North Falmouth Furniture Store Closes Its Doors

FALMOUTH- After three years in business, Falmouth Furniture Company on North Falmouth Highway will be closing at the end of this month and liquidating its inventory.
The reason, owner Bruce C. Allen, can be attributed to one factor: the economy. “Our sales were down 40 percent for the year,” he said. “There is no new construction, not much remodeling, and people are not spending money on furniture.”
Mr. Allen opened the company in 2005 after having worked at Eastman’s Hardware on Main Street as a sales manager for 21 years. When Eastman’s underwent new ownership that year, he was let go and decided to open the unfinished furniture store in North Falmouth.
He said the first year was busy, but the second year was stagnant, with little growth. “That is when you typically see an increase in your business,” he said.
His customers were typically older clientele with second homes in Falmouth. The majority, he said, were happy with the quality and finish of the furniture.
The furniture sold at his store, he said, was middle- to upper-range quality, with prices higher than those found at the Mill Store in Yarmouth, but roughly the same as Unfinished Business in Yarmouth.
Those are the only two unfinished furniture stores on the Cape, Mr. Allen said, and he did not see them as direct competitors because of their distance from North Falmouth. “As far as competition, I don’t think anyone would drive from Bourne or Falmouth to South Yarmouth just to buy a bookcase,” he said.
He did not blame the drop in sales to the location of his store, noting that it was visible from 28A and that from his experience, “unfinished furniture is typically a destination location, not an impulse buy. That is why you typically don’t have to be on Main Street to run this type of business.”
When he first opened, he said, customers would often buy sets of furniture, whether it was for the dining room or the bedroom. That held for the first 18 months, he said, and then customers would simply buy one or
 two items. “No one was looking to purchase a whole room of furniture,” he said.
His goal, he said, was to double business from the first to the third year. That did not happen, he said, and fuel surcharges started increasing last summer. At one point, he said he was paying 25 percent of the cost of furniture toward freight. As an example, he said, if there was a $1,000 order, $250 would go toward transportation costs.
That meant, he said, the cost of products went up. Those costs, he said, were absorbed evenly by his business and the customers.
Overall, he said, “this has been a lot of work. I worked seven days a week. I did enjoy the customers and the finishing aspect of the job. We have been proud of what we turned out the last few years.”
It was in November that Mr. Allen realized his store would have to close after meeting with his accountant. He was told he had two options—either triple business to stay afloat or close. “I was a little shell-shocked,” he said. “I didn’t want to believe it...I threw around some ideas to triple our business, but we knew we couldn’t.”
He admitted this is not a great time of year to close a store, particularly for his three full-time employees, one of whom is his father, Eugene H. Allen of Hollis Street, and his two part-time employees.
Mr. Allen said customers who have already ordered furniture can expect them to arrive as scheduled.
The reaction about the store closing from those in the industry was a combination of shock and disappointment. Both Daniel H. Shearer of Chapoquoit Road, West Falmouth, owner of Nautical and Nice and a stockholder in Paine’s Patio on MacArthur Boulevard, and Richard Barbo of Dennisport, co-owner of Barbo’s Furniture, were saddened by the news.
“It is unfortunate. You hate to see a small local business get hurt like that,” Mr. Barbo said. “I’m sure he had employees who wanted to keep working. It is unfortunate.”
At the three Barbo’s Furniture stores on the Cape—in Falmouth, Hyannis, and Dennis—Mr. Barbo said, business has slowed. “We generally go up and down with the real estate market,” he said. “As people move around they will want new stuff. Maybe they have a room they didn’t have before, like an extra bedroom.”
Over the past year, Mr. Barbo said, sales have been down, forcing the company to make changes that have included reducing its sales force, cutting back the amount of inventory they order and addressing their delivery strategy. “We used to have two trucks out per day,” he said. “Now they are going out every other day because they aren’t always full and to save on fuel.”
Barbo’s has been in business since 1985, he said, and this is probably the slowest he can remember. He was cautiously optimistic that next year will be better in terms of sales, but , “I am not expecting a huge turn-around in the next 12 months...Hopefully the new administration will get consumer confidence back up.”
He will know whether that is the case in April, he said, which kicks off the start of Barbo’s busy season. That is usually when retirees and residents with second homes return to the Cape and are looking to purchase new furniture, he said.
Of the three stores, Mr. Shearer’s seems to have not been impacted by the recession. He said that for his store, along with Paine’s Patio, which his son Douglas H. Shearer of Monument Beach owns, sales have been ahead of where they were for September, October, and November of last year.
“I think we are in a good situation because we sell the middle to upper end in both our furniture and gifts,” he said.
However, he said the furniture business, as a whole, is a difficult one to be in. He attributed this to the large amount of stock one has to have on hand, the delivery costs, and the fact that markups are low, compared to items like clothes. “It is a very hard business to make a profit in when you think about the square footage of retail and warehouse space you have to light, heat, and pay taxes on,” he added.
He, too, was disappointed to hear about the Falmouth Furniture Company going out of business. “They were very friendly and sold a nice product,” he said, adding that he bought a work table for his kitchen from the store last year.
While he and his son have yet to be impacted by the downturn in the economy, he said, they have made preparations just in case that were to happen. Paine’s Patio, he said, did not purchase as much stock for next summer as in years past.
And he does not anticipate that his stores will be immune from potential problems. “The economy will have an impact on everything,” he said. “How hard? I have no idea, but it will affect everyone.”