User:Kate City/sandbox

City Furniture is a furniture manufacturer and retailer headquartered in South Florida. The company originally began in 1971 when founder Kevin Koenig opened Waterbed City in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The popularity of flotation sleep systems and Waterbed City's store led to additional store openings until waterbeds began to fall out of favor in 1989.

Five years later, Kevin Koenig, along with his brother Keith Koenig and several other childhood friends, reinvented Waterbed City into City Furniture. The first of many full-line furniture stores, City Furniture opened its first location in August 1994.

Today, City Furniture owns and operates approximately sixteen retail locations that encompass both coasts of South Florida and into Central Florida ; City Furniture has also partnered with Ashley Furniture and has 10 Ashley Furniture HomeStores, with several additional stores slated to open in 2014.

City Furniture also manufactures their own line of upholstered furniture under its Kevin Charles Upholstery, named in honor of the late founder of City Furniture, Kevin Koenig. The Kevin Charles Upholstery brand is hand assembled in New Albany, Mississippi. City Furniture has also taken their Kevin Charles proprietary brand and expanded it to include other furniture categories by designing, developing, and sourcing these goods throughout the world.

History
In the summer of 1971, founder Kevin Charles Koenig took a vacation to Providence, Rhode Island, where he worked in a small shop during his stay. When he returned to South Florida, he used his earnings to open Waterbed City. The first Waterbed City location opened on the corner of Commerical Boulevard and Dixie Highway in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (now recognized as Oakland Park, Florida). Soon after, Waterbed City grew to become the biggest seller of waterbeds in South Florida.

After a successful opening of Waterbed City's first location, Kevin Koenig was joined by his younger brother, Keith Koenig, and his childhood friends, Mike Lennon, Garry Ikola and Steve Wilder.

These men began partnering with manufacturers in North Carolina to add casegoods such as dressers, nightstands and mirrors to be sold along with their line of waterbeds.

In 1989, after 17 years of steady growth, the waterbed industry reached a plateau, to which the Koenig brothers and their friends responded by introducing conventional innerspring mattresses to their product offering. Five years later, Waterbed City evolved into City Furniture.

City Furniture opened in August 1994 with its first retail location in North Miami.

Products
City Furniture retails a variety of types of furniture; although it began as a waterbed retailer, it currently sells furniture for all rooms in a home, from living room to home office and outdoor furniture.