"When you make it through tough times like these, you have a right to feel good"
Sometimes there really is no place like home. For Larry Mark, it took a lot of exploring before he found his way back. Mark grew up working and playing at Mark Furniture, the Beaufort store owned by his parents since the 1940s. When it came time to pick a career, the one thing he knew was that he wanted to do anything but work in furniture.
After graduating from Beaufort High School in 1969, Mark attended college with aspirations of becoming a veterinarian. But he changed his mind and decided to study business. However, he found that wasn’t for him either, so he tried international studies. At that time, Mark recalls, he had trouble sticking with things, including universities. He attended three over two-and-a-half years. When many of his friends who had degrees in international studies were only landing positions as night auditors at motels or getting other jobs unrelated to their degrees, Mark decided international studies wasn’t the best route for him. Instead, he returned home to rethink his future.
Mark then taught a few math classes at Beaufort High until they found someone certified to take over. He quickly learned that he needed to know more about controlling a high school classroom — one of his classes left en mass.
“At that point, as they say, all else had failed,” Mark said. So, he went to work in the sales department at his parents’ furniture store. There, he quickly learned what it takes to be a good salesperson.
“First is product knowledge. Second is attitude,” he said. “The third thing is to remember your customers and their purchases. Last, never over-promise and under-deliver.”
While working at the store, Mark learned the ins-and-outs of the business and began thinking about how he would run a business of his own. Mark said his parents’ ideas were developed over time, which proved tremendously successful. Still, he thought if he ever had the opportunity to open his own business, he would run it differently — in part to be his own man and in part to make his business stand out from the others.
When his father found a location to open a used furniture store, Mark was able to convince his parents to help him follow his own dream. He opened Furniture Warehouse (now Furniture Warehouse Design Gallery) in January 1972. He was only 20 years old. In the early years, he, his-then fiancée, Robyn and a family friend were the staff. The first week that the Furniture Warehouse was open, the entire inventory sold out. “I couldn’t have been higher if I’d won a million dollars,” Mark recalled. “Of course, I thought I was a genius then, but business cycles regularly brought me back down to earth.”
At one point in the 1970s, gas prices were so unstable that Furniture Warehouse had to buy furniture from manufacturers at “price prevailing.” That meant that it didn’t matter what the prices of goods were when the order was placed because they would be re-priced at the time of shipment. Because Mark couldn’t imagine telling a customer that he might have to charge them more when the order was shipped weeks later, Furniture Warehouse absorbed all of the price increases.
“That was a really tough time for a small business,” Mark said.
But, he always remained optimistic. “In my experience of 37 years in business, I’ve learned that bad times will follow really good times and vice versa,” he said. “I’m a believer that most things in life are like a pendulum. It only gets better after it has been really bad, and it only gets bad after it’s been really, really good.
“Times like these are when business people have an opportunity to prove how good they are, even though good businesses and business people fail during tough economic times,” Mark said. “But when you make it through times like the last two years, you have a right to feel good about yourself and your business.”
Mark has noticed that more people seem to be starting to take advantage of great deals on home prices in the area, and he believes the area is poised for real economic growth. He said the business has seen a nice uptick since early May.
“I must say that I feel good seeing local people shop locally, and not just for furniture,” Mark said. “I think people now understand what it means to send their money to another state. Shopping locally means our citizens all benefit when their money is circulated through the local economy.”
