furniture outlet near me

After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is shutting down.

Ruth got his start at the furniture industry driving a delivery truck and getting his neighborhood buddies to assist him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Now, health problems are currently forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.

"I'm going to keep on working. I got to deliver all this furniture"

This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a going-out-of-business sale. Twenty-two decades ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the inventory.



Paradoxically, the firm that assisted him with all the retirement sale back is helping him with this going-out-of-business sale.

Ruth, 87, still does business like he always did. His store doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I don't email," he explained. "Only been a couple of years ago we have a computer for bookkeeping."

Gerard's includes a focus on luxury furniture created out of premium leather.

"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going to the boats. It's gambling. You do not understand what you going to have," he said. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."

Ruth started working in the furniture business during his senior year in Baton Rouge High in Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU, then joined the Coast Guard.

In 1953, he returned to Baton Rouge and also to his job with the furniture shop.



"I had been making $35 per week at Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he explained.

During that time he was a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a catalyst for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine which won the prestigious and dangerous Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain.

With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became buddies through the ship races. Gottlieb backed some teams.

Ruth got a call. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his kids weren't interested in taking over the enterprise. Would Ruth be interested in owning a furniture store?

Gottlieb advised him to check the store out, and he'd help him fund the offer if he was other interested.

"It was a nice shop, and I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth explained. The issue was money. Selma, ruth and his wife, had just had their second child, and he needed a couple hundred bucks after paying the hospital bill. However he'd have a $10,000 life insurance policy he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance policy to the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to make it."

The Furniture of gerard started at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. During the day, Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he delivered the items he offered.

At that moment, the trend in furniture has been Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. A successful Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth he had to find some of those items in the store to ensure it is effective. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to buy the furnitureso he got them to ship three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture on credit to Gerard's and phoned a Virginia manufacturer. "That cranked business up," Ruth said. "We offered out the hell of that furniture."

A few decades after, Ruth heard about a shop.

"It cost $2 million to revive the whole building," he said.

The Florida Boulevard place of the Furniture of Gerard opened around 1975. The shop won acclaim for its completeness of this choice, which included artwork, furniture, fabrics, rugs and accessories. 1 area is filled with George Rodrigue prints in the 1970s. His son Larry prints in another area of the store and has a gallery of original Louisiana art.

To round out the selection at Gerard's, Ruth visits with the furniture markets in North Carolina.

"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in good taste and standard furniture," he said. "The people who buy fine furniture want to sit inside, would like to feel it, and if they have any understanding at all, unzip it and see what is inside ."

Over the years, Ruth has had health problems, including diabetes and cancer. He was diagnosed with lung disease. That led the store to shut after meeting with four children and his wife.

"I got outvoted," he said. The decision was made to liquidate the organization, because his kids have professional occupations.

"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four children, send them off to school -- and not need to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from trouble," he explained.

Regardless of his years in check this business, Ruth stated he chose overnight to shut the shop.

"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture store," he said.

He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his kids find things in the store to help decorate their own houses.

Plans are to spend selling off the inventory in Gerard's. The store will close, when everything is gone.

Ruth said he has seen a increase in clients since announcing he was shutting down his organization. The day after it was announced he was closing, 500 people showed up at the store. The following day about 400 people were there.

"We had them come from 20, 30, 40, even 50 years ago to purchase things on our sale," he explained. "It's been rewarding."