furniture xpress

Ruth got his start 70 years back driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood buddies to assist him haul mattresses. Now, health problems are currently forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture store.

"I ain’t going home to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the center of his Florida Boulevard showroom. "I'm going to continue working. I got to deliver all this furniture"

This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a going-out-of-business sale. Twenty-two years back, when he turned 65, Ruth brought in an outside company to help the inventory is sold off by him.

"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went stir crazy," he explained. "So I came back."

Ironically, the identical company that helped him in 1996 back with the retirement sale is assisting him with this going-out-of-business sale.

87, ruth does business like he did. His shop doesn't have a site. "I don't text and I do not email," he said. "Only been a few years ago we have a computer for bookkeeping."

Gerard's includes a focus on luxury furniture.

"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going into the boats. It is gambling. You don't understand what you are going to get," he explained. "Some of this leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."

Ruth began working in the furniture industry during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU, then joined the Coast Guard.

Back in 1953, he returned to his job and also to Baton Rouge with the furniture shop.



"I was making $35 a week in Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.

Throughout that time he had been a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a catalyst for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine that won the prestigious and dangerous Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.

With Lewis Gottlieb, Ruth became buddies Throughout the boat races. Gottlieb backed some teams.

Ruth got a call from Gottlieb one day. The owner of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his children weren't interested in taking over the enterprise. Can Ruth be interested in having a furniture shop?

Gottlieb advised the shop to be checked out by him, and when he had been interested, he'd help him fund the offer.

"It was a great shop, and that I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth explained. The problem was money. However he did have a $10,000 life insurance additional info policy he bought from a fellow member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance policy into the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to make it."

The Furniture of gerard started in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. In the store, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the day. In the evenings, he also delivered.

At that moment, the trend in furniture has been Mediterranean- and Spanish-style furniture. A Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he needed to find some of those items in the store. Ruth told the guy he did not have the money so that he called a Virginia manufacturer and got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture on credit to Gerard's. "That really cranked up business," Ruth said. "We sold out the hell of that furniture"

Ruth discovered about a store on Florida Boulevard which was up for sale for $500,000. Ruth checked out the construction at 7330 Florida Blvd. and decided to purchase it and fix it up.

The loan was so large, it had to be divided between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.

Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard place opened around 1975. The shop won acclaim for its completeness of the choice, which included furniture, art, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. One room is filled from the early 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry prints in another part of the shop and includes a gallery of original Louisiana art.

To round out the selection Ruth visits with the furniture markets in North Carolina.

"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in great taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The men and women who purchase fine furniture want to sit in it, want to feel it, and if they have any knowledge at all, unzip it and see what is inside ."

Through the years, Ruth has had health problems, including diabetes and cancer. Lately, he had been diagnosed with chronic lung disorder. That led the store to shut after meeting with four children and his wife.

The choice was made to liquidate the organization, because his children have professional occupations.

"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four kids, send them all off to college -- and not have to pay any associations or attorneys to get them out of difficulty," he said.

Regardless of his years in business, Ruth said he chose overnight to shut the store.

"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture store," he explained.

He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his children find things in the store to help decorate their houses.

Plans are to spend promoting of the inventory off . When everything is gone, the store will their website close.

Since announcing he was shutting down his business, Ruth said he has seen a boost in customers. 500 people showed up in the store, the day after it was announced he was closing.

"It has been rewarding."