How Darvin Furniture & Mattress grew from a door-to-door operation to one of the highest-volume single-location furniture stores in the world. An interview with brothers Steve & Marty Darvin and new president Will Harris, himself a 4th-generation furniture professional.
The two brothers, who remain as close as ever, as partners and friends, after all these years, aren’t all that big on looking back, however, although they could with justifiable pride. “What we’re proudest of right now,” says Steve, “is how the next chapter of Darvin has begun to unfold, with us transitioning the company to employee ownership [via an ESOP] and the arrival of Will Harris, our first outside President, taking us beyond where we’ve gone before.
As far as the ESOP, “with neither of us having children going into the business, our employees were starting to worry about the future,” says Marty. “And we didn’t want to sell out to some conglomerate that might change the culture that is so precious to us and precious to our employees as well. So making the employees into owners was the solution to that. And having Will at the helm reinforces that because of his core philosophy.
Harris is also a proponent of making the most of Darvin’s unusual single-location approach. “Truth be told, there’s enough volume here to split into maybe a dozen smaller stores, but you’d lose so much with that approach,” he explains. “Having the one location means more control, more communication directly with our warehouse, with our marketing team, our buyers, our administrators, fewer layers of management...
In the spirit, you could say, of door-to-door grandpa Louis Darvin, still covering the neighborhood house by house, and still watching out for his customers.
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