Losantville, IN, September 26, 2006--A longtime East Central Indiana carpet store, the Big Losantville Carpet Outlet -- a longtime fixture along U.S. 35 southeast of Muncie -- closed earlier this month, according to The Star Press.
The building was locked and dark last week, and paper covered the glass doors. Signs and banners still decorated the outside of the building, but the store -- owned in recent years by Don Barrett Jr. -- closed after a mid-September sale.
On Monday, The Star Press received a letter from Don Barrett Jr. blaming many factors -- from Hurricane Katrina to rising energy costs to East Central Indiana plant layoffs -- for the store's closing.
The closing caught some customers off guard. Muncie resident Erin Griffith and her husband just bought a new house and ordered $1,800 worth of carpeting. She paid $1,000 down in July and waited -- and waited -- to hear from the Losantville store.
After learning that the store had closed, Griffith finally got in touch with a representative.
"I asked, 'Can we just have our money back?'" Griffith said. "She said there's no money."
On Saturday, Griffith was able to get her carpeting, but as she noted, "No padding and no install and no delivery and no one to tear the old carpeting out."
The Losantville store was open for a mid-September, one-day sale. Since then, according to Barrett's letter, the store and $240,000 in inventory has been in the hands of creditors.
Barrett wrote that he was glad to have paid down his debts in the final months of operation.
"While I regret greatly that we couldn't keep the store going, I am proud that we stayed long enough to knock the payables down and take some of the sting out of what could have been much worse," he wrote.
The store has been in financial trouble before. Between the periods when the older and younger Barretts owned the store, another owner drove it into bankruptcy.
Longtime players in the carpet and flooring business told The Star Press that while they feel pressure from big box competitors like Lowes, it was possible to survive and even thrive in the local flooring market.
Keith Lambert -- who owns Keith Lambert Flooring in Muncie -- worked at the Losantville store for 12 years.
"It's kind of a shame it closed," Lambert said. "It had been around for so long."
Lambert said the flooring market in the area was tough.
"Did the market get stiff with competition?" Lambert asked. "Yes, there are too many stories in Muncie for the population."
Ron Stafford, who owns Kenny's Floor Covering in Muncie and has been in business for 49 years, said, "Lowes is probably the biggest competitor.
"People feel like at the big box stores, they can get a better deal," Stafford said, adding that was not the case. "We are busy and we take care of our business and try not to worry about the others. We get a tremendous amount of business. We've done something right in 49 years."
