Oneonta, NY, July 20--After half a century in business, a downtown home improvement store is rolling up its carpets, according to the Daily Star, Oneonta, NY.
Samsons Decorating Warehouse owner James Reeks Jr. said he’ll close the 11 Elm Street store at the end of the month.
Having run the store for 28 years, many of those alongside his father, Reeks said he’s getting out of retail.
"I want to do something else for the next 20 years of my life," he said. "There are a couple avenues I’m exploring as for what I’d like to do, but I haven’t decided."
Signs announcing a July 31 on-premise auction and the availability of the 6,000 square-foot first floor for commercial lease have hung in the store’s windows for the better part of this month.
"We’ve been thinking about closing for the past two years," he said. "We made the decision in January."
Reeks, 48, said the store’s one other employee got a job with cross-city rival Endwell Rug. The store will be open during its regular hours until the auction, he said.
Monday afternoon, customers trickled in, flipped through display racks and meandered down rows of towering rolls of carpet remnants in shades of reds, tans and blues.
Although the store has offered a wide selection of products, Oneonta’s home-improvement section is also well-stocked, offering Endwell Rug, a recently opened Home Depot and Bellevue Builders, which was purchased by a larger chain this spring.
If that weren’t enough, a Lowe’s on Southside is in the offing.
"We were ahead of our time with Lowe’s and Home Depot," Reeks said. "We were a one-stop store with carpet, wallpaper, tiles, paint — everything to decorate your house with."
Reeks can go on at length about low-pile carpets, Berber, cut-and-loop, synthetic and natural fibers or linoleum tiles, but he said Monday he was thinking about the building itself.
The flooring and home-improvement business itself was opened in the 1950s, Reeks said, and later owned by his father, James Reeks Sr.
