And then there was one.

By the end of July, the second of three local La-Z-Boy dealers will have closed this year. Declining sales have been blamed for the decision.

Leath Furniture, which sells a variety of home furnishings in addition to La-Z-Boy brand chairs, opened its going-out-of-business sale to the public Tuesday. Customers already on the company’s mailing list received special invitations that gave them access to special discounts in the Glenbrook Commons store five days earlier.

“I think that it’s always a combination of things” that leads to a store closing, manager Simon Berkowitz said. “There was a lack of business. And our lease was coming to an end.”

Atlanta-based Leath Furniture operates 31 stores, mostly in the Midwest, according to its Web site. Other locations of the 103-year-old company are not affected.

The demise of the local Leath store, just east of Lima Road and south of Coliseum Boulevard, follows the closing of La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries on Washington Center Road this year. That independently licensed store had been operating in Fort Wayne for 30 years.

But tepid demand hasn’t stopped another retailer from expanding its presence in the market.

The remaining La-Z-Boy retailer, John Klopfenstein Furniture at 1206 Magnavox Way, is in the middle of a 17,000-square-foot expansion estimated at $2 million.

“We’re actually adding a 15,000-square-foot, in-store La-Z-Boy gallery,” owner John Klopfenstein said.

The gallery will triple the store’s La-Z-Boy display space. The retailer will also triple the number of La-Z-Boy items in stock.

Klopfenstein’s display area will rival the size of the stand-alone gallery that closed on Washington Center Road, he said. Although his store’s expansion project began in September, Klopfenstein doesn’t think it had any bearing on owner and general manager Steve Ervin’s decision to close the La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries. Leath was similarly unaffected, as far as Klopfenstein knows.

John Klopfenstein Furniture, which also operates a location in Leo, will employ 38 full time and four part time between the two stores after the expansion opens. The addition will prompt the Fort Wayne store to hire nine, Klopfenstein said.

The retailer has started selling lower-priced furniture on a small scale. The building expansion on Illinois Road will allow the 53-year-old company that has traditionally carried medium- to upper-priced furniture to increase its selection.

“We’re going after that younger generation from 20 to 40 that is still raising a family,” Klopfenstein said. “We’re hoping that it’s going to increase sales by offering more selection.”

The furniture store owner said sales have fallen about 7 percent to 9 percent in recent years.

“But we’re going to proceed as normal,” he added.

Berkowitz said Leath just can’t make a go of it in the Fort Wayne market. The local manager has also noticed a trend of more people buying cheaper furniture.

“They’re not looking at the quality,” he said. “Not enough people seem to be worried about quality.”

Many of today’s furniture buyers figure they’ll deal with the consequences of broken and worn furniture in a couple of years, he said. Berkowitz couldn’t predict whether those same shoppers will again make a short-term purchase or will invest in longer-lasting products.

“Whether it’s cyclical or not, only time will tell,” he said.

Leath, 4122 Lima Road, moved to the shopping center adjacent to Glenbrook Square in June 2002. The 30,000-square-foot space was previously occupied by HomeLife Furniture Corp. Leath corporate officials said at the time that they moved the store because they couldn’t agree on lease terms with the owners of The Shoppes at Coldwater Road and Coliseum Boulevard.

Berkowitz, who has been with the company one year, doesn’t know the details of Leath’s lease agreement with Glenbrook Commons owner The Hutensky Group.

Leath is selling “everything to the bare walls at unbelievable prices,” Berkowitz said. He expects the sale to wrap up by July 15. Items are now marked 20 percent to 50 percent off.

A few of the store’s 20 full- and part-time employees will transfer to other Leath locations, Berkowitz said. The company’s next nearest store is in Lafayette.

Klopfenstein has considered the Fort Wayne market oversaturated with furniture stores for about the past eight years. Some store closures were inevitable, he said.

The local market has been littered with furniture store closings in the past four years.

Ervin Bros. Furniture, 220 Fernhill Ave., announced the final weekend of its going-out-of business sale in January 2004. A company spokeswoman said at the time that poor sales prompted the closing.

Family-owned George & Kate’s Furniture Showroom, 1726 St. Joe River Drive, operated more than 50 years before announcing in 2002 it would close. The Adams & Walda Galleries North Inc. store, 4004 Coldwater Road, announced the same year that it was preparing to liquidate. Adams & Walda, which also began more than 50 years ago, sold high-end designer furniture.

Leath sold furniture in Fort Wayne for nearly 40 years.

“I don’t know how to put it into words,” Berkowitz said of the closing. “It’s a sad thing.”

Source: fortwayne.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Furniture. Tags: Adam, Area, Atlanta, Coldwater Road, Design, Ervin Bros, Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne store, Furniture, Furniture Store, George, Glenbrook Commons, HomeLife Furniture Corp, Illinois, Illinois Road, January, John Klopfenstein, John Klopfenstein Furniture, La-Z-Boy, Leath Furniture, Lima Road, Location, longer-lasting products, Midwest, Oman, Price, products, Project, retail, Simon Berkowitz, Small, South, Steve Ervinâ, Table, the Company, The Furniture Store, The Hutensky Group, Today, Washington, Washington Center Road, West, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.