Sustainable Business Profile
By Christy Greenwald

Samuel’s Furniture
Owner: Elie Samuel
Location: Ferndale
Employees: 44
Sustainable Connections member since January 2005
Took the Watershed Pledge in June 2006

Samuel’s Furniture is a family business in more ways than one.  Elie’s father owned a furniture store in Vancouver, Canada and Elie worked there.  He headed straight to the University of British Columbia after high school to obtain a business degree, with the intention of owning his own furniture store.  Not many of us even stick to one major in college, but Elie went from his job at his father’s shop, to college, and straight into his career.  He has had Samuel’s Furniture for just about 15 years, and he’s not even 40 years old!

It’s no wonder Samuel’s Furniture won America’s Top Independent Furniture Store in 2004 from “Furniture Today.”   Samuel’s has individual traits that only family could engrain so deeply.  Elie treated me like family as soon as I met him, feeding me cookies and allowing me behind the scenes, upstairs in the office area, where I witnessed him quickly and smoothly put out small fires with customers, which are commonplace in any business.  Besides Elie’s father’s influence, his wife Kirsten has helped make Samuel’s anything but a cookie-cutter furniture store.  The two met in college.  Kirsten’s environmental awareness rubbed off on Elie, and they now attend Sustainable Connections business conferences together.  Elie’s desire to protect the environment is evident in the knowledge he has taken initiative to acquire about things like chemicals in manufactured products and water runoff.

Samuel’s recycles or reuses paper, aluminum, glass, toner cartridges, and even fabric samples.  They service their four company vehicles regularly, use as environmentally friendly paint and carpeting as possible, and are planning to switch from having drinking water delivered to an internal filtering system.  Elie is aware of many other eco-friendly options for the business, and seems excited to explore those opportunities in stride, as he deals with day to day business.

Elie is not your typical business owner, as you may already recognize.  He has his hands full because he doesn’t leave tasks up to other people that he can do himself.  He doesn’t even have a buyer; he travels to North Carolina twice a year, and now Las Vegas as well, for purchasing.  This man has a lot of energy!

The main obstacles to Samuel’s Furniture’s environmentally sound practices are the large square footage of the building and the long distances the merchandise travels to get to the store.  The 6 acre property holds a showroom of 50,000 square feet and 25,000 square feet in warehousing space.  Ideally, not so much space would be used for the store, or there would at least be solar panels utilizing the vast roof space.  However, the building has to be large enough to house all the furniture available so customers can test for comfort, because no one wants to spend hundreds or more dollars on a chair just because the tag reads “luxurious.”  And actually, Elie seemed interested in the idea of solar panels and the benefits there are for participating businesses, but that expensive construction probably won’t be going on tomorrow.  As for purchasing merchandise from far away, there isn’t much option.  40% of furniture at January 2005Samuel’s is made in the USA, including a line called Simply Amish that is a collective of about 90 small Amish factories that use no electricity, but some use diesel generators for some tools.

Other obstacles include electricity use and diesel for company vehicles.  Displaying furniture in a furniture store is technical, just like displaying a painting in a gallery; it has to look appealing to the customer.  There are 1300 light bulbs on the ceiling tracking, strategically pointed in different directions.  Elie has a plan to switch the bulbs that just point to the floor to fluorescent, about 10%, and put about half the lights on motion sensors.  That’ll definitely help the $5000 per month electricity bill.

Mango wood furniture is all the sustainable rage, and it’s one unique feature of Samuel’s.  The wood comes from the trees that produce mango fruit.  After 20 or 30 years, the trees do not yield fruit that can be harvested for food.  When the trees reach that point, the wood can be harvested for industry, including being made into beautiful furniture, and new trees can take their places.  Yum!

If you’re in the market for a nice piece of mango wood furniture, or just want to test couches for fun, come by Samuel’s and congratulate Elie for his superior effort in maintaining a family business that goes far beyond a materialist mentality.  Feel good about any purchase you might make, and even pick up a Buy Local Coupon Book while you’re there!

Samuel’s Furniture
1904 Main Street
Ferndale, WA 98248