Are old-fashioned furniture stores an endangered species?
Apr 19, 2018Now, there is just one.In Cross Plains, Feiner Home Furnishings will be out of businessby May, and Achenbach Furniture and Floor Covering in Boscobelclosed in 2010.Blanchardville at one time had a furniture store, as didMontfort, Dodgeville, Cuba City, Cambridge and Jefferson.But despite a struggling economy and the growth of big-boxstores in larger cities, some independent furniture stores remainviable and often are the centerpiece of a community's downtownbusiness district."Our secret is overhead," said Anthony Ayers, whose unclestarted Ayers Furniture in Ridgeway in 1940. "There's nothingexciting about our store. We keep the overhead very low."Name a small village or city, and at some point it was likelyhome to a family-owned furniture store or, in some cases, acombination furniture store and funeral home, many with roots tothe 1800s.Some have closed because of economics, others because theirowners were at retirement age and a buyer was nowhere to be found.Sometimes, it was a combination of the two, which was the case forMike Schutz, 66, and Ron Brunner, 67, who purchased their store onCross Plains' Main Street in 1979 from Al and Mary Feiner.The Feiners purchased the store in 1957. For decades beforethat, it was a funeral home.Schutz and Brunner transformed the store into a high-end shopwith such things as $12,000 leather sofas, $2,500 recliners andcherry entertainment centers for $6,000. Not surprisingly, thestore's customer base comes primarily from the Madison area andthroughout south-central Wisconsin.Over the past three years, revenue tumbled by 55 percent."There's a smaller market for that kind of merchandise," Schutzsaid. "We depended a lot on new homes and that's not takingplace."Schutz said the pending reconstruction of Main Street, whichwill eliminate parking in front of the building, helped solidifythe decision to close.But furniture and bedding sales will continue to be a growthindustry, according to a forecast by the trade publicationFurniture/Today. Its report, published in December, predicts salesto increase to $96 billion by 2016 from an esti... (Wisconsin State Journal)
