WEST LEBANON — The owner of a furniture store which has helped furnish Upper Valley homes for decades says a sharp drop in sales forced him to close his showroom.
Meanwhile customers who have put down deposits on purchases are wondering if they ever will see their furniture or at least get their money back.
“I owe a lot of money to people,” acknowledged Brad Nelson, owner of Brown Furniture on Interchange Drive in West Lebanon. “People are going to be livid and screaming and it’s going to be awful.”
“This is no way to treat a customer,” said Max Green, who on Tuesday drove into the empty parking lot of Brown Furniture to find out for himself what was going on. Like others, Green was met by a notice taped to the inside of a glass door announcing the store is “temporarily closing” in order to “resolve our backlog of sales deliveries.”
Nelson, in an interview with the Valley News this week, said he is “heartbroken that we haven’t been able to take care of our employees, our customers and our vendors,” adding he was “having a hard time putting it into words.
“I’m absolutely ruined, just emotionally,” he said, and in a “terrible spot.”
Nonetheless, Nelson vowed: “I’m going to continue to do everything in my power to make sure that everybody gets taken care of, regardless of what process we go through to do it.”
Nelson, who acquired the now 85-year-old West Lebanon business in 2018, is working to “restructure” in a bid to avoid bankruptcy, he said.
He said he is in talks with potential partners and investors to “pick up the backlog and get people their furniture.”
“But it’s not an instantaneous solution,” he cautioned.
Nelson declined to say how many customers have been affected but estimated that he has a backlog of at least three months of furniture sales that need to be filled by manufacturers so that he can get those orders into the hands of customers.
In order to do that, Nelson said, he is in talks with potential partners and investors who could “pick up” the backlog of inventory and facilitate delivery.
Nelson said he has not read the angry Facebook comments from irate customers, but he can guess what they say.
“I’m sure people hate me because I haven’t been getting back. But, honestly, I’m a little busy trying to figure out how to fix the mess,” he said.
Green, who lives in White River Junction, said he put down a $2,400 deposit on two La-Z-Boy recliners on Jan. 1 and was told they would be delivered in “10 to 12 weeks.”
At the end of March, Green said, he called the store three times to inquire about why his purchase had not been delivered and never received a callback.
Finally, Green visited the store twice in April and the last time was told “they expected delivery at the end of the month.
“And then I was reading online yesterday and I went, ‘oh boy,’ ” Green said outside Brown Furniture on Tuesday afternoon.
“I’ve been doing business with them for years and they had always been great with customer service,” Green said. “I like to buy local, but this is just wrong.”
Nelson said that 2022 and most of 2023 had been banner years for Brown Furniture, but sales fell sharply in 2024.
As the store’s financial troubles mounted last year, Nelson said manufacturers began demanding full payment from him before shipment, drawing down his funds.
“Through all of ‘24, it just became ever tighter and more difficult and then impossible to turn back to the (former standard of business) because the volume was too low,” Nelson said.
He had hoped a “blowout sale” of inventory he staged in March would pay for a remodeling of the La-Z-Boy showroom on the second floor but the sales event was disappointing.
From there, things only got worse. “April absolutely fell off a cliff,” Nelson said.
“We got so far behind in cash flow last year that there just wasn’t enough left to continue the ball rolling,” he said.
Nelson said he wants to reopen the store, but he doesn’t know when — or even if — that will happen.
“I would love to stay in business,” Nelson said. “I’m just not sure that I can.”
In 2018, Nelson, a former telecommunications sales manager who lived in Manchester and had no background in the furniture business, acquired Brown Furniture, one of the last of the Upper Valley’s furniture stores. At the time, Nelson said he was looking forward to owning a business with a good reputation and deep roots in the community.
Nelson is Brown Furniture’s fourth owner since the business was founded 85 years ago. He bought it from Ron Gobeil, who had acquired it from Phil Desmond, who had acquired it from the Channing Brown family. It was the Browns who first opened the store in 1940.
In recent years, other furniture stores that have closed have included Bridgman’s — now the site of the Listen Community Services thrift center — and Allard’s Furniture and DeFelice Family Furniture, both in West Lebanon.
Bunny Danaher, a retired nurse who lives in Quechee and the Facebook poster who went public with her complaint that triggered the response from others describing similar issues with Brown Furniture in recent months, said she put down $1,050 to buy a recliner on Nov. 14 and is still waiting for it to arrive.
Danaher said she would call the store, leave a phone message, but never hear back. When calls were not returned, she began visiting the store to ask sales staff when she would see her La-Z-Boy, only to be told it was on order.
Finally, on April 17, Danaher went to the store for the fourth time and said that if she did not have her chair by May 1, she wanted a refund.
With the store now closed, Danaher will not be able to return in person to cancel her order.
“They told me it was going to be 12 to 14 weeks,” she said. “Now it’s been 22 weeks.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
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