Value City Furniture

Value City Furniture is a regional home furnishings retailer that sells mid-priced furniture and mattresses for the whole home, including living room, dining, bedroom, and décor, with a focus on value-conscious households across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast as of November 2025.[2] It operates as one of the two main retail brands of American Signature, Inc., a family-owned company based in Columbus, Ohio, that also runs the American Signature Furniture banner.[2]

The company’s origins go back to the Schottenstein family’s retail operations in Columbus, where the dedicated furniture business took shape in the mid-20th century and ultimately grew into the Value City Furniture chain.[2] In 2002, American Signature, Inc. was created as the parent company and vertically integrated manufacturer for both Value City Furniture and American Signature Furniture, giving the business the ability to design and source its own product while also buying from many outside vendors.[2] That structure has allowed Value City Furniture to offer a wide assortment under one roof, blending in-house brands with well-known manufacturers to keep price points and selection competitive for mass-market shoppers.[2]

As of November 2025, American Signature, Inc. operates roughly 120 stores across the Value City Furniture and American Signature Furniture brands, with locations in about 17 states and a larger concentration of Value City Furniture units in core Midwest and Mid-Atlantic markets such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Maryland, and West Virginia.[2] Public reporting indicates that the combined banners employ around 3,000 people, and that after restructuring, the company expects to keep roughly three-quarters of its stores open, resulting in a smaller but still meaningful regional footprint.[2]

Over the decades, Value City Furniture grew from a small regional operator into a multi-state chain, adding stores steadily through the 1970s, 1990s, and beyond as it moved into new Midwestern and Eastern markets.[2] In the last five years, the brand has been particularly active in taking over large boxes vacated by other furniture retailers, including several former Art Van Furniture showrooms in Michigan, which gave it a faster path into established furniture shopping corridors.[2] This approach has kept the chain present in the kinds of big-box formats and suburban trade areas that remain important to furniture shopping trips, even as the overall portfolio is being reevaluated.[2]

In November 2025, American Signature, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while stating an intention to keep the business operating and to pursue a sale through a stalking horse process, with a plan to emerge with a reduced but healthier store base.[2] The restructuring involves closing a meaningful number of underperforming locations across both banners and trimming exposure in certain markets, while signaling an emphasis on core Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic regions where the company has long-standing brand recognition.[2] For property owners and leasing teams, this period represents both a source of near-term vacancy as some boxes go dark and an opportunity to work with a still-active regional anchor that is re-focusing on its strongest markets.[2]

Today, Value City Furniture continues to function as a full-line furniture anchor, typically operating in large-format showrooms that can act as traffic drivers within power centers, freestanding big-box sites, and open-air retail projects.[2] Its long history in key Midwest markets, combined with a vertically integrated supply and merchandising platform, makes the brand a recognizable and credible tenant in the home furnishings category for landlords evaluating anchor mixes and backfill strategies.[2] Even while the parent company restructures, Value City Furniture maintains a value-driven, promotional stance with broad assortment and financing options that tend to pair well with grocery, discount, and soft-goods anchors in regional retail environments.[2]