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After 70 years in furniture business, his business is being shut down by Gerard Ruth.
Ruth got his start getting his neighborhood friends to assist him haul mattresses and driving a delivery truck. Now, health issues are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I am gonna continue functioning. I got to deliver all this furniture"
This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a sale. Twenty-two years ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought in an outside company to help the stock is sold off by him.
"So I came back."
Ironically, the firm that helped him in 1996 back with the retirement sale is assisting him with this sale.
Like he always did, 87, ruth , still does business. His shop doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I do not email," he explained. "Only been a few years ago we have a computer for accounting."
Gerard's has a focus on luxury, American-made furniture created with premium leather.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going into the boats. It's gambling. You don't understand what you are going to get," he said. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."
Ruth began working in the furniture business during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., then at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War.
Back in 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to his job and to Baton Rouge.
"I was making $35 per week in Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
He had been a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a catalyst for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine which won the most prestigious and dangerous Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain.
Throughout the boat races, Ruth became friends with Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank. Some racing teams were endorsed by gottlieb.
Ruth got a call, 1 afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his kids weren't interested in taking over the business. Would Ruth be interested in owning a furniture store?
Gottlieb told him to check the shop out, and when he had been interested, he'd help him finance the deal.
"It was a nice store, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth explained. The issue was money. Selma, ruth and his wife, had just had their second child, and he only needed a couple hundred bucks after paying the hospital bill. But he did have a $10,000 life insurance coverage he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance policy into the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You're going to make it."
Gerard's Furniture opened in 1966 in 1530 Foster Drive. There were three employees: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. During the day, Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he also delivered the things he offered.
At that time, the hottest trend in furniture has been Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. An effective Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth, he needed to find some of those things in the store to make it successful. Ruth told the man he did not have the money so that he called a Virginia maker and got them to ship three suites of furniture to Gerard. "That cranked click this up business," Ruth said. "We offered the hell out of the furniture"
A few my site decades later, Ruth discovered about a store on Florida Boulevard which was up for sale for $500,000. Ruth checked out the construction at 7330 Florida Blvd. and decided to purchase it and fix it up.
"It cost $2 million to restore the entire building," he explained.
The Florida Boulevard place of the Furniture of Gerard opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for the completeness of this selection, which included fabrics, art, furniture, rugs and accessories. 1 room is filled in the early 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry prints in another area of the shop and has a gallery of original Louisiana art.
To round out the selection Ruth and the major furniture markets visit in North Carolina.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and standard furniture," he said. "The people who buy nice furniture want to sit in it, want to feel this, and when they have any understanding in any way, unzip it and see what is inside ."
Recently, he was diagnosed with chronic lung disease. That led the store to close after meeting with his wife and four children.
"I got outvoted," he said. Because his children have professional occupations, the choice was made to liquidate the organization.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them off to college -- and not have to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from trouble," he said.
Despite his years in business, Ruth said he decided overnight to close the shop.
"My family would go mad trying to work out everything at the furniture store," he said.
He also made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his children find things in the store to help decorate their homes.
Plans are to spend the upcoming few months selling of the stock off in Gerard's. The shop will close when everything is gone.
Ruth said he's seen a increase in customers, since declaring he was shutting down his organization. 500 people showed up at the shop, the day after it was announced he was closing.
"It's been rewarding."