Ogden, Utah, October 4---As times change, so does the nature of the retail business. In the 21st century, many of the most successful retailers have lived by the "bigger is better" mantra, according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner.
Experts say this trend applies to furniture stores as much as any other retail segment, and it's playing out in the Top of Utah as smaller stores are struggling to stay profitable in a tightening and increasingly competitive business environment.
The slow economy of recent years, increased competition, and a shift in production overseas have combined to make tough times for local furniture sellers, especially the smaller ones that have been fixtures in their communities for decades.
"A lot of these stores opened after World War II, when G.I.s were coming home with money in their pockets," said Mary Frye, president of the Dallas-based Home Furnishings International Association. "Anything the stores could get their hands on, they could sell. Now, there are so many options and variables in the furniture business that anytime you make a sale, you've really accomplished something."
Gary Blacker, president of Blacker Furniture in Willard, said all of the above factors contributed to his family's decision to close their business after 45 years. The store will close around the end of this year, Blacker said.
"Our industry was hurting before 9-11," he said, "and since then, there have been more negatives than positives."
Blacker Furniture was opened in 1959 by Fred Blacker, Gary's father. It expanded with a new showroom and warehouse in the 1970s, and did very well during the 1980s and early 1990s, but then Blacker started to notice a shift that began to eat into the store's profits.
"In the late `90s, everything started to be imported from overseas, mostly from China," he said. While the price of the furniture itself did not change significantly, the added costs and logistics of shipping have become prohibitive for many smaller retailers who are unable to obtain the necessary credit, Blacker said.
"Creditors have become very leery because they've been burned lately," he said. "Individual stores are having trouble maintaining the lines of credit that help with cash flow."
Local furniture stores of all sizes have struggled in the recent economic downturn, but the smaller operations with limited assets have had the hardest time, Frye said. While the shift to production overseas has had the biggest impact on manufacturers, it has also trickled down to the retail level.
"The big guys can go direct and buy from China, while the little guys have to go through distributors," she said. "The smaller stores are always going to be paying more for merchandise because they can't cut out the layers between where it's produced and where it's sold."
Single-store operations aren't the only ones taking a hit locally. Salt Lake City media outlets have reported recently that Salt Lake City-based Granite Furniture, Utah's oldest family-owned furniture retailer, is holding liquidation sales in order to pay off creditors and stay afloat.
Several reports have stated that Granite plans to close and sell its Layton store, as it did earlier this year with its Orem location, which would leave it with two Salt Lake City stores. Vice president John Richards, Jr. said the company is not currently commenting on its financial situation, saying only that "we're holding sales at our stores for a couple of months."
Still, there are modern-day success stories in the industry. Retail furniture is a more than $1.3 billion dollar business in Utah, and more than half of that volume comes from R.C. Willey, which was founded in Syracuse when Rufus Call Willey opened his first store there in 1949 after selling furniture door-to-door for 17 years.
The company now has 13 stores in three states.
