Restoration Hardware Bets on Mansion Stores and Money

All bulked up with cavernous stores and an expanded merchandise assortment, Restoration Hardware is building muscle in the hotly competitive home furnishings space. The retailer is undergoing what CEO Gary Friedman calls a "real estate transformation" as it ditches small-format stores and goes in for larger ones, including Full Line Design galleries ranging from around 14,000 square feet to roughly 45,000 square feet of interior space. Restoration Hardware is also upping its game on the merchandising front by expanding assortments, raising the page count of its catalogs and adding catalogs in new categories such as rugs.