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After 70 years in the furniture business, Gerard Ruth is shutting down his business.
Ruth got his start driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Health problems are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I is not going home to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting in the middle of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I am gonna continue working. I got to deliver this furniture all "
This is the second time that Ruth has had a sale. Twenty-two decades ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help the inventory is sold off by him.
Ironically, the company that assisted him with the retirement sale back is assisting him with this sale.
Like he did 87, ruth , nevertheless does business. His store doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I do not email," he said. "Just been a couple of years ago we have a computer for accounting."
Gerard's has a focus on American-made furniture made with premium leather.
"All that stuff on the internet, it's like going to the ships. It's gambling. You do not know what you are going to get," he explained. "Some of the leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."
Ruth started working in the furniture industry during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., then at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU, then joined the Coast Guard.
He returned to his job and also to Baton Rouge with the furniture store.
"I was making $35 a week in Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
He had been a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a driver for the Tom Cat Baby, a ship with a Corvette engine which won the prestigious and dangerous Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain.
Through the boat races, Ruth became friends with Lewis Gottlieb. Gottlieb endorsed some teams that were rushing.
1 afternoon, Ruth got a call. The owner of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his children weren't interested in taking over the enterprise. Would Ruth be interested in owning a furniture store?
Gottlieb advised him to have a look at the store, and he would help him finance the offer when he was interested.
"It was a nice shop, and that I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth explained. The issue was money. Selma, his wife and ruth, had just had their second child, and that he needed a few hundred dollars after paying the hospital bill. However he'd have a $10,000 life insurance coverage he bought from a fellow member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb advised me to bring him that insurance policy to the bank," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to create it."
Gerard's Furniture started at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. In the store, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the afternoon. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that moment, the trend in furniture was Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. A Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth, he had to find a few of those items in the shop. Ruth told the guy he did not have the money to buy the furnitureso he got them to ship three suites of furniture to Gerard and phoned a Virginia manufacturer. "That really cranked business up," Ruth said. "We offered the hell out of that furniture"
A couple of decades navigate to this site after, Ruth discovered about a shop. Ruth checked the building at 7330 Florida Blvd. and decided to buy it and fix it up.
The Florida Boulevard location of Gerard's Furniture opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for its completeness of this choice, which included artwork, furniture, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. 1 room is filled from the early 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry includes a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints in another area of the shop.
To round out the selection Ruth and the major furniture markets visit in North Carolina each six months to locate items.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in great taste and traditional furniture," he explained. "The people who purchase fine furniture want to take a seat inside, want to feel it, and if they have any understanding at all, unzip it and see what's inside ."
Through the years, Ruth has had health issues, such as diabetes and cancer. Recently, he had been diagnosed with chronic lung disorder. browse this site That led the shop to shut after meeting with four children and his wife.
"I got outvoted," he said. The decision was made to liquidate the organization Since his children have professional jobs.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them off to school -- and not need to pay any associations or attorneys to get them out of trouble," he said.
Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he decided to close the shop.
"My family would go mad trying to figure out everything at the furniture shop," he explained.
He made a point of helping his children and eight grandchildren find things in the store to help decorate their own houses.
Plans are to spend promoting off all the stock in Gerard's. The shop will close, when all is gone.
Ruth said he's seen a increase in customers, since declaring he was shutting down his business. The day after it was announced he closed, 500 people showed up in the shop.
"It's been rewarding."