana, among other states, and Piper said they also have plans to move into Tennessee with their next store.
In the case of the store’s Colorado locations, Piper said they opted to move into an existing building rather than build a new one.
That will likely continue, Piper said, because there is a hefty supply of vacant retail space around the country that offers options far cheaper than new construction.
The Aurora location, which is in the City Center shopping district near East Alameda Avenue and Interstate 225, had been vacant since 2009 when Linens and Things closed its location there.
Conn’s is evil. They prey upon uneducated consumers.
SURE…SURE…..if the bottom line is that if someone could buy cash a stereo for $300 and then you offer the same stereo to own at $35 month for 24 months well then you are a blood sucking vampire that preys on people with bad credit harming poor people….sooo are these the type people you’re conning us to believe are good for us to have in town?? Hey…give us a example of a contract for like a 42″ big screen TV to own….we are all waiting.