New Jersey retailer Bograd's Fine Furniture calls it quits

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, October 29, 2012

RIVERDALE, N.J. — Bograd's Fine Furniture here is closing ... really.

A little over a year ago, the 82-year-old high-end retailer hired Lynch Sales and announced "Bograd's Last and Best Sale." Co-owner Joe Bograd, who runs the business with his wife, Marcia, and son Mark, told Furniture/Today at the time that the combination of tight vendors, slowing business and trouble refinancing the mortgage on the store property had taken all the fun out of the business.

But after a successful sale, Bograd was having fun again. The retailer had yet to find someone to buy or lease its 30,000-square-foot showroom property and still had plenty of merchandise left to sell, so it improvised with a skeleton crew and kept at it.

Now, in a letter to customers, the Bograd family said the company has found a new occupant for the property and "is finally closing" on Nov. 3.

"That moment will be both sad and gratifying," they said in the letter.

"It will be sad because it will mean the end to our daily relationships with so many of you who have come to regard Bograd's as the go to place for fine home furnishings. It will be gratifying because we will know we did it on our own terms without having been forced out as has happened to so many businesses over the last few years."

The letter notes that "our good friends at Lillian August" will be occupying the space in a few weeks.