When it comes to furniture in commercial establishments, there are two factions: those that say a chair is a chair and is intended solely for sitting with no frills attached, and those that say the right chair can enhance a room.
Nightlife Furniture is more than able to satisfy the former and happy to appease the latter. Nightlife was set up as a subsidiary of Venue Industries. Venue, headquartered in Tampa, opened for business in 2008 as a furniture manufacturer that offers product design, furniture layouts, built-to-order domestic products and the sourcing of furniture for all segments of the hospitality industry. Venue’s work can be seen from hospitality and commercial office environments, to retail establishments, to hotels, to bowling alleys.
In a partnership with ED Publications, Nightlife Furniture has been established as the adult arm of Venue’s furnishing empire. Nightlife is utilizing Venue’s most popular types and styles of furniture—upholstered sofas, booths, banquettes, lounge chairs and bar stools— that have populated countless establishments.
“It really is the same type of furniture,” says Venue Industries’ President Chuck Courter. “Maybe it’s a different style, different fabrics are used, but the structure remains the same.”
The biggest factor that will translate for Nightlife Furniture is that their furniture is purposely built for high-traffic, high-volume types of facilities where the furniture takes a significant amount of abuse. Courter notes that while durability and resiliency are critical to Nightlife Furniture, he feels the adult industry furniture has lacked the ability to reupholster and repair furniture as needed. It’s the latter that sets Nightlife apart from its competitors, notably KG Furniture, which Courter admits owned the market.
“It is a good, quality, American-made product. Another thing that sets us apart from our competitors, regardless of the industry, is that everything is built to order. It’s not import products. Everything is built to the customer’s specs; now, we have a standard line of products specifically for the adult industry.” – Nightlife’s Chuck Courter
However, KG Furniture’s disappearance from the furniture market opened the door for Nightlife Furniture and their partnership with ED Publications.
“Partnering with Nightlife Furniture has shown ED Publications to be more than just a publication for club owners to read,” says ED’s PR Manager, Kristofer Kay. “Once again, we’re a resource. The industry’s growing ‘furniture issue’ wasn’t just a problem but was almost a small epidemic—businesses were getting hurt. That’s why we decided to take action. Having seen Nightlife’s manufacturing process first-hand, and knowing their commitment to making great furniture, we’re confident that club owners will now have a quality furniture vendor to rely on.”
“It is a good, quality, American-made product,” Courter adds. “Another thing that sets us apart from our competitors, regardless of the industry, is that everything is built to order. It’s not import products. Everything is built to the customer’s specs; now, we have a standard line of products specifically for the adult industry.”
“Most furniture manufacturers are building the same type of furniture out of dimensional lumber so they’re stick-framing their frames. That’s the way it’s been for decades—but we’ve changed the process.” – Chuck Courter
Customization and durability
If owners want to further customize their furniture for space purposes or perhaps to fit a certain aesthetic, that’s also doable through Nightlife.“(Customization) has always been one of our strengths,” Courter says.
But of course, it’s more than the aesthetics that club owners are looking for in their furniture. It harkens back to the need for the furniture to be of lasting quality because of the beating it will take from constant traffic.Nightlife achieves this durability from both the materials and technique used to build the furniture.
“The technique is different than most furniture manufacturers that are our direct competitors,” Courter says. Nightlife designs everything in CAD (Computer Aided Design). All of their components are cut from a “very, very high-quality plywood” and all of their frames are built from engineered plywood cut on a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) router for “pinpoint” accuracy—everything is true and straight.
“Most furniture manufacturers are building the same type of furniture out of dimensional lumber so they’re stick-framing their frames,” says Courter. “That’s the way it’s been for decades—but we’ve changed the process.”
As Courter explains, all of their parts are bolted, literally bolted, with three-inch steel bolts and nuts. “Say an arm to a base, an arm to a back, a back to a base—which, number one, provides a tremendously strong frame, but also it gives that other feature — the ability to re-upholster,” he says. “Traditionally what you’d have to do is reupholster the entire piece of furniture. Most owners aren’t thinking about this when they’re buying furniture.”
Courter detailed a catastrophic scenario where a bowling center owner had 26 sofas and the fabric had failed because of the high traffic—not Venue’s fault, in fact Courter remembers warning the owner not to use the fabric. So a year and half into the furniture’s life, it looked 20 years worn.
They were able to send a crew out, unbolt the backs, reupholster them and reattach them.
“If he had bought those sofas literally anywhere else, he probably would have had to just buy new sofas,” Courter says. “Fortunately for him it cost very little to get everything reupholstered.” The bowling center owner never even had to close because Nightlife was able to get in and get out over the course of two nights without forcing the bowling center to close.
In order to help club owners avoid that potential nightmare, Nightlife has seized the opportunity of the Annual Gentlemen’s Club EXPO to further push its name. Nightlife exhibited at EXPO for the first time in 2017, then followed in 2018 by not only exhibiting but also providing the furniture for the EXPO’s “On the Couch” seminar.
“We’re very excited about our partnership with ED Publications and the Gentlemen’s Club Expo,” says Courter. “We can’t wait to get back to Las Vegas in 2019 and meet one-on-one with the industry’s club owners and operators, and show them that we’re ready and able to become their number-one choice for all of their furniture needs.”
For more information, call Nightlife’s Chuck Courter at (855) 558-3683 or visit nightlifefurniture.com.
