Furniture/Today honors industry's leaders of year

Art Van, Flexsteel, Manuel Capo take top awards

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, December 14, 2009

Ray Allegrezza and Dwayne Welch present the Supplier of the Year award to Flexsteel executives Jim Richardson, Ron Klosterman and Lee Fautsch.

Art Van Elslander, left, founder and chairman of Warren, Mich.-based Art Van Furniture, accepts the Furniture/Today Retailer of the Year award from the newspaper’s Ray Allegrezza and Dwayne Welch of awards sponsor Hickory Springs.

Industry veteran Hershel Alpert gets a standing ovation upon receiving the Arthur J. Adelizzi Distinguished Service Award from the New England NHFA chapter.

Luis Capo, left, Carlos Capo and Pedro Capo, El Dorado Furniture, Miami Gardens, Fla., stand with Ray Allegrezza of Furniture/Today and Dwayne Welch of conference sponsor Hickory Springs. The Capos accepted Furniture/Today’s Lifetime Achievement Award for their father, the late Manuel Capo, founder of El Dorado.

NAPLES, Fla. — Nearly 280 industry leaders and guests were here Dec. 3 to see Art Van Furniture's Art Van Elslander, Flexsteel's Ron Klosterman and El Dorado Furniture's Capo family accept top honors at Furniture/Today's 13th Annual Leadership Conference.

Also honored during the conference was industry veteran Hershel Alpert, who received the Arthur J. Adelizzi Distinguished Service Award from the New England Chapter of the National Home Furnishings Assn.
Michigan retailer Art Van was named Furniture/Today's Retailer of the Year, and Flexsteel was named Supplier of the Year. The late Manuel Capo, founder of Miami Gardens, Fla.-based El Dorado Furniture, was honored with Furniture/Today's second Lifetime Achievement Award.
Klosterman thanked Furniture/Today and the industry for the honor, which he called recognition and validation for the more than 1,500 Flexsteel employees who "come to work every day and provide great product and service to all the dealers that we serve."
He thanked the Flexsteel and Wynwood case goods retailers and said, "The independent dealer has always been the backbone of our company."
In accepting the honor for Art Van and its 2,500 employees, founder and Chairman Art Van Elslander recalled the immense economic challenges the industry has faced this year, especially in Michigan, which leads the nation in unemployment and home foreclosures.
Yet the 32-store Top 100 chain opened two stores this year and celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of events that gave millions of dollars in cash and home furnishing to charities and needy families.
"We discovered that there is more than one way to sell a sofa," he said. "The events we held this year were absolutely over the top," he added. "They were extravagant. They were very very expensive (and) it really worked."
Accepting the Lifetime achievement award for Manuel Capo were three of his seven sons - Luis, Carlos and Pedro Capo. Pedro told the crowd of the many compliments the family received following Manuel's death after a short illness in July.
"Nobody said anything about how big the store was, how successful the business was," Pedro Capo said. "Everybody (talked about) his smile and humility, his humbleness. We had people come to us that we didn't even know that he had actually helped."
Alpert was surprised with the Arthur J. Adelizzi Distinguished Service Award, presented annually by the New England Chapter of the National Home Furnishings Assn. Recipients are chosen for exemplifying "leadership in the home furnishings industry and in their community; ethical standard and integrity in dealing with their fellow man; and devotion to their family and friends."
Alpert is the principal of Alpert Consulting and consultant to Serta International President Bob Sherman. He's the former president and CEO of Alperts, the 150,000-square-foot furniture showroom and warehouse in Seekonk, Mass, that was sold to Raymour & Flanigan in 2007. He also lectures at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where he is a faculty member and senior executive in residence.
Alpert has been president and chairman of NHFA and chairman of the National Home Furnishings Foundation, where he currently is a trustee.