116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
After 35 years of ‘old school’ sales, Jeff Jones will close Cedar Rapids furniture store
Jones has weathered flood, pandemic, internet disruptions
CEDAR RAPIDS — Jeff Jones developed a strategy through a lifetime in the furniture business.
“Since I grew up in it, I stayed with the old school, which is low overhead and high volume,” he said. “That’s how I’ve gone through it. It’s a little different from some philosophies, but I’ve kept it simple.”
That simple-seeming philosophy has seen Jeff Jones Furniture through economic booms and busts, flood and pandemic.
“Just like all industries, it’s really changed,” Jones said one morning last week, sitting on one of dozens of couches in stock at his store at 803 Third Ave SE. “Since I grew up in it, I stayed with the old school.”
After 35 years operating his own store, Jones, 65, is retiring. The change was prompted by a customer’s review.
“I got the perfect review on Google, and when I read it, it just hit me,” he said. “Now I can go happily into retirement. It just clicked.”
Jones came up in the family business, working in his uncles’ stores while he was still in school.
“I grew up all across the state, wherever my family was putting in a store,” he said. “Le Mars, Des Moines, Fort Dodge. I was in the business for a while.”
That brought Jones to Cedar Rapids in the late 1970s, to help manage his uncle’s store, Jack Jones Furniture.
“I didn’t like it,” he said of management. “I liked talking to customers, I liked doing that kind of stuff. My uncle said, ‘That’s not where the money is. You need to manage stores.’ So I said I’m just going to open my own little hole in the wall downtown. That was ’88, and he closed his store.”
Jones drew on his experience — “I had to work in bookkeeping for a while, and deliveries for a while, and carpeting” — and industry contacts to start his own store. A factory sales representative tipped him to what would become the store’s specialty through its early years.
“These retired football players were opening these furniture-on-consignment stores, because they could start it with very little money,” he said. “I went out there and looked at it. There’s a lot of really nice furniture that other people wanted to sell, upper-crust people, and they didn’t want to put an ad in the paper. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and I brought it back here.”
That led to a location on Second Avenue SE near downtown, where costs were lower than the suburban locations favored by chain stores.
“I didn’t have a lot of money,” Jones said. “I talked to the landlord, and he said ‘I think this is a brilliant idea.’ He let me have the space really cheap, and I was there for 14 years.”
Consignment — selling gently used pieces on commission — sustained the business in its early years. The approach drew customers.
“For the first five years I never advertised that I had furniture to sell,” Jones said. “I advertised that I wanted yours. That reverse sell really worked. I was in people’s attics long before the ‘American Pickers.’”
Jones still takes in some pieces on consignment. Today, it’s only about 10 percent of current business, compared with half in the store’s early days.
Business was good enough that Jones purchased the former Hawkeye Seed building at 803 Third Ave. SE, moving there in 2002.
The new location gave him a front-row seat for the June 2008 flood, which crested a few blocks west of the store.
“I just told my employees, ‘I’ll give you pay, just go home. There’s nothing we can do,’” said Jones, who passed the time talking to the National Guard troops patrolling the flood zone.
“They were all over here just to guard that area, and I sold recliners to them because I was selling them cheap and they had their pickups,” he said. As the waters receded, business boomed.
“There was a line of people on the sidewalk, and the parking lot was full,” he said. “All those people had gotten FEMA money, and they gone out and rented an apartment and they needed furniture,” referring to disaster-aid payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It went crazy for a while. We delivered seven days a week for two months.”
Jones’ connections with suppliers — especially the few remaining American manufacturers — helped him weather the COVID pandemic and its aftermath.
“I had two companies that were still American,” said Jones, who estimates 60 to 70 percent of the furniture now sold in the U.S. is imported. “They were still willing to deliver in a decent time. I had to keep my employees, because we were delivering every day. It was the dream for them. (Customers) didn’t want them in the house, so they’d just set it in the driveway.”
Similarly, his basic business approach enabled Jones to weather the internet’s disruption.
“It’s really hurt a lot of the brick-and-mortar stores,” he said. “But that low-overhead, high-volume thing means I’m still cheaper than the Internet. That’s what saved it, because a lot of the big box stores are really struggling.”
Jones and his five employees will continue taking custom orders through about July 10, “then we’re just going to sell the items in the store,” he said.
Retirement plans?
“Just the normal,” he said. “Travel, grandchildren. I have four — two girls and two boys.”
Jones still remembers “this old guy in his late 70s” working in one of his uncles’ stores.
“As a kid, I’m wondering, ‘Why are you here, you should be retired. You’ve got money,’” he recalled. “He said, ‘When I’m waiting on a customer and I’m totally focused on helping them find what they need to find, whatever we have to do, I’m ageless. Time seems to stop for a few moments. And when we put their pieces together, they’re super happy, I’m happy. Life is about being of service.’ That always stuck with me.”
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