decorative chairs
After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is shutting down.
Ruth got his start receiving his neighborhood friends to assist him haul mattresses and driving a delivery truck. Now, health problems are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I is not going home to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the middle of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I am going to continue functioning. I got to deliver all this furniture."
This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a going-out-of-business sale. Twenty-two decades back, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the inventory.
"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went stir crazy," he said. "So I came back."
Ironically, the same company that helped him with all the retirement sale back in 1996 is currently helping him with this sale.
Like he did, 87, ruth does business. His store does not have a website. "I really don't text and I don't email," he said. "Only been a couple of years ago we have a computer for accounting."
Gerard's includes a focus on luxury, American-made furniture.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it is like going into the ships. It is gambling. You don't understand exactly 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 industry during his senior year at Baton Rouge High in Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War.
He returned with the furniture store to his job and also to Baton Rouge.
During that time he was a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a catalyst for your Tom Cat Baby, a ship with a Corvette engine which won the dangerous and prestigious Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.
With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became friends through the boat races. Gottlieb endorsed some teams that were racing.
Ruth got a call from Gottlieb one afternoon. The owner of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children were not interested in taking over the business. Can Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?
Gottlieb told him to check the shop out, and he'd help him finance the deal if he had been interested.
"It was a nice store, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth said. The problem was money. But he did have a $10,000 life insurance policy he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb advised me to deliver him that insurance coverage to the lender," Ruth said. "He told me'You are going to make it."
The Furniture of gerard started in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. Ruth sold furniture in the shop. In click resources the evenings, he also delivered view it the things he offered.
At that time, the hottest trend in furniture has been Mediterranean- 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. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money so that he got them to ship three suites of furniture on credit to Gerard's and phoned a Virginia manufacturer. "That cranked up business," Ruth explained. "We sold out the hell of the furniture."
Ruth heard about a store.
"It cost $2 million to revive the whole construction," he explained.
The Florida Boulevard place of the Furniture of Gerard opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for its completeness of this selection, which included art, furniture, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. One area is filled with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints at a different part of the shop.
Ruth visits the major furniture markets in North Carolina to round out the selection at Gerard's.
"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in great taste and traditional furniture," he explained. "The people who purchase fine furniture want to sit inside, want to feel this, and if they have any knowledge in any way, unzip it and see what's inside ."
He had been diagnosed with lung disease. That led him to shut the store after meeting with four children and his wife.
"I got outvoted," he said. Because his children have professional jobs, the choice was made to liquidate the organization.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four children, send them all off to school -- and not need to pay any associations or lawyers to get them from trouble," he said.
Despite his years in business, Ruth said he decided to shut the store.
"My family would go crazy trying to work out everything in the furniture shop," he said.
He also made a point of helping his kids and eight grandchildren find items in the shop to help decorate their houses.
Plans are to spend selling of the stock off . When everything is gone, the shop will close.
Ruth said he has seen a increase in customers, since announcing he shut down his organization. The day after it was announced he closed, 500 people showed up in the store. The following day about 400 people were there.
"It's been rewarding."