“It’s not a day until somebody cries at work,” Sandra Kern jokes as she wipes away tears on a Friday morning inside the steadily emptying showroom her parents built on Gibsons Way.
Early bird customers poke their heads into Kern’s Furniture and staff move product to displays as the showroom prepares for its final weeks in business.
Last December, the store announced its bricks-and-mortar store is closing this spring. After more than 50 years in the community, with customer habits shifting and with opportunity on the horizon, Sandra, now manager of the store her father started in the early 1970s, is ready for change.
But change doesn’t come without a few tears. “It’s been really overwhelming. People have come in like crazy, sharing their stories that go back so far,” says Sandra. “Over 51 years, it’s not just the original customers, it’s then their children and their grandchildren.”
Beginning
While working as an electrician, Walter Kern started repairing TVs at home in the evenings in the early 1970s. In what Sandra calls the first leap of faith, in 1973, Walter left his job and opened a small retail store on Gibsons Way. He was repairing, selling and renting TVs and stereo equipment. Then, says Sandra, the community wanted more options – appliances and such – and the store evolved.
The second leap of faith came a couple of years later, when the store moved into a larger space in Seaview Place (also on Gibsons Way) and Beryl Kern left her job at Clayton’s produce department to focus on the business. From their showroom there, the Kerns sold TVs, stereos, appliances, furniture and records. It was at that location that Sandra had her first job. As a teenager, she worked weekends and evenings doing video rentals, which the store offered for many years.
A decade after Kern’s first move, the lot at 771 Gibsons Way came available with the opportunity to construct a purpose-made building. “My dad was in love with [the site],” remembers Sandra.
Walter felt it would always be in the center of town and would connect Lower Gibsons to Upper Gibsons, Sandra wrote in a Facebook post reflecting on the store’s history. “The original plan was to build something to house just the furniture store but the needs of the community quickly changed that. The Credit Union was in need of space so the building plans grew.”
The Plaza now houses a suite of businesses, including the Kern’s showroom and warehouse. “From breaking ground to the construction, Walter can be seen in almost every photo. He had a dream and he had a vision,” said the Facebook post.
Then, in the mid-1980s, at 50, Walter suffered a stroke. While he recovered well, his job was to keep healthy, and Beryl took the reins of the business.
“There were not a lot of women in business running companies doing stuff like that,” recalls Sandra. “She had no choice. She just had to do it.”
“She put on her boss lady pants and truly did it all!” Sandra wrote in the Facebook post.
Over its decades at the Plaza, the store evolved from electronics into furniture, which became Kern’s focus a couple of decades ago, estimates Sandra.
What’s next?
Now, for Sandra, it’s time for another leap – to online.
The pandemic changed shopping habits, Sandra says.
“People have learned how to shop differently, they want the best for the least,” she says. “The only way we can do that is by getting rid of our bricks and mortar.
“It’s the end of an era in this regard, but also really [the start of] exciting new chapters.”
The online business will go by a new name and basically be wholesale direct, says Sandra.
They will keep the same suppliers – after all those are relationships the Kerns have built over decades. The suppliers are excited and “ready to go on this next crazy ride and see what happens,” says Sandra, adding that the business will expand to serve Powell River, Sunshine Coast and Lower Mainland.
While Beryl hasn’t been involved with the business side for many years, she still owns Kern’s Furniture and the building says Sandra. Talking about the move to online, “[Beryl] was excited, because she also loves the idea of change and excitement,” says Sandra.
Managing Kern’s has been fun and very creative, said Sandra, and she’ll miss the staff, all of whom have stuck with her through the closing. And naturally, with the closing of the showroom, Sandra will miss the people.
“Every single day since announcing our closing, a handful of people come in to share their memories,” she said. “I do spend a lot of my day apologizing to everybody because everybody says, ‘we’re so sad to see you go.’
“But it’s just time – it just can’t go on forever.”
Looking back over the decades, giving back to community has been a constant for the Kern's, local causes included Yew Transition House among many others.
Sandra remembers one year they had a giveaway at Christmas with a $1,000 shopping spree. She called up the winner, who promptly started crying. Her husband had just been diagnosed with cancer, and this was just a glimmer of good news.
“To have the opportunity to do that in our community has just been the greatest gift.”
Though the plan had been to close the store at the end of April, the last days of Kern’s showroom may run into next month as inventory sells off. See updates at facebook.com/KernsFurniture/
