Retail veteran Hayes joins Weekends Only

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Furniture Today Staff — Furniture Today, August 29, 2011

HayesST. LOUIS — Weekends Only Furniture Outlet has hired Derrick Hayes as district manager, with responsibility for store leadership and directing the day-today activities of store managers at the Top 100 company.

Hayes most recently was with Cost Plus World Market out of St. Paul, Minn., where he spent seven years as district manager. Before that he was with retailer Best Buy for 16 years in various roles including regional operations manager.

“I am excited to have someone on board … with Derrick’s experience and background,” said Lane Hamm, Weekends Only chief financial officer and director of stores. “His time at Best Buy and Cost Plus adds a great deal of strength to our team as we continue on our journey to become a Top 50 furniture retailer.”

The district manager position has been vacant for about a year, with Hamm filling in while the retailer was recruiting.

With five St. Louis-area stores, Weekends Only is No. 90 on Furniture/Today’s Top 100 with estimated furniture, bedding and accessories sales last year of $47.9 million.

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Savvy Spaces wins good early reviews

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Clint Engel — Furniture Today, August 29, 2011

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Savvy Spaces, the first multi-line store by Ashley Furniture HomeStores licensee Broad River Furniture, opened to some solid consumer reviews earlier this summer.

The 36,000-square-foot showroom in the Charlotte, N.C., suburb of Pineville sits next door to the retailer’s top performing Home- Store, on a furniture row and in a former Boyles location.

The 36,000-square-foot Savvy Spaces in Charlotte, N.C.’s Pineville suburb is Broad River Furniture’s first multi-line store, offering a step-up assortment from its network of Ashley Furniture HomeStores.
Just inside the entrance of the new Savvy Spaces, the retailer pairs a one-of-kind reclaimed wood server ($979) from Jaipur Home with a Hooker dining room group with distressed country flair.

Its mix of home furnishings is designed largely to be a step up from Ashley prices without being high-end, officials said. Savvy Spaces targets a more affluent consumer with goods from sources including Jaipur

Home, Fairmont Designs, Hooker, Bernhardt and Aspenhome.

Other key suppliers include Samuel Lawrence, Leggett Platt, Franklin, Legacy Classic, Bradington-Young, Pulaski, A.R.T., Corinthian, Jackson/Catnapper, Steve Silver, New Classics, USA Premium Leather and Sealy, Stearns Foster and Tempur-Pedic in bedding.

The store soft opened July 1, but Broad River didn’t begin its advertising push until Aug. 4.

“Customers have been saying it’s unique, beautiful, nothing like it in the market,” said John McGaha, general sales manager.

Throughout the store, the retailer has played up the Savvy name – Savvy Sleep, Savvy Motion, Savvy Kids, Savvy Service – wanting to reinforce the perception that the consumer is savvy for shopping there and that the retailer is a savvy buyer. The store’s tagline is “Stylish furniture, smart choice.”

A Fairmont Designs display invites consumers to create their own sectional with modular pieces and a choice of 36 upholstery covers and 32 pillow options, with delivery within about 30 days from Fairmont’s Hickory, N.C., plant.

A Bradington-Young leather sectional, shown in what the retailer calls a “Savvy Spaces green” ($3,699), is displayed with tables from Bernhardt. The two-piece sectional also can be used as a sofa with an armless loveseat.

“It’s lack of confidence that keeps people from pulling the trigger” in home furnishings stores, said Jonathan Ishee, a partner with Charlie Malouf in Broad River, a Charlotte-based Top 100 company. “Even down to our name, we want to give people that feeling of confidence.”

Ishee and Malouf won’t disclose their investment in the new store or projected sales for the showroom, but they do project total furniture, bedding and accessories sales for all the Broad River-owned stores of $65 million this year, up from an estimated $50.7 million in 2010. And with additional expansion, they are looking for $75 million to $85 million in 2012.

Broad River will open its 13th Ashley Furniture HomeStore in Fayetteville, N.C., Sept. 1 and plans to roll into the Raleigh, N.C., market with the dedicated store concept later. It currently operates 12 HomeStores in the Carolinas and Augusta, Ga.

The owners say Savvy Spaces offers an assortment of traditional to contemporary furniture and home accents that consumers are “not going to see across the street.”

A tagging system, explained on display towers in the store, breaks down goods into three types: “select,” or core goods; “one-of-a-kind” items, with unique finishes or wood grain patterns, for instance, where no two pieces are exactly alike (and are sold off the floor); and “showroom stock,” such as possible closeouts or other goods that also get pulled and delivered from the floor.

“Customers have loved the shopping experience,” Malouf said.

“We’ll continue to update it, tweak it, keep it fresh,” he said, adding, “I feel confident as we begin to advertise the brand, sales to go in the direction we want to see them go in. We’ve been very pleased so far.”

Savvy Spaces hosts industry guests at store opening

Sandy Rose, left, Fairmont Designs and Jaipur Home, and Brooke Harrington, Broad River Furniture and Savvy Spaces, Charlotte, N.C.
Ty Coleman, left, and Roxanne Stevens, Sealy; Charlie Malouf and Jonathan Ishee, Broad River Furniture and Savvy Spaces, Charlotte, N.C.; and Scott Warlick, Sealy.
Patrick Tully, left, Rowe Furniture; John McGaha, Savvy Spaces, Charlotte, N.C.; and Ben Rush, Aspenhome.

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The Power and Glory of Cheesy TV Commercials

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An insider’s guide to small-business marketing.

I recently saw a list of cheesy local TV commercials that got me laughing and thinking. Why exactly do these spots have such a time-honored place in our culture?

In Corpus Christi, Tex., where I grew up, the high priest of the daytime local genre was Mr. Louie of Mr. Louie’s Wig City. Day after day, he took to the airwaves, entering our living rooms while standing in front of hundreds of Styrofoam heads, each with a thousand-mile stare and some kind of Eva Gabor number on top. He’d shout their names as if they were horses coming down the home stretch: the Aspire! The Invitation! The Lite and Airy and Cheer! The Perk!

The grand finale of the spots was Mr. L, in solidarity with his target audience, wearing something that looked like coal on his head, and in full-on monotone, delivering the line that somehow seemed to make female follicles sit up: “Ladies, if your hair is not becoming to you, you should be coming to us!” The camera holds for three full seconds and then pulls back to show the support group of big-haired but vacant faces. Fade to black. Many years later, this commercial — $200 to produce, tops — still occupies a shelf in my brain.

But was it effective advertising? Clearly, a lot of other local advertisers thought so. In the New York metro area, Crazy Eddie, the electronics retailer who filled 30 seconds as if he had a vest with explosive devices underneath his Santa suit that would detonate if his decibel level dropped, will not soon be forgotten. Atlanta had the Wolfman and sidekick Donna, pitching sofas. Indiana has Butt Drugs, a sing-along spot with the cheeky line “free parking in the rear.” Houston has Mattress Mack and Gallery Furniture (voted the worst and best TV ads in the Houston Chronicle in the ’80s)  and the newer Houston furniture store pitchman making a run for the bedding crown, Hilton the Chainsaw Guy of Hilton Furniture — who wound up being treated to 15 minutes of precious national TV fame courtesy of Conan O’Brien.

These pitchmen — because they’re so good? because they’re so bad? — often ignite their own celebrity, expanding their companies and hanging with sports stars and writing best-selling business books.

These commercials  just keep coming, so they must be getting results. This is professionally painful for me to acknowledge, but some of these spots are very effective in making sales. Here are some thoughts as to why we respond to the high cheese factor:

The spots are memorable. The higher the cheese, the more we gawk. Like a bad wreck, we just can’t look away. They give us something to talk about around the water cooler, a common frenemy to have fun with and, perhaps, feel a little superior to.

We secretly like being yelled at. Cheesy commercials dislodge us from couch-potato stupors. They get our attention.

We have a weakness for faux celebrities. Spokespeople create their own celebrity by putting themselves in front of a camera and buying airtime. Recently, finding myself across the salad bar sneeze shield from a local chiropractor who “stars” in his own TV spots, I got a bump in my pumps — even though he was a lot shorter than he comes across on TV!

We kind of like being told what to do. Yes, we like to think we make our own decisions, but when someone directs us to “Come on down and see me!” we often respond like dogs to bones.

And yet, I continue to believe that there are alternatives. Let’s look at a car dealer whose ads are highly entertaining, memorable, achieve results and are of another genre altogether. The ad agency R/West was hired by the Suburban Auto Group of Sandy, Ore. (about 45 minutes from Portland) in 2004 to create some TV spots. The series of Trunk Monkey ads that resulted were entertaining and affordable to produce — each on less than the dealer’s cost of a new car.

“It’s about recall,” said Sean Blixseth, founder of R/West. “We work in this industry that is sort of paralyzed by the idea that you have to put a lot of information in an ad to get someone to pick up the phone and call you, when sometimes all you need is to get someone to remember you.”

People remember the Trunk Monkey ads and that memory and association — unlike more typical car dealer ads — is positive. The subtle brilliance of these spots is that the whole question of “Do I trust this car dealer?” is whisked off the table. Consumers unconsciously take away that Suburban and its tire-jack-wielding primate are looking out for you. Today, the Suburban Auto Group is one of the top Chevy and Corvette dealers in the Northwest. It also sells thousands of Trunk Monkey T-shirts a year.

The beauty of a good commercial — especially in the age of YouTube — is this: when it’s highly memorable, businesses can spend a lot less on media and get solid returns. According to Mr. Blixseth, the Trunk Monkey series has well over a million YouTube hits. The media value of those views is off the charts.

So, can we step away from the cheese? Or are these kinds of spots — and here’s one more personal favorite — just too much of who we are? What do you think?

View from 500 feet: Back to work for Hampton Roads – The Virginian

When the winds died and the rain stopped and high tide passed for the second time, the people of Hampton Roads went back to work. It was a sunny, cloudless day, and now that the 500-mile-wide Hurricane Irene had dragged past, the rest of the weekend could not be wasted.

Too much time had been spent already. People had used Thursday and Friday and most of Saturday preparing for the storm, moving trash cans, lifting furniture from low-lying rooms, and picking up potential backyard projectiles.

By early Sunday afternoon, from a helicopter 500 feet up, it was clear Irene was no Isabel, the last hurricane to cripple the region. By Sunday, Hampton Roads was already trying desperately to get back to its routine.

That is not to say the view from 500 feet is to look upon a hurricane miracle. The bones of a couple of houses picked apart by tornadoes in Sandbridge were instantly recognizable. A few buildings without roofs – or, more commonly, without a part of their roof – were visible, but so were the guys working on them.

Every five minutes, houses that had become islands enveloped in the small sea of their yard appeared on the horizon, but they were surrounded by hundreds of others with intact roofs and debris-spotted yards.

Is this the look of luck? Is this the fashion, not of an over-hyped storm, but of faring better than expected?

Creeks throughout Hampton Roads were swollen with cola-colored water. Fields appeared covered in sweat – a light perspiration, not a serious soaking.

Yes, there was evidence a hurricane had been here. A construction sign knocked over. Tires floating in a tributary. Adirondack chairs blown apart. The Great Dismal Swamp fire was mostly doused, but refused to be extinguished.

The roads moved with a certain eeriness, gentle without the traffic from evacuees. At a Walmart parking lot, pickups showed off, proving they can brave the water. Others pulled trailers filled with yard debris.

On a property near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, someone had installed plywood to protect the windows, then wrote in black spray paint, “Don’t Be Mean, Irene.”

She wasn’t.

In southern Chesapeake, swimming pools needed to be cleaned and baseball diamonds needed to be raked. Golf course water traps looked less pristine. In many neighborhoods, Dominion Power crews tended to lines.

The Oceanfront was dotted with brightly colored coolers and beach umbrellas and surfers on longboards. One of the last weekends of summer was not to be wasted. Elsewhere in Virginia Beach, construction crews pushed sand from places it’s not supposed to be.

In Ocean View, a few lots held water, even during low tide. Trash cans floated aimlessly. Across Hampton Roads, pine trees – and they are almost always pine trees – had fallen, whipped out of the ground indiscriminately.

The numbers from Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management, not the view from a helicopter, present a dramatically different portrait.

Power companies are reporting 1.1 million outages, some that may last a week or more, affecting about 2.5 million people. Virginia state troopers responded to 292 crashes and 462 calls for highway hazards or road debris. Fewer than 3,000 people statewide are in shelters.

But from 500 feet up and moving at 100 miles an hour, faster than the storm, Irene no longer seems all that overwhelming. You can see people in neighborhoods, congregating and talking, but you can’t hear what they’re saying. You can see homes that look safe, but don’t know if the residents are without power and mourning ruined furniture or if they escaped untouched and are watching a movie on demand in HD in 72 degree air conditioning.

You can see people in tank tops and shorts, but can’t tell if they smell like rotting fruit from too little hot water or like an exotic shampoo from the hotel where they rode out the storm Saturday night.

In Newport News, the Lowe’s parking lot was packed. There was work to be done. In almost every neighborhood, it was easy to spot people who had spent days preparing for the storm, now sitting on their riding mowers and raking their yards and hauling their wheelbarrows and, of course, starting their leaf blowers to blow back what Irene had left.

There was no time to waste. Every hour, everything was getting a little closer to normal, a little closer to forgetting about all the work.

But before the helicopter landed at Suffolk Executive Airport, an orange cube appeared right there on the runway – a portable toilet, tossed 200 yards and lying on its side.

One more thing to be cleaned up.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss

What’s News for Aug. 28:

NEENAH — The law firm of DiRenzo Bomier has opened a second office in Oshkosh at 420 S. Koeller St., Suite 308, in the Anchor Bank building off U.S. 41. Attorney Todd Slagter, who focuses primarily on estate planning, probate matters and tax law, will be based at the Oshkosh office. Additionally, other DiRenzo Bomier attorneys will offer their services at both locations as needed. DiRenzo Bomier is planning an open house from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 15.

APPLETON — Christina Winch of Winch Financial Services recently was named to the Sports Financial Advisor Association the same week the company landed on the Bloomberg Wealth Manager’s Top Wealth Manager’s list. Winch also was named to Financial Advisor Magazine’s list of Top Financial Advisors in the country. The SFAA was created in 2004 to promote a network of licensed financial professionals that provide first-class financial planning expertise to professional athletes, coaches, players associations and athletic organizations.

GRAND CHUTE — Culinary Arts students representing Fox Valley Technical College’s first-ever Grilling, Smoking, and BBQ class competed as two teams in a national barbecue competition in Montello, sponsored by the Kansas City Barbecue Society. The class is part of a new certificate offering in Advanced Culinary Arts. Forty-one teams from around the nation competed in four different categories. Awards were given to top 10 finishers in the chicken, ribs, pork shoulder and beef brisket categories. The FVTC students’ earned sixth- and 12th-place team finishes, respectively. Individually, three FVTC students earned top 10 finishes, including Bob Nelson, fifth place in the beef brisket category; Emily Hoskins, sixth place in the chicken competition; and Scott Strand, who landed an eighth-place finish in the pork shoulder contest. Other participating FVTC students in the competitions included Allie Schuls, Katie Oskey, Miranda Peyketewa, Eric Williamson and Charlie Stephens.

KIEL — Amerequip Corp. recently was awarded ISO-9001:2008 registration after successfully completing a compliance audit in July by Verisys Registrars of Brookfield. Amerequip is a manufacturer of custom-designed equipment; common applications are attachments for compact and subcompact tractors including backhoes, front loaders, mower decks and snowblowers, as well as other highly engineered components. It has an engineering center in New Holstein and three manufacturing facilities, including welding, forming, machining, paint and assembly, in New Holstein and Kiel. ISO-9001-2008 is a family of standards that is associated with quality management systems, and a common-sense approach to business activities for achieving customer satisfaction.

APPLETON — Dimensions Salon, N162 Eisenhower Drive, is now owned by Amy and Lee Van Grinsven. Dimensions offers hair cuts, colors, perms, extensions, highlights and additional services for women, men and children of all ages. The salon has 23 stylists with up to 35 years of experience.

APPLETON — Appetize Inc. in Appleton; Buckhorn Supper Club in Milton; Hospitality Group in Wauwatosa; and Terry Bolland, owner of the Summertime Restaurant in Fish Creek, were honored as Wisconsin finalists for the National Restaurant Association Restaurant Neighbor Award. Appetize Inc., a HuHot Mongolian Grill franchiser in Appleton, was honored in the midsize business category for its focus on positively affecting every restaurant guest and employee, but also the neighborhoods they serve. Through its Making Community Impacts program, Appetize donates 1.5 percent of each month’s gross sales to a different nonprofit group.

KIMBERLY — Capital Credit Union recently announced the seven recipients chosen from among 49 applicants to each receive a $1,000 scholarship. They are Marisa Thome, Appleton North High School; Ben Vanden Boogaard, Little Chute High School; Benjamin Lamers, Appleton East High School; Alexandra Van Cuyk, Kaukauna High School; Courtney Gonnering, Freedom High School; Andrew Schultz, Kimberly High School; and Nicholas Anderson, Hortonville High School.

BROOKFIELD — Wisconsin Lift Truck Corp., which has a Green Bay location, has been awarded Most Valuable Partner status for 2011 in a new program from the Material Handling Equipment Dealers Association for its distributor members. To earn the award, the company demonstrated a commitment to business excellence, professionalism and good stewardship. MVP status requires a company’s commitment to excellence in industry relations, customer relations, peer-to-peer networking, education for employees and best practices.

GREEN BAY — KI has entered will purchase Sebel Furniture Limited from GWA Group Ltd., an Australian-based supplier of building fixtures and fittings to households and commercial properties. Sebel Furniture a manufacturer and supplier of educational furniture in Australia with operations in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. Sebel Furniture will continue to operate as a standalone division of KI. Sebel Furniture will maintain its product portfolio of education furniture solutions, which will continue to be marketed and manufactured — along with select KI products — in its current markets and territories. Sebel Furniture management and staff will remain in place and unaffected by this acquisition. KI manufactures furniture and wall system solutions for education, health care, government and corporate markets.

STEVENS POINT — Delta Dental of Wisconsin received two prizes at the 2011 Communicator Awards, presented by the International Academy of the Visual Arts. Delta Dental’s creative team won silver awards in the branded content corporate image categories. Delta Dental of Wisconsin provides benefits and services to more than 1.4 million subscribers and their families.

FAIRLAWN, Ohio — Omnova Solutions, which has a Green Bay location, recently announced its 2010 Technology Award recipients. This annual award program recognizes exemplary technological contributions by associates in Omnova’s research and development, sales and marketing, technical service, operations, product management, Lean SixSigma and strategic sourcing organizations. Regional employees receiving recognition include Rick Ellenberg and Mark Siebers, both of Sherwood; Pam Arndorfer of Green Bay; Mark Pomush of Ashwaubenon; and Scott Sabourin of Greenville.

DE PERE — C.A. Lawton, a provider of large cast iron components, completed the first phase in the planned expansion of its sand delivery system. The company added silos and other key components to its sand system to increase its foundry production.

New ‘GIB Villa’ for luxury furniture opens

By A Staff Reporter – MUSCAT — German Interior Brands (GIB), a new company under Hashimani Group, was recently formally inaugurated by Dr Fuad bin Jaafar al Sajwani, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries.
The “GIB Villa”, is the first of its kind luxury furniture and interior designer store in Oman. In an ambience perfectly suited for those with an interest in living in design, the “GIB Villa” offers a combination of brand names, styles and price ranges for the office, home and outdoors, including a variety of bedrooms, living rooms, baby rooms, dining areas, TV units, kitchens, lightings, wooden flooring, rugs with complementing accessories and pieces of original art to ornament the décor.
Hashimani Group has been in the furniture market since the 1960s, when it was established among a few existing companies at that time and one of the first furniture companies. Noticing the increase in demand for designs that are contemporary and of high quality and supported by an overall interior designing concept, Hashimani Group has obtained franchises of more than 20 leading and most renowned German and European furniture brands to offer a mix of modern and trendy furniture.
Their offerings serve home owners, integrated residential projects, hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, offices and business centres.
“The concept behind GIB is that when anyone walks in the “GIB Villa” they get a feel of what it is we can offer, in a serene atmosphere we slowly uncover what they have in mind and then present them an overall interior designing concept best suited to their taste”, explained Hassan Hashimani the founder of GIB and the Managing Director of Hashimani Group.
Elie Canaan, also the founder and General Manager of GIB, is an interior designer by profession with more than 15 years of experience.
He has dealt with large projects for homes, housing projects, hotels, business centres and restaurants across Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Commenting during the occasion, “what differentiates us from other furniture stores is that we offer a concept of a contemporary modern interior design. We assist the client throughout the whole
process, from the designing stage, setting up of the furniture pieces all the way to the final artistic touches of accessories and décor”.
The furniture is also customised to the customers’ desire, they can choose from a wide range of colours, sizes, fabrics or materials for any type of set-up like a walk-in closet for the bedrooms, or a customised kitchen with appliances.
Hashimani Group had signed this year a contract with “Muriya” to supply furniture to their villa and apartment projects in Jebel Sifah and Salalah beach.

Bigger likely not better for thrift store therapy

For 32 years, the Salvation Army Thrift Boutique on Sumner’s Main Street has offered retail therapy at its best and most thorough.

All that ends today.

The little shop of someone else’s treasures closes forever after a week of deep discounts and rueful tears.

When it opened, second-hand stores were small, local ways to do right by one’s former sofa while doing good for one’s favorite charity. You could drop the couch off in the morning, see it displayed that afternoon and loaded into a pickup truck that evening. The purchaser got a good deal, and the nonprofit got down to good works.

The Thrift Boutique most recently supported the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center in Seattle. The regional program helps 125 men and 12 women beat addictions and get jobs: retail therapy, literally.

To support rising demand for their services, charities such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army are going big to compete in the thrift industry. That means closing small shops and opening superstores.

“We need to have enough product in the store for all styles and tastes. We need to be in a larger format to make that happen,” said David Puszczewicz, the Salvation Army’s director of operations.

“Call me Dave P.,” he added.

Let’s do.

“Our stores are not always in the best spaces with the best parking in the right size,” Dave said.

Sumner’s is 5,000 square feet, in a much-walked downtown with parking out back. It has suited its customers and the community well, but it does not fit the Salvation Army’s evolving sales strategy.

Salvation Army stores have a central distribution center in Seattle where employees, including people in its programs, sort, clean and repair donations that are then trucked out to the stores. That worked when gas wasn’t hugging $4 a gallon.

It’s more economical now, Dave P. said, to have a regional super store in space big enough to handle donations and repairs on site.

He’s looking for space in the Sumner-Puyallup area, he said. He’d like it to be on a bus route, with lots of parking and between 19,000 and 25,000 square feet. He’d like to buy or lease it and make the inside nice enough to provide a pleasant shopping experience.

If there’s room, he’d like to see an upholstery shop for the high-quality older furniture that comes in, or a computer repair workshop.

All of that, he said, would be better for shoppers, clients and the mission.

None of that is a comfort to the Sumner boutique’s clientele, or the people who love the South Hill, Burien and Renton stores that will close next month.

Love is not an overstatement.

Carol Smith, who volunteers at the South Hill shop, said customers have cried over the news. So have employees looking for work in a tough market.

So did Christine Johnson, 62, of Orting, when she stopped at the Sumner store to confirm the bad news.

Delighted as she was with her hand-thrown $1 teapot in pink, mint and earth tones, she teared up while talking with her old friend Claudia Rosengard, 61, of Lake Tapps.

Rosengard has worked at Salvation Army shops for 22 years, most of them in Sumner.

It’s where she and Johnson, who went to school together as kids, met again.

“This is a great store for friendship and community,” Johnson said. “You don’t just come here to shop. You come here to visit.”

It’s been a restful stop for customers waging medical battles, she said. They stop in for a break and a bargain and a little conversation: retail therapy.

One woman, she recalled, would make a day of it, arriving in the morning with her small dog, browsing, stepping out for lunch, occasionally resting on the furniture, letting the staff members pamper her and make much of the pup: retail therapy.

It has always been a spot where the perfect, unexpected item shows up as if it were part of some cosmic interior design plan.

Johnson’s teapot, Rosengard observed, will look great next to the mint-green Sunbeam mixer she bought for $35 last month.

“I talked him out of it,” Johnson said of her shop friend Jeff Pickard, 56, of Sumner.

“But I finally got the dough hook,” he said.

He’s also built a teapot and art collection out of the store.

“It has the most best things in the smallest space,” said Linda Jones, 58, of Sumner. “They tend to be higher price, but you don’t have to paw through a lot of junk.”

You could find a wedding dress, as a young woman was doing on Wednesday. You could find a hand-painted cabinet. You could find new Franco Sarto shoes, walking out the door for $3.75.

“You can be at ease here,” said manager Eira Conley, 31, of Des Moines. “It’s the best place I’ve ever worked. Seeing everyone just so happy. People walk in just to say hello, or to give you a hug, or some food, or flowers.”

If a new superstore can achieve that, it will be a retail miracle.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677 kathleen.merryman@ thenewstribune.com