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Park Avenue Furniture to close

Retailer had promoted giveaway tied to Cubs win

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, September 11, 2007

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. — Park Avenue Home Furnishings is going out of business, citing three years of losses.

Gary O’Reilly, owner of the 80,000-square-foot showroom and the former O’Reilly Fine Furniture at the same location in this northern Chicago suburb, said he originally planned to liquidate the majority of his inventory, remodel and reopen, but the high-impact sale he ran didn’t draw the business he had expected.

So this month he began a going-out-of-business sale, run by Planned Furniture Promotions. O’Reilly expects the GOB sale will run for about 90 days and projects total sales between $4.2 million and $4.9 million.

O’Reilly said he believes consumers are still buying furniture. The bigger problems for Park Avenue and the industry, he said, are what he called “the China influence” and online furniture sellers. Imports and the deflation associated with them, he contended, are largely responsible for cutting his annual sales from $7.7 million in 2002 to about $3 million in 2006.

He also said he believes e-commerce operators are stealing 20% of his business, as consumers are coming in with pen and pads in hand, then leaving the store to buy online.

“With the exception of grocery stores, restaurants and gas station, the Internet is hurting (retailers) bad,” he said.

O’Reilly said he was also hurt when the state government stepped in and made him pull his advertising in April for a promotion that offered his customers free furniture if the Chicago Cubs win pro baseball’s World Series. The state called it gambling, he said. (In Boston, Jordan’s Furniture is facing a similar challenge from an individual’s suit, claiming the retailer’s promotion tied to a Red Sox win is an illegal lottery.)

Park Avenue fought the challenge and won, O’Reilly said, but the Cubs played terribly in April, he said, and by the time his advertising was reinstated it was too late.

O’Reilly, who has operated a furniture store at the same location for about 30 years, said Park Avenue is not filing for bankruptcy and all creditors have been paid. He owns the store building and plans to either sell it to a shopping center operator or split the space with another retailer and open a new concept home furnishings store.

Either way, O’Reilly, 55, said he’s too young to retire and will return to the industry with that new concept already in the works, though he declined to elaborate on it.

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” he said. When he announced the closing, “People come in with tears in their eyes asking why I am closing.” He asks them if they have bought anything in the last two years. And when they say no, “I say, ‘That’s why.’”

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O'Reilly closing Park Avenue, plans new store format

Sep 16, 2007

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