Our RTO dealers are packaging our Media Fireplaces together with a flat screen TV - offering their customers a complete entertainment package.
Gidget Meaut, Sales Representative, Twin-Star

Photo/Twinstar

RTO dealers are packaging Twinstar Media Fireplaces together with a flat screen TV, offering customers a complete entertainment package.

Entertainment is popular year-round in the rent to own industry, and for Twin-Star International, providing rent-to-own dealers with quality entertainment components from their versatile product lines is a foundational aspect of their business. "Our entertainment products have been a huge success," said Alexia Rouquette Mays, director of marketing and public relations for Twin-Star. "It's a growing field, and one in which we really excel because of the durability, attractiveness and craftsmanship of our products."

Every product offered by Twin Star is meticulously crafted using the finest materials, including solid hard woods and wood veneers. "Quality craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology are essential ingredients in the success of our home furnishings," said Mays.

Make Mine a Combo

Twin-Star's Tresanti Furniture line, launched in 2008 to acclaim and popularity, offers entertainment consoles and wine cabinets, and the Classic Flame line offers decorative electric fireplace/entertainment console combinations. The Baxter, a ClassicFlame product, offers all three features. This traditionally styled piece in a cherry finish holds stemware on the left, 18 bottles of wine on the right, and a fireplace in the middle. The top is designed for a flat-screened TV, with a shelf above the fireplace for media components.

"These combination fireplace and media consoles have been very successful," said Mays. "You have your fireplace, TV, and ambience all at once. They bring warmth, beauty, and great versatility into any living room."

Durability and Visual Appeal

Product quality is SO good, in fact, that it pulled fireplaces back into the RTO market from which they had been rapidly disappearing. "Many RTOs had dropped fireplaces completely because they just didn't hold up to moves. The quality simply was not there. Our Classic Flame products have brought that corner of the RTO market back because they are so well built and so visually appealing," said Mays.

"We were the first to design mantels of the most sought after furniture styles crafted from the highest quality hardwood solids and hand-selected hardwood veneers. And we use a one-size, universal bolt throughout the entire unit, making it very easy to assemble. Once it is assembled, units are easily moved without the worry of falling apart. They are extremely durable."

According to Gidget Meaut, sales representative for Twin-Star, "Our RTO dealers are packaging our Media Fireplaces together with a flat screen TV. This way, they are offering their customers a complete entertainment package. They have a place for their big screen TV, the appeal of a very realistic fire, and the option to turn on the heater for zone heating. Our electric logs use very little energy and can save customers on the heating cost when used as a zone heater."

"We are currently selling to over 3,000 locations. Their customers love the fact that they can have one piece of functional furniture that does not take up the whole room."

Practicing What She Preaches

"We've been doing business with Twin-Star for over five years," said Kathy Windsor, executive vice president of National TV Sales & Rental in Lebanon, Missouri and the furniture chairperson for TRIB. She first came in contact with Twin-Star at a vendor meeting, where she was assured that units could be moved easily with a dolly.

"I had purchased other brand names in the past that National had issues with, like having to put the fireplace together and finding it did not hold up to multiple moves. In the rental industry, our product MUST hold up to being moved multiple times," she said.

TRIB approved Twin-Star for the rental industry and Windsor placed an order to see for herself how durable the units were. "My delivery people simply took out the firebox and delivered it with a dolly," she said. "I was so impressed, I told all my friends about it. Twin-Star even picked up on it and had dollies at trade shows and in some of their advertising."

Windsor's company has had great success with the 23MM054 entertainment unit, and for the last two holiday seasons have priced it with a TV and featured it as a "must have" for Christmas. "We go through large numbers every year, and Twin-Star always comes through by finding me a substitute when we run out of product in the middle of a promotion," she said.

"You'd think a fireplace would be a seasonal thing, but our 17 stores have proved that myth wrong. Our fireplace/TV combos are the main focus in hundreds of living rooms throughout Missouri," said Windsor. "You might think I'm overselling Twin-Star, but I practice what I preach. I have a Twin-Star fireplace in my bedroom and sunroom of my own house. I know what I'm talking about."

Source: Twinstar