Hard work pays off as retailer overcomes humble beginnings
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, November 14, 2004
Elizabeth City, N.C. — Some businesses have modest beginnings, while others have really modest beginnings.
The latter applies to Ambrose Furniture, a three-store chain in eastern North Carolina, established here in 1946.
The business was started by H.H. Ambrose, who originally worked as a traveling preacher in Georgia. After losing their farm in the Depression, Ambrose, his wife and their four children moved to Elizabeth City in the mid-1930s.
Knowing he couldn't feed his family on a preacher's salary, Ambrose got extra work selling roll-up mattresses door to door for about $6 each.
Soon, customers asked for headboards and chests to go with the mattresses. Ambrose picked most of those items up at auctions and used furniture stores and sold them at a bargain.
Often, he sold items right off his 1931 Model A Ford truck, collecting deposits as low as $2. In other cases, customers bought items from Ambrose's garage, which served as a shop to repair and paint items that needed fixing and doubled as a warehouse of sorts.
In 1946, the family opened its first store in a former dry goods store in Elizabeth City. Two of H.H. Ambrose's sons — Marion and Horace — helped out by delivering products to neighboring counties.
"My dad stayed in the store, and my brother and I would drive around and take orders," recalled Marion Ambrose, who was about 18 when the store opened and who purchased the business from his father about 10 years later.
Customers would make a small down payment and then pay what they could each week.
"If you had a customer that could pay a dollar a week, that was a good customer," said Ambrose.
Marion did a two-year stint in the Army and Merchant Marine in World War II and later served a year in the Korean War. His father died in 1957, leaving Marion and Horace to run the business.
Marion Ambrose laughs about some memories of the old days, including the time he had to deliver some iron stoves. Things were going great until he got to the destination about 25 miles away, and found that two of the stoves had fallen off the truck.
There were unpleasant memories, too. In the beginning, Ambrose recalled, the owners often had to put money in the bank as soon as they made a sale to make sure they could cover their expenses.
"When you went to bed at night, you worried if you would have enough money to pay your vendors," he said.
Around Christmas of 1961, the store burned, destroying about $40,000 in furniture. Insurance covered only a small part of the loss, Ambrose said.
Eventually, the business got back on its feet. The Elizabeth City store reopened in a new location in 1962, and by 1984, Ambrose had opened its hugely successful Kitty Hawk store, which got off the ground thanks largely to Marion's wife, Betty. She would get up about 6 a.m. and drive about an hour from Elizabeth City to make sure she was there for the store's opening. The Coinjock store opened in 1988.
Looking back, Barry Ambrose is amazed at how much hard work his family has put into the business.
"I have often said that if I had to start this business in today's world, I couldn't do it," he said.
"It's just a different world. You have to have so many resources to begin a business today. It takes so long to get established and get yourself going."
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