SHUTTER ALERT: GABBERT’S

Gabbert’s Furniture and Design Studio is closing after 32 years in Dallas. This is not a surprise. When Florida-based Robb & Stucky entered the market about five years ago, rather than reinventing themselves, Gabberts responded by organizing its showroom into “lifestyle vignettes” — essentially the R&S showroom formula. Google Gabbert’s and you discover it doesn’t even have a website. In a market as competitive as Dallas the only way you an be all things to all people is to be as large as Robb & Stucky. You can’t be a quart-sized generalist, as Covins, a pint-sized now defunct generalist, proved. Fingers crossed that a company with imagination picks up the pieces.