home decor sale
Ruth got his start 70 years back driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood buddies to help him haul mattresses. Health issues are currently forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I is not going home to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the center of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I'm gonna keep on functioning. I must deliver all this furniture."
Twenty-two years ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the stock.
"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went stir crazy," he explained.
Paradoxically, the company that helped him in 1996 back with all the retirement sale is currently assisting him with this going-out-of-business sale.
Ruth, 87, still does business like he always did. His store does not have a website. "I really don't text and I don't email," he explained. "Only been a few years ago we have a computer for accounting."
Gerard's has a focus on high-end, American-made furniture.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it is like going into the boats. It is gambling. You do not understand what you going to have," he explained. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."
Ruth started working at the furniture industry 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 during the Korean War.
He returned with the furniture shop to his occupation and also to Baton Rouge.
"I was making $35 a week at Lloyd Furniture, then I got an offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
He was a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a driver for the Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine that won the dangerous and prestigious Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.
With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became buddies through the boat races. Some teams that were racing were endorsed by gottlieb.
Ruth got a call from Gottlieb. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children were not interested in taking over the business. Would Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?
Gottlieb advised him to check the store out, and he would help him fund the offer if he was interested.
"It was a great store, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth explained. The issue was money. However he'd have a $10,000 life insurance coverage he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance policy into the lender," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to make it."
The Furniture of gerard opened in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: a bookkeeper and find out this here the Ruths. At the shop, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the day. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that time, the trend in furniture has been Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. An effective Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he needed to get some of those things in the store to ensure it is successful. Ruth told the man he didn't have the money to purchase the furnitureso he got them to ship three suites of furniture on More Info credit to Gerard's and phoned a Virginia manufacturer. "That really cranked business up," Ruth explained. "We sold the hell out of the furniture."
Ruth heard about a shop. Ruth checked the construction at 7330 Florida Blvd. and chose to buy it and fix it up.
"It cost $2 million to revive the whole building," he said.
Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard location opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for the completeness of this selection, which included furniture, art, fabrics, rugs and accessories. One room is filled with George Rodrigue prints from the 1970s. His son Larry includes a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints at a different area of the store.
Ruth visits the furniture markets in North Carolina each six months to locate items to round out the selection in Gerard's.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in great taste and standard furniture," he explained. "The men and women who buy fine furniture want to take a seat inside, would like to feel this, and if they have any knowledge in any way, unzip it and see what is inside ."
Lately, he had been diagnosed with chronic lung disease. That led the shop to close after meeting with his wife and four kids.
The decision was made to liquidate the business because his children all have professional jobs.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four children, send them off to college -- and not have to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from difficulty," he explained.
Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he decided overnight to close the shop.
"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture shop," he said.
He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his kids find items in the store to help decorate their homes.
Plans are to spend the upcoming few months selling off the stock in Gerard's. The shop will close, when everything is gone.
Ruth said he has seen a increase in customers since declaring he shut down his organization. 500 people showed up at the shop the day after it was announced he was closing.
"It has been rewarding."