In a new year a new owner (but familiar face) takes over at Eager Beaver Furniture in downtown Waldport

 

By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com

WALDPORT — The learning curve won’t be too steep for the new owner of a familiar Waldport retailer — he was store manager for the past three years.

Ryan Bennett of Waldport officially became the business owner of Eager Beaver Mattress & Furniture Outlet on Jan. 1, buying the business from founder Abe Silvonen. “I’ve always wanted to own my own business,” said Bennett, who began as a salesman at Eager Beaver five years ago.

Working with a staff of five, Bennett is now in charge of south Lincoln County’s only full-service furniture store, and discovering that the job comes with some new challenges.

“When I was manager, I didn’t have a lot to do with pricing merchandise, and making sure the floor looked good,” he said. “Now, though, I’m chief executive officer, purchasing, human resources — just about any title you can have in a business.”

Bennett leases the building space from Silvonen, who founded what was once a three-store chain. Silvonen is getting out of the furniture business to focus on commercial real estate. He recently bought the property and buildings that once housed four small businesses at the corner of U.S. Highway 101 and Northwest Hemlock Street, just steps from Eager Beaver.

Bennett isn’t planning any major changes to the store right away, but he has identified a market need that needs filling.

“The only thing I’d change is to add a section where we could have ‘scratch-and-dent’ discounted pieces, and maybe some used merchandise, so we could have something for everybody,” he said. “We get people coming in all the time asking for used furniture, because the prices of new have just kept going up and up, and a lot of people can’t afford it.”

Rather than promoting holiday sales or special promotions, the new owner adopted Silvonen’s philosophy: “We price as low as we can all year long …”

As with all businesses, Eager Beaver has experienced market shifts since the pandemic began two years ago, including an increase in business as more people stayed home. Since then, supply chain problems have changed consumer habits.

“People are more willing to take pieces from the floor, or from what we have in stock — a lot are asking for that because they don’t want to wait” for custom orders, he said.

Pulling items from the store warehouse in Newport and from vendors in Portland, “I can replenish the floor really quickly,” Bennett said. “We have people who come in every two weeks to see what’s new; I send a truck to Portland every week to get new stock.”

With financing programs, free delivery and haul-away, Bennett said Eager Beaver “always makes sure to take care of customers from start to finish; we bend over backwards to help out.”