Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401210336
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Lois Johnson Bettis listed 75 beds with special waterproof mattresses and 36 chests of drawers donated in 1972; 36 mattresses given 10 years later; then another three dozen mattresses . . .
The Cartledge name is prominent among supporters of Roanoke Valley projects, whether it be the Rescue Mission or Center in the Square, the arts facility that over the years has gotten thousands of the family's dollars.
The money has come from operating one of the nation's largest furniture retail businesses which the Georgia native began in Roanoke in 1945.
Trade publications estimate the company's annual sales at more than $60 million. The family's name appears on lists of the state's richest; their estimated worth is more than $40 million.
But the Cartledges don't discuss their sales or their worth.
Cartledge in 1988 resigned from the authority that governed Explore Park rather than fill out a financial disclosure statement required of people who serve on state boards and commissions.
"It's no one's business," the patriarch says quietly.
And the portion of Bettis' tribute that best described Cartledge didn't have to do with money anyway.
"Mr. Cartledge is not just a financial contributor, but has actually attended these various programs for the children. I have seen him `misty eyed' on more than one such occasion," she wrote.
He can get equally sentimental about running a retail furniture business. "I love it," said Cartledge Sr. one day as he looked around the company's newest Roanoke Valley store, the one at Valley View.
This is a man who sets the pace for everything from community leadership and the preservation of courtesy titles at the office to the business aggression that put Grand Piano & Furniture Co. among the top 50 furniture retailers in the country. The ranking is according to Furniture Today trade publication.
Cartledge also penned a classic memo to employees on how to give customers Coca-Colas as they enter a Grand store, a tradition the company began as a promotion when it opened a store in Lynchburg in the 1950s.
"Let me emphasize how important it is to give our Cokes with enthusiasm and a smile," the memo began. It continued: "Salespeople and store managers too should watch the door and be ready with a Coke when the customer walks in."
The memo noted that the company gave away 14,000 Cokes at the Lynchburg opening. The success of the promotion made it stick and although Grand can no longer get the drink in 6.5 ounce returnable bottles, you can't walk in a Grand store without being offered a Coke.
In addition to George Cartledge Sr., there are four other family members in the business - George Cartledge Jr., 52, president and son of the founder; Robert H. "Bob" Bennett Jr., 60, executive vice president and Cartledge Sr.'s son-in-law; George Cartledge III, 30, and Robert George Bennett, 32, senior vice presidents and the founder's grandsons.
They don't argue; they discuss.
"We get along because we respect each other's opinion," said George Cartledge Jr. If there are disagreements, the one in charge of the area of business under discussion makes the decision.
Cartledge said the secret of the smooth family operation is his father's style of management: delegate responsibility and don't embarrass someone who makes a mistake.
"Dad never corrects us about anything. He just doesn't do that," he said. "That's a pretty good quality that most people don't have."
The belief that if people are given both responsibility and freedom, they will do their jobs well carries throughout the company, said Fred Hill, who manages two Grand stores in Lynchburg. Hill, a Roanoke native and 19-year employee, started work as a stock handler.
Managers can let their personalities show in the displays and operations of their stores, but they also know what's expected of them, Hill said.
On a recent cold Saturday, as Hill was going between his two Lynchburg stores, he remarked: "They expect me to be here making sure customers are waited on properly and taken care of."
As George Cartledge Jr. points out:
"We've never hired a manager. We grow them. That way they know what we want."
Cartledge said he always planned to come into the family business, but he thought he would ease in. Instead, because of a plane crash he had to take on responsibility rapidly.
In May 1963, the same month he graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, the corporate plane hit a North Carolina mountain, killing one company executive and the pilot and injuring three other company leaders. One of the injured was Karl Cartledge, brother and then business partner of the senior Cartledge.
"That turned us upside down," he said. "When I got out of school, my duties accelerated."
In the past 20 years, George Cartledge Sr. has increasingly let his son assume the company leadership. However, at 84, the senior Cartledge serves as chairman of the company and works six days a week, except for a regular January trip to Florida. He also looks at every check going out, his son said.
Cartledge Jr. has his father's low-key approach to being in charge. He's gracious, but he expects people to do their jobs, which means they are are on the road a lot, visiting stores.
Family members don't hang out together, he noted.
"I haven't seen my son all week," he said one Friday.
Each family member has his responsibilities in the day-to-day operations. George Cartledge Jr. is in charge of the furniture buying; his son is the liaison between Grand and its largest single supplier, Kincaid Furniture Co. Bob Bennett oversees the office functions and the design, construction and outfitting of new stores. Robert Bennett is in charge of the electronics division, which includes home theaters and appliances.
There are no Cartledge or Bennett women in the business. It wasn't expected, said Robert Bennett, who is married to Patricia Cartledge Bennett, daughter of the company founder.
The only time one of the women in the family gets involved beyond appearing at special store openings is when a store is being decorated, he said.
"Then Pat will help me set it up," Bennett said.
Bennett, the son-in-law who says he has always been treated like a son, ran his family's commercial baking business in Georgia before he joined Grand.
He said he had been expected to join the baking business after graduating from Florida State University.
He said he would never have encouraged his son "one bit" to go to work at Grand.
"It's fun to see your son in the business, though," he said.
George Cartledge Jr. notes that ending up in a family business is just "the draw of the cards. Grand is lucky because we have two young, strong men coming along who love the business and can do it."
When a company still has its first generation leader, discussion of the passing of leadership to a third generation seems premature.
But the youngest members of the family, who are like the yin and the yang, say they're in for the long haul.
George Cartledge III, who was in a coma for 15 days after a car accident in 1980, talks of how he "loves everything about being alive." Robert, no less a lover of life, speaks however of how he likes to "get to the point of things" and doesn't like the "fluff."
The youngest Cartledge, who attended his first opening of a Grand Piano store at age 9, said he might would have worked for some other company before joining the family business except he wanted to be able to work with his grandfather.
"Granddad" was already 77 when George Cartledge III graduated from Virginia Tech as a history major.
"I'm devoted to this company and this job," he said. "Above everything, I'm devoted to my grandfather."
"The reason I work six days a week is I don't want him to get one up on me," he said.
His grandfather, in a 1991 interview, said, "You can't expect to work 40 hours a week and really be successful." In the same interview, the patriarch said his family was his "greatest achievement."
George Cartledge III is the third generation to work with Kincaid Furniture, the retailer's major supplier of wood furniture. A Kincaid Gallery is part of every Grand store.
The Hudson, N.C., manufacturer has been a division of La-Z-Boy Chair Co. since 1988, but it began as a family operation, and its growth was greatly influenced by George Cartledge Sr.
"Mr. Cartledge was instrumental in us getting into the bedroom business," said Steven Kincaid, president of the company.
Kincaid said George Sr. was buying the company's cedar wardrobes when he asked the company to begin making bedroom furniture. The first design was produced around 1950 and was a solid mahogany suite, which Cartledge's stores promptly sold, Kincaid said.
Through the years Kincaid Furniture honored the Grand family by naming products for them: for example, the Bennett wardrobe and the Cartledge cupboard.
"My father would always call Mr. Cartledge Sr. and the two of them would really decide what we would make in the company. That worked real well," said Kincaid.
While George Cartledge III is selecting wood furnishings in Shaker and similar traditional styles, his cousin, Robert Bennett, is choosing the company's home theater and other electronics offerings.
Both grandsons work in the corporate office on Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke, but that's not where they started. Cartledge III began in the Charlottesville area; Robert Bennett at the Martinsville store.
Bennett, 32 and a 1983 business management graduate of North Carolina State, also began his career track as a youngster.
Relatives in a family business work "twice as hard" to prove themselves "because you're working against an adverse image that you're not expected to have to do anything," he said.
"I've been in every store opening since I was 4 or 5," he said. During Christmas vacations from school, he cleaned stores. In summers, he worked in the warehouse.
"I don't feel I've been given anything," he said. "I have earned my position."
Both the younger Cartledge and the younger Bennett envision that some day they will run the business together, but they approach the subject with their different styles.
"I guess I see Robert and I someday doing that together," said George Cartledge III.
"There is room at the top for more than me," said Robert Bennett.
No matter which generation is in the lead of the company, Grand officials say the main goal won't change: The company needs to please customers.
What might be different is how customer satisfaction is achieved.
Part of George Cartledge Jr.'s daily routine as president is phoning and writing customers in reply to their comments on surveys they filled out after making purchases.
He said the company is aiming for all "excellents" on its consumer surveys.
It also must find ways to be more competitive in pricing by finding suppliers who can make better furniture at lower prices because that's what customers expect, he said.
Cartledge Jr. said the company intends to grow, and knows it will have to go further away from Roanoke than previous to do it.
The Cartledge family has its roots and its corporate offices in the valley but otherwise "we don't think we're tied to Roanoke," he said.
Grand's growth strategy is to build regional warehouses that can serve clusters of stores. For example, he said, the warehouse in Winchester serves three stores, but it could deliver to two more.
He said the company is looking for sites in a radius of 300 miles from Roanoke, paying most attention to cities comparable to Roanoke. The company wants to be the dominant furniture retailer in its markets, he said.
"We're not big on metropolitan areas. We like to get credit for service to your grandmother," he said. "We're probably not going to Charlotte."
Nor Richmond. But maybe to Knoxville, Tenn., and Greenville, S.C.
Grand's store on the perimeter of Valley View Mall is its most successful by sales volume, Cartledge said. It is a one-level structure with offerings across a broad price range, but concentrated in medium-priced merchandise.
He said the chain's more upscale stores like Grand Interiors on Virginia 419 do well in sales, but the company's focus is on stores like the one at Valley View.
The company also recently changed its advertising strategy moving away from inserts in newspapers and tripling its television promotions.
The television commercials feature popular furnishings, recliners were in a recent one, but also attempt to tell the larger story of Grand's free delivery policy and other consumer-friendly services, Cartledge said.
Sales in recent months indicate the furniture industry is on a comeback from several tough years, but Cartledge Jr. said it still can't lose sight of the fact that "furniture is just not the most important thing people have to buy."
He said the company will continue to remodel stores and assess suppliers to get the best deals.
"We known as loyal, but we will change quickly when something is not right," he said.
Just like his father years ago rejected one furniture design from his friends at Kincaid because they wouldn't use wooden pulls on the drawers like he wanted.
The company: Grand Piano, a home-furnishings retailer, operates 22 stores in 16 cities in Virginia, Tennessee, Maryland and North Carolina.
Headquarter: Roanoke
Employees: 585
Financial data: The private company does not release financial information but its annual sales are estimated at more than $60 million by Furniture Today, a trade publication, which lists Grand among the nation's top 50 retailers.
Officers: George B. Cartledge Sr., chairman and founder; George B. Cartledge Jr., president and son of the founder; Robert H. Bennett Jr., executive vice president and treasurer and son-in-law of founder; Charles A. Long, secretary.\ Company history:
1937: George Cartledge Sr. and partners established Southeast Wholesale Furniture in Atlanta; Cartledge had previously managed a grocery store and then worked as a furniture salesman in Atlanta and Knoxville, Tenn.
1945: Cartledge, a Georgia native, and partners, L.G. Sherman and M.B. Seltzer, expanded to Roanoke by purchasing Grand Piano & Furniture Co. from the Paul Hash family of Roanoke.
The Hash family had opened Grand Piano Co. in 1910 at the corner of Kirk Avenue and First Street to sell pianos, other musical instruments and related merchandise. The Hashes expanded into furniture and appliances in the early 1930s.
Karl Cartledge, brother of George, came to Roanoke to run the Roanoke store along with Henry Williamson, who remained an officer of the company until his death in January 1990.
1950: The company began its annual warehouse sales
1953: Began what would become a company tradition of giving customers Coca-Colas when they enter a Grand store. The custom started at the opening of the Lynchburg store, when Grand gave away 12,000 bottles of the soft drink.
1951-1993: Grand expanded into Radford, Covington, Lynchburg, Staunton, Waynesboro, Martinsville, Winchester, Hagerstown, Md., Blacksburg, Bristol, Va., and Kingsport and Johnson City, Tenn., mainly by purchasing other furniture stores.
For example, Grand bought Brown Furniture Co. in Lexington, Ball Brothers Furniture in Bristol, United Furniture Co. in Kingsport, M.C. Thomas Furniture Co. of Charlottesville and Staunton Furniture Co., and the H.H. Jones Furniture Co. of Winston-Salem, N.C.
Also during this period, Grand Interiors was opened in Roanoke County, at Grand Pavilion, a shopping complex owned by the furniture retailer.
1963: On May 21, a company-owned plane crashed in North Carolina killing its pilot, Bob Garst, and the company's controller, George Davis. The company has not owned a plane since. 1965: Harrisonburg store was built, the first store the company constructed.
1965: Karl Cartledge assumed ownership and management of Ball Brothers Furniture Co. in Bristol and United Furniture Co. of Kingsport, which had been part of Grand Piano, and George Cartledge Sr. retained the Grand Piano stores.
1965: In October, Grand bought N.W. Pugh building at corner of Campbell Avenue and First Street in downtown and renovated it and opened in September 1966.
1968: Company opened Grand Exchange Store on City Market. That store was closed a couple of years ago.
1991: The company added Seat Yourself, a sofa, chair and accessory shop aimed at younger customers, at Grand Pavilion; opened new Grand Piano store at Valley View Mall.
Source: The company
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