Published: February 03, 2009 08:10 am      

Generations of service

When New Ulm Furniture celebrated its 60th anniversary three years ago, it announced a contest to see who could bring in the oldest sales receipt from the store. One man arrived at the store with a 59-year-old sales slip for a nightstand that had cost $20 at the time — and that he was still using.

Ben Pieser was just a baby when that man bought that nightstand from his parents, Dick and Sara Pieser. They opened New Ulm Furniture in 1945 on Minnesota Street in New Ulm. Fourteen years later, they moved a block east to German Street, where customers would be able to park for free.

“Minnesota Street parking was all at meters,” Ben Pieser says. “Dad wanted to offer free parking. That was important to him.”

Today, Ben Pieser runs the business his parents started — but he’s got help from his 32-year-old daughter, Betsy, who returned to New Ulm three years ago after going to school and working in Washington, D.C. Together, they sat down with Minnesota Valley Business to talk about working together and running their family’s business in New Ulm.



MVB: You call your dad Ben at work; is that strange for you?

Betsy Pieser: No, not really. This is a professional setting, and we’re talking to each other on a professional level. At family settings, I call him Dad, but it seems natural to call him Ben here at work.

Ben Pieser: It doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t want to hear her say, “Dad, call on line one” over the intercom.



MVB: How are other family members involved in the business?

Ben Pieser: My mom, who will be 92 in May, still works many afternoons; she answers phones and does sales — she’s still an excellent salesperson. She knows a lot of people, and they know her. My wife, Vicki, works in the office, too. And our son J.P. helps dust the furniture.



MVB: Talk a little bit about the relationships you’ve developed with the people of this community.

Betsy Pieser: There are people who come in and say that they bought their first bedroom set from my grandpa. And they’re still buying from us. It always makes me happy to hear people say that we took such good care of them the last time they were in. They tell me that my dad was so helpful when they bought their first house, that sort of thing.

Ben Pieser: We have one customer who came in to buy her first bedroom set when she was 16. My dad set up a payment plan for her at a time when no one else was doing that. Half a century later, she’s still buying her furniture from us.



MVB: What’s changed the most about your business in the past 63 years?

Ben Pieser: When we opened right after World War II, it was browns and greens. Now the choice of colors and styles is endless. People can make a room uniquely theirs.

Betsy Pieser: Like my dad said, today customers of any age want their home to be unique, to represent their tastes. We have the selection for that. Also, I think the length of time people are keeping their furniture has changed. My contemporaries like changing their pieces more often than their parents did. Also, houses are so much bigger now; there’s a lot more space to fill with furniture.

Ben Pieser: But on the other side of that, there are a lot of people who are downsizing too. They’re moving to apartments and condos, and they need smaller-scale pieces and just less of everything.



MVB: Have you had to change your business model in response to that?

Ben Pieser: We’ve broadened our price ranges — you can get a $300 sofa or a $3,000 sofa, a small sofa or a big sofa. But we’re still about quality pieces.

Betsy Pieser: And when it comes to working with the aging population, we added durable medical equipment to our line about 10 years ago. So now we sell lift chairs, adjustable beds, even motorized scooters. We wanted to find a way to continue a relationship with our customers as they aged. We wanted to be able to continue to service them and to have what they needed. And, of course, they get the same personal service that they’ve always gotten here.



MVB: Has the current economic downturn affected you?

Ben Pieser: Maybe not as much as it has the rest of the nation. We’re slightly more insulated here, and we haven’t seen a big dip in sales yet. People aren’t building or buying as many new homes, but instead they might be looking at a new sofa and a coat of paint to freshen up their current homes.



MVB: Has working together changed the relationship you two share in any way?

Betsy Pieser: I think we’ve grown closer. I’ve learned so much from him, and I have so much more to learn from him. I have a great deal of respect for how he’s run this business.

Ben Pieser: Betsy is a real people person. She’s got retail in her blood. It’s great to have her here to bounce things off of. She’s brought a lot of good things to this business.