Havertys Furniture set to close its doors in Pine Bluff

Havertys Furniture will have been at its East Harding Avenue location for 50 years this year, but the up-scale retailer won’t be around to celebrate a 51st anniversary.

The company recently announced on its marquee sign the business was closing.

A spokesman for the company, Jenny H. Parker, who is senior vice president for finance, said the decision was not reached quickly or easily.

“We evaluate all of our stores each year evaluating historic, current and prospective financial performance,” she said. “The Pine Bluff location no longer meets our criteria for continued investment.”

She said the evaluation process also was not one that allows “one or two bad years” to sway a decision.

“In the end, however, we have stockholders, and we have to decide where is the best use of our capital,” she said.

There are six employees at the Pine Bluff location – there is still a Rogers location and one in Little Rock – and efforts are being made to offer the workers other positions within the company.

“We have already had one associate transfer to another location, and we are working with the current team members on potential options with other Havertys stores,” Parker said, speaking from her office at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta.

She said the estimate was that the store’s doors would close for good at the end of March.

Asked if there was anything the city of Pine Bluff could have done to keep the business in operation, Parker said no.

“The community has been very supportive of Havertys since we opened in Pine Bluff in 1974,” she said, adding that the relationship had always been a positive one. “We greatly appreciate the privilege of serving our customers from this location for the past 50 years. We are grateful to all of our current and former team members for their positive impact on the community. Although we are closing this store, we will continue to serve the Pine Bluff area from our Little Rock location.”

The store’s closing is reminiscent of the sudden closure of the Super 1 Foods location, just down the street from Havertys, in October 2022. Mayor Shirley Washington said this week that the closure of the grocery store, leaving part of the city in a food desert, “caught us by surprise.” After that happened, she said, she restarted her practice of meeting with local business people to make sure the city was doing all it could to sustain their operations.

To that end, Washington said she met last summer with Dale Blake, Havertys market manager who works out of the Little Rock location. She said she asked Blake if the store was at risk of closing and Blake said “no, not at this time.”

Washington said Blake did say that what was hurting the Pine Bluff store was that people would shop in Pine Bluff and then drive to Little Rock to shop, eventually buying the item they saw in Pine Bluff from the Little Rock location. Washington said Havertys knew this was going on because of where furniture purchases were delivered.

“After that, I went on a ‘buy local’ campaign,” Washington said. “I couldn’t say ‘buy at Havertys’ because there are other furniture businesses in Pine Bluff. But I thought it was important to remind citizens that it does matter where they make purchases.”

Washington blamed some of the problem on generational differences.

“I don’t buy much furniture because I don’t need furniture,” she said. “But young people who are just getting started in life, they are the ones who would normally buy furniture. But young people don’t think things like that are important. They’d rather spend their money on experiences like travel and food. Then they’ll go home and sleep on a mattress on the floor.”

Blake was reached by phone but said he could not talk to the media.

Larry Miller, president of Pope Furniture, also just down the street from Havertys, said the closure would likely help his bottom line, but he said he would miss having the big retailer in town.

“I really wish they’d stayed,” said Miller, the third generation of family members to run the Pine Bluff store. “Competition is good. As long as I get my share, I want everybody else to get a piece of the pie, too.”

Miller said he had no proof of the exact reason why Havertys was closing, but he said Havertys has its own brand of furniture “and it’s pretty high end and maybe they didn’t adapt to the needs of people in the middle and lower ends of the market. My guess is you can’t just sell high-end furniture in Pine Bluff.”

Asked if the closure was a frightening turn of events in terms of the furniture market in Pine Bluff, Miller said no.

“We are doing great,” he said. “Business is better now than it has ever been. And this is our 99th year and my 50th.”

Miller said his two sons are carrying most of the load now.

“I see us being here for another generation at least,” he said.

Havertys has been at the East Harding Avenue location since 1974, but it has had a presence in Pine Bluff for much longer. Parker, after checking the company’s archives, said Havertys, which was founded in 1885 and has 120 stores in 16 states, invested $35,000 (purchase plus renovations) in a downtown Pine Bluff location that opened on Oct. 16, 1958.

“Our partner in the operations was Vernon Markham Sr., a former long-time Havertys manager of our Little Rock operations,” she said. “The store opened as Davidson Furniture Co. Havertys purchased Mr. Markham’s interest in the operations in December 1968.”

Employees at the Pine Bluff store said they would miss working there.

“You never know who was going to walk through the door,” said Mary Threets, a sales associate who will celebrate 10 years at the furniture store in February. “You get to meet them all and their families.”

Sam Garner, another sales associate, said his family has other retail interests and that he would likely go back to SEARK College as a math tutor.

Another sales associate who didn’t want to be identified said she would miss being around people the most.

“I love it here,” she said. “Our customers hate it that we’re closing. My husband raises cattle and is around the house most of the day. I said ‘Peace out, I’m gone. I’ve gotta find something to do.'”

As for what’s ahead, Threets said the future was not necessarily up to her.

“I feel that where God leads, he provides,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Parker said that for those employees who were not able to relocate to other jobs, there would be severance packages

“If you look around, you’ll find that many of our employees have been with us for several years,” she said. “They are loyal to us, and we try to reciprocate in being loyal to them.”