You can’t put a price tag on service. But that’s exactly what they do every day at Moore Furniture in Ephrata.
Today the store is mostly ran by the fourth and fifth generation, including brothers Mike and Kelly Moore, Kelly’s wife Janice, and Mike’s sons, Matt and Nick.
It was Nick Moore who took some time recently to fill me in on all the family history, sitting with me at various couches and vignettes throughout the store. His stories began back in 1911 when the family’s original store, Isenhart’s, was opened in Wenatchee. An article in the Wenatchee World from 1919 reports on his great-great grandfather, Edwin Isenhart, speaking to his staff at their Christmas party, thanking them for getting all the deliveries finished with “the teams” – meaning a team of horses – in Wenatchee, in December!
The family, and the business, has seen a lot since 1911. In 1911, Nick said, everything was brought over from Portland up the Columbia River to Wenatchee by barge, and some items were then loaded onto trains. Mike and Kelly’s generation was the last to help unload items from the train.
In the 1930’s, when they saw the dam being built in Grant County, Nick’s great-grandmother and Edwin’s daughter, Avril and her husband Kenneth Moore, decided to open a second branch in Ephrata. The business was eventually, officially split in two. After Kenneth died suddenly in his late 40’s, it was Avril and her son, Lowell who ran the business, “There’s a whole women’s empowerment message,” Nick said, “There weren’t a lot of businesses owned by women in 1948.” The tradition of women in the business continues today with Janice, as well as Matt’s daughter, Samantha, 19, who has worked a couple summers at the store, the first of the sixth generation.
Then, of course, are even more recent changes like computers, the internet, and cold storage appliances – much different than the blocks of ice delivered along with bottles of milk, or the communal “Polar Lockers” where patrons could pay for locked shelving space in the large freezer storage building in Ephrata, Nick said.
Not only are there six generations of family members who have committed to the business over the years, the family also has an eighty year tradition of going to Washington State University – at least one family member every decade since the 1940’s. Samantha, when not working in the store, is currently going to school there.
To many of you, especially with the holiday season so close and when family gatherings become more inevitable, this scenario of working so closely with family may seem… a little daunting? a terrible idea? never in a million years? “It’s not always easy,” Mike said, “There’s times when you’ve done too much all week and so you don’t do the weekends together… but we do pretty good. It’s one of those things, you have to want to be here.” He said there is no pressure for family members to work at the business, or go to Pullman, and that several of them had different careers in banking, engineering, the military and accounting to name a few, before returning to Ephrata to raise their family and work. “There’s room to grow,” he said. “We’re not only thinking what I can do with the furniture business, but what options the furniture business give to me,” he said, talking about the importance of work-life balance, the family’s hobbies, and more.
By a variety of methods, Moore Furniture keeps their prices competitive with bigger chains and online stores, while also providing all the things those other businesses can’t – or won’t without additional fees – like delivery, removal, repair technicians, in-house financing and more. “If you call, a human is going to answer,” Nick said, “For many places… by a freeway, there’s always another customer. But at Moore Furniture, if it wasn’t for repeat customers, we wouldn’t have any customers. If customers didn’t shop here a second time, we’d close.” He said it is important for them to provide a variety of quality and price points in the store, great service during delivery or repair, and responsible financial advice when financing. “We own the store, so our income is based on how well we do, but none of us work on commission, so no one in our store is trying to close this sale. Everyone in our store will tell you what we honestly think,” he said.
Beyond that, if the family doesn’t think a product they get in is good, they simply won’t stock it anymore – only they decide what goes on the floor, and they believe in all of it. “You can’t be peoples’ total solution if you’re just telling them what they want to hear… they’re going to come back next month and tell me that clock is not doing what I told them it would do. They’re going to find me at Safeway. They’re going to be at the same soccer match. This isn’t the kind of town where you never… even if people don’t like you… I’m going to see these humans again!” Nick said, “Our incentives are different. We tend to stock the stuff we believe in.”
There has been an uptick in brick-and-mortar store sales nationally, as well. With so many of us tired of sending things back, why would you want to buy a sofa or a bed you haven’t actually touched and sat on? How do you get that washer and dryer into the house after its been delivered to your driveway? Why write a review online when you could just run into their mom buying groceries? And… how do you get that bed-in-a-box back in the box once you unrolled it, anyway? We guarantee… once you shop at Moore Furniture you’ll be a customer for generations.
