Lloyd’s Mennonite Furniture
My wife, Suzanne, and I both had other fulltime jobs when we first started in this business. We would work those jobs through the week and then on the weekends we worked the markets selling furniture. After our regular, full-time jobs during the week, we would do the deliveries of the furniture sold on the weekends.
As our furniture business grew, we eventually rented a store in Bradford and my wife left her job to be in our store on a full-time basis. This was back in September, 1989.
As the business continued to grow, I also left my job in order to work full-time in our business.
I used to drive out to the Mennonite builders to pick up our furniture and drop it off in the same area of Elmira to be finished. Then we would return the following week to pick up the finished pieces and also some new pieces to be dropped off at the finishers.
With this system in place, we would have our sons deliver the furniture on the weekends while Suzanne and I continued to sell.
As time went on, our business grew to the point where we needed to have 3 finishers, 2 large trucks plus a full-time driver and sales staff. Our sons and daughter came to work with us full-time.
At this point we decided to purchase the store we were renting together with the store next door so that we would have more showroom space. As time went on, our business outgrew even this space as well.
A building in Schomberg became available so we moved to that location while still keeping the Bradford location open.
The Schomberg location had an existing business in the back that did finishing and we began using them as our sole finisher. The owner of that business was ready to retire so I had a decision to make; either start sending our product back to Elmira, or purchase the business. We chose to purchase the finishing business.
This was all new territory to us but, looking back, it was the best decision we could have made as it gave us control over the quality of the finishing.
So, to sum it up, we have great quality, handmade, solid wood furniture along with great finishing available.
35+ years later and we are still going strong with no end in sight!
WRITTEN BY: DAN PELTON | PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDI SOLOWKA
RESOURCES: LLOYD’S MENNONITE FURNITURE, SCHOMBERG
