Banana Republic Wants to Outfit Your Home, Too

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Inside Banana Republic’s design studio in San Francisco, Sandra Stangl, the company’s chief executive, pointed to an item that had been creating buzz in stores. It was not a shirt or dress draped on a mannequin. Instead, Ms. Stangl walked toward a king-size bed with a parchment-colored backboard. The company has started putting these bed frames, which sell for around $5,000, near the front of its stores in Los Angeles and New York. Enough shoppers have asked if they were for sale — the answer: Not yet, but Ms. Stangl and her team are taking a limited number of pre-orders for the fall. Shoppers usually think about outfitting themselves, not their homes, when they walk into Banana Republic. But the brand is trying to change that. In March, the retailer announced it would begin selling home textiles, and since then it has rolled out items like throw blankets, rugs and the attention-grabbing bed frames, selling home products online and in 16 of its stores. The home category “gives us a bigger addressable audience,” Ms. Stangl said, standing in front of an embroidered linen and cotton duvet, which the company says is a best seller. She added that offering home goods “stabilizes out the business a little bit.”