STROUDS STALKING GEN XERS CLEANER LINES, RELAXED LOOK IS LURE FOR YOUNGER BUYERS.

Byline: Don Jergler Staff Writer

INDUSTRY - Armed with both a new direction and marketing campaign, Strouds Acquisition Corp. is taking aim at the softer side of its new target customer: Generation X.

It's been a year since a group of senior executives successfully lobbied Cruttenden Partners, a private investment firm, to pick the bedding seller out of the wreckage of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Since then, the company has reorganized, moved its corporate operations and cut back the number of stores. Strouds are in Glendale, Studio City, Woodland Hills and Thousand Oaks.

The new company has a new target, too, a group largely unfamiliar with Strouds: 25- to 45-year-olds. The company plans to do this through a redirected $10 million per year marketing campaign with a message for the generation:

``If you decorate your home this way, you will feel better about yourself,'' said Robert Valone, Strouds president.

``People think they can't decorate themselves,'' Valone said. ``They don't have the experience with the product category.''

Strouds' aim at Gen Xers is not merely through marketing. The company is modernizing its product line and initiating in-store decorating seminars, as well.

``We do need to broaden our assortment of contemporary and California casual categories,'' Valone said.

This means there will be more Strouds products with clean lines, less pattern, with a relaxed look and a less sophisticated air, Valone said.

Is Strouds up to this challenge?

``We see it as an opportunity,'' he said. ``We're very penetrated in the 45- to 65-year-old demographic. Those people know our stores, love our stores and wouldn't shop anywhere else.''

But the younger market is where Strouds sees its growth, and now is the time to strike, he said.

``People of our generation will really want to stay at home and entertain more,'' Valone said. ``I'm 35, and I can't remember the last time I went out on a Friday night.''

If Strouds executives want to market their products to a younger crowd, they should start upgrading their storefronts, said Britt Beemer, chairman and founder of America's Research Group, based in Charleston, S.C.

``The external appearance of just the building, the storefront, is paramount today,'' Beemer said.

Consumers 35 and younger are two times more likely to choose not to shop at a store because of its outside appearance than those over age 40, according to Beemer.

``If they expect to go after that 25- to 45-year-old age group, and they're doing it with older-looking stores, they're doomed,'' he said.

But apparently, Strouds is on the right track with its plan for distributing its message.

The younger age group is also largely television-driven, and more apt to look at four-color advertising inserts in daily newspapers than direct mail, he said.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Robert Valone, president of Strouds, is in the firm's new facility in the City of Industry, where a youth movement has taken over.

(2 -- color) Strouds workers in the new City of Industry facility move cartons of bedding and other goods along conveyor belts for shipping to stores.

(3) Jeff Stroud shows off some of the new, cleaned-lined, California casual items that officials hope will attract Gen Xers.

Keith Birmingham/Staff Photographer