Rising Star: Fun, flexible furniture
By Marc Barnes -- Furniture Today, May 14, 2007
Bend, Ore. — If the words quirky and fun and responsible and decent and environmentally conscious could all be thrown into a blender and poured out to make a furniture store, it might look a lot like Rising Star Stellar Home Furnishings here.
Owner Leslie Blok wouldn't have it any other way.
Rising Star got its start when Blok, then 19, wanted a futon. It had to be an authentic futon, not the thick foam mattresses that sometimes pass for futons. It would have to be made of pure cotton — thin and foldable and easy to store, like the original designs used in Japan.
Blok found what she wanted from a woman who made them in her living room.
"You can sleep on them, you can use them as covers, you can fold them up," she said. "It is a natural and easy way to make a bedroom out of a living space."
Six or seven years later, her future — and current — husband, Todd Wooldridge, needed a bed, so Blok swung into action. She figured that if the woman could make a futon in her living room and sell them, she could do the same.
A hands-on approach
Blok took a class on traditional futon making and made her first futon. And in a way, she hasn't stopped since.
"In the beginning, I made the mattresses and he made the frames," she said. "In about 1985, we had a little cottage business and it grew. In the beginning, it took us a week to make a mattress and a frame. It was really learn as you go."
Factory machinery? Blok and Wooldridge used the 1980s version of Craigslist and found a 1930s-era sewing machine in a "free box" in a stairway at a college. The free box was where you put stuff that you wanted to give away.
Marketing? In the days before computers and the Internet, they called it "word of mouth." They also printed up fliers and posted them on bulletin boards in laundromats.
Like many entrepreneurs, the couple's business ambitions interfered with their day jobs. At the time, both were instructors for Outward Bound, so they moved their business to Blok's mother's garage. There, it grew to take over the house, so they bought a separate building to house the burgeoning manufacturing operation.
"A large portion of it was a factory and a smaller part was retail," Blok said of the building. "We do more retail now and the factory has moved to a different building."
Today's Rising Star store has been on the corner of Colorado Avenue and Bond Street in this central Oregon city for 15 years. The store is 5,800 square feet. The factory is 2,000 square feet.
Blok attributes part of her company's success to a growing awareness of the importance of the environment on the part of many people. She had been interested in the environment from her childhood, growing up in the outdoors.
"I really came to appreciate what nature had to offer, the magic of it," she said.
As others began to embrace the idea of protecting the earth, and as concern grew over the possible health effects of fire-retardant chemicals applied to cotton. Blok had the idea of using recycled plastics from soda bottles as stuffing in her futon mattresses.
"We got into some discussions with one of the largest recyclers of plastics, and we did a lot of prototyping," she said. "The people we were talking to were not encouraging. If we called it recycled, they said people would be turned off by it."
Undeterred, Blok moved forward, and by the early 1990s the idea took off and the orders began to pour in.
"We took it to the streets," she said. "We had the manufacturing plant and retail and employees and the whole shebang. We were doing trade shows and it was really the heyday of futons. It was starting to get real popular."
Blok's futons are sold under the brand name Wellspring Futon Mattresses and Fiber Line. Offerings include the Wellspring Supreme, the Super Natural and the Ultrafoam Mattress System.
Blok says her futons aren't like many on the market.
"Futons have really gotten downgraded and diluted," she said. "The reputation has been shot by some of the lower-end stuff that is sold in the discounter stores. What is being passed off as futons are really torture devices — thick, fluffy and lightweight."
Wellspring futons are sold to 20 other retailers as well as at Rising Star.
An eclectic mix
These days, Blok's store offers, in addition to futons and futon accessories, an eclectic mix of bedroom furniture, sofa-sleepers, sofas and chairs, lamps, accessories, art pieces and décor items, some of which are one-of-a-kind.
The tagline is, "Fun, flexible furniture that makes sense."
The store's average ticket on a futon and frame is $600; sofa-sleeper, $2,000; sofa, $1,000; chairs; $600 to $900. Blok doesn't divulge retail or wholesale volume.
In all, the store employs 14 people, none on commission. A profit-sharing plan means that everyone shares in the success, whether or not they are in sales. The result, Blok said, is a laid-back atmosphere that is communicated to customers, who find themselves among friends instead of high-pressure, commission-fueled salespeople.
Blok also attracts employees by offering flex time, health insurance and "well days," days which you can take off because, well, you want to. In return, the employees give the store and each other a measure of loyalty not often found in larger, more impersonal places.
"It creates a nice atmosphere, in the way people are approached in the store, compared to how they are approached elsewhere," Blok said. "It all gets paid forward, about how they feel about treating customers right and making sure they feel right about coming back over and over again. We have been in business a long time, a little over 20 years and it seems to have made a positive impact."
Blok also makes sure the store supports a number of causes in the community, which gains points with many customers.
"People really do pay attention to that," she said. "It's hard to compete purely on price alone, so we are offering more than that. So far, we have pulled it off.'
Blok said a popular addition at the store has been Art by Roz, paintings by her mother Rosamond Blok, in a style she describes as ethnic whimsy. Rising Star also features art objects made of recycled steel drums by Beyond Borders in Haiti. Other items include textiles and home décor items made by co-ops in India and Africa, which agree to pay fair wages and not use child labor.
"A big part of what we do is that we try to create a space that works energetically, that feels good, that gives (customers) the option of choosing something that is healthier for the environment," she said. "It's nice to have that option. The more you are exposed to it, the more you understand it is available and you can vote for it with your pocketbook."
