couch removal
After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is currently shutting down.
Ruth got his start getting his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour and 70 years ago driving a delivery truck. Now, health issues are forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I'm gonna keep on working. I got to deliver this furniture all "
Twenty-two years ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help the stock is sold off by him.
"So I came back."
Paradoxically, the identical company that assisted him in 1996 back with the retirement sale is currently helping him with this going-out-of-business sale.
Ruth, 87, nevertheless does business like he always did. His shop doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I don't email," he explained. "Just been a few years ago we have a computer for bookkeeping."
Gerard's has a focus on high-end, American-made furniture.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going to the boats. It's gambling. You don't understand exactly what you going to get," he said. "A number of this leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."
Ruth started working at the furniture industry during his senior year at 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 his occupation and to Baton Rouge with the furniture store.
Throughout that time he was a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a driver for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine that won the most prestigious and dangerous Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain.
Through the boat races, Ruth became friends with Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank. Gottlieb endorsed some teams that were rushing.
Ruth got a call, one day. The owner of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children weren't interested in taking over the business. Would Ruth be interested in owning a furniture store?
Gottlieb told him to have a look at the shop, and when he had been interested, he'd help him fund the offer.
"It was a nice shop, and that I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The issue was money. But he'd have a life insurance coverage he bought from a fellow member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to deliver him that insurance coverage to the bank," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to make it."
Gerard's Furniture opened in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. In the shop, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the day. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that moment, the trend in furniture was Mediterranean- and Spanish-style furniture. A Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth, he needed to get some of those items in the store. Ruth told the man he didn't have the money so he got them to send three suites of furniture on credit to Gerard's and phoned a Virginia maker. "That really cranked up business," Ruth said. "We offered the hell out of the furniture."
Ruth heard about a shop on Florida Boulevard which was up for sale for $500,000.
"It cost $2 million to restore the whole building," he said. The loan was so large, it was split between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.
Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard place opened around 1975. The store won nationwide acclaim for its completeness of the choice, which included art furniture, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. One area is filled in the 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry prints in a different area of the store and has a bunch of original Louisiana art.
To round out the selection Ruth visits with the significant furniture markets in North Carolina each six months to locate items.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The people who buy nice furniture want to sit inside, would like to feel this, and if they have any understanding in any way, unzip it and see what's inside ."
Recently, he was diagnosed with lung disease. That led the store to shut after meeting with his wife and four kids.
Since his kids have professional jobs, the choice was made to liquidate the organization.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them all off to college -- and not need to pay any institutions or attorneys to get them helpful site from difficulty," he explained.
Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he decided overnight to close the store.
"My go to this web-site family would go crazy trying to figure out everything at the furniture store," he said.
He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his kids find things in the shop to help decorate their houses.
Plans are to spend the next few months selling off of the inventory in Gerard's. When everything is gone, the shop will close.
Ruth said he has seen a boost in clients since announcing his business shut down. The day after it was announced he closed, 500 people showed up in the shop.
"It has been rewarding."