He bet the farm ... and won!
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, November 25, 2001
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — John Campbell's pioneering days at Thomasville were actually born out of defeat.
In 1984, while he was president of Los Angeles-based Barker Bros., parent company Household International announced plans to sell its furniture division, which consisted of Barker, American Furniture of El Paso, Texas, Colby's in Chicago and Huffman Koos on the East Coast.
Campbell and Jim Johnson, then president of Huffman Koos, attempted a leveraged buyout of the furniture division but ended up losing out to a group of South African investors.
With 30 years invested in the Household group of furniture stores, Campbell was suddenly looking for other opportunities, as was Johnson. Their eyes fell on Thomasville, which with the value of its brand name seemed to have the potential for store development. Thomasville was best known for its breadth of wood product, but Campbell figured upholstery would follow naturally.
Campbell and Johnson wanted to develop a retail operation with virtually no backend — no distribution center, no inventory — a business with none of the costs that tended to suck profit out, as they had witnessed at the Household companies.
"We put together a business plan for this fantasy we didn't know was viable," Campbell said. It focused almost solely on the front end of the business — on advertising, display, sales, sales training and customer service.
Campbell began taking red-eye flights from Los Angeles to New York to look at sites in Long Island, a market Thomasville already had been studying and believed was ripe for store development. He opened the first Thomasville store in May 1987 at the present Farmingdale location, an area that was becoming one of the first high-profile furniture rows in the country. (Johnson ended up opening the first Bernhardt stores in Orlando, Fla., then followed with two Thomasville stores in the same market.)
Campbell was betting the farm on Thomasville. He sold his home in California, using the proceeds — somewhere under $500,000 — to start the new business. When the moving van left his driveway, Campbell didn't even have a place to send the driver. "I said, 'When you get to New York, call me,'" he recalled.
He believes risking it all was one of the keys to his success. "When your playing with someone else's money, it doesn't have quite the same ring," he said.
Not that anything at the start was fun. When someone asked him once if he'd do it all over again, Campbell said, "Absolutely not." Even the thought, he said, is too painful.
Indeed Campbell has a knack for making a successful experience seem incredibly unappealing. When someone who was just starting his own business asked him if the fear that comes with putting everything on the line ever goes away, Campbell said, "Never."
"That's what keeps you on top of your game — the fear," he said. "If it's truly your business there's no relaxing. And that's a good thing."
| Doug Campbell, left, and Jeff Campbell, right, have joined their dad John Campbell to make the 6-unit Thomasville Home Furnishings Stores a family experience. |
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