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Nebraska Furniture Mart
- gbacon 7y agoIt's an amazing place. At least when I visited, you walk through the door to see some bland looking furniture (some maybe even the cheap MDF self-assembled type that you buy in a cardboard box), but then you walk through a doorway that opens up into a gigantic space of every sort of electronic game, device, accessory, geegaw, tchotchke, peripheral, plaything, and delight you could imagine. The staff were highly trained, happy to be there, knowledgeable, helpful, and made me want to come back and buy more.
- wozniacki 7y agoGates & Buffet did a lighthearted tour of the place [1] [1] Testing Mattresses with Warren Buffett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFwlNVRD5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFwlNVRD5M
- oh_sigh 7y agoI love how the founder sold her company to Warren Buffet, and then opened up pretty much the same store right across the street, forcing Buffet to buy that one as well(with an added non-compete clause)
- rileytg 7y agothe story is more of business drive than competition (imo): > She bitterly ''retired'' in 1989 at the age of 95, but after three months returned with characteristic combativeness, setting up a rival store called Mrs. B's Clearance and Factory Outlet across the street from the Furniture Mart. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-retail-queen-dies-at-104.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-ret... my understanding from primary sources is she started the second to carry on her ideals when the original iced her out
- YourGrace 7y agoI think it's important to state that one of the reasons she opened another store was because her family forced her to retire.
- hogFeast 7y agoShe was also notoriously abusive towards staff and her family. That was the reason why her family forced her to retire initially (iirc, and I may be misremembering this, she only has one biological son...the other two married her daughters and they were, perhaps understandably, not keen to carry on after the sale because of the abuse).
- 609venezia 7y agoDo you have a source for her abuse? A quick search didn’t turn up anything—your comment is the top google result :)
- zaroth 7y agoSeriously, the ranking of HN comments in organic Google results is a little bit off-putting in some cases. Someone dialed up the weights on HN comments way past where IMO a potentially throwaway remark should be scored. And I say this as someone who tries to make substantive and significant HN posts on the regular.
- tim333 7y agoHere's something from http://www.quoteswise.com/rose-blumkin-quotes.html http://www.quoteswise.com/rose-blumkin-quotes.html : >[To Warren Buffett when she had lined up a group of her grandsons and sons-in-law and nephews against a wall and was lecturing them.] See all these guys next to me? If I sell it to you, you can fire them. These people are a bunch of bums, and they are all related to me and I can’t fire them. But you can fire them. They’re bums, bums, bums. [‘She went on like this for an hour, literally. The word ‘bums’ recurred many, many times. Then she dismissed me. I had served my purpose.’ – ###Warren Buffett The other quotes are quite an interesting read also.
- 7y ago
- tim333 7y agoBuffett talking about it and Mrs B this year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg1XfTNKRJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg1XfTNKRJk
- hogFeast 7y agoIt is worth checking out the relevant chapter in Alice Schroder's Buffett bio. Amazing story. Iirc, it took her six months just to get out of the USSR, across Russia, through China, then went on a cargo ship. It also covers how she got started which is just as interesting (she got sued for selling too cheap, she can't read, she can't write, etc.). The stores are also unbelievably large. They seem to be 25-50% bigger than Ikea stores, which is incredible. Only in America (and possibly China in 2030).
- AmVess 7y agoThere's a door showroom in Chongqing that's so big you drive through it and look at all the doors on offer. Yes, you drive through it in your car and look at housing doors of all types.
- hogFeast 7y agoThat is really worth a Google. Must require some ventilation. Totally mad.
- givehimagun 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwS3R20IoMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwS3R20IoMk
- lqet 7y ago> In 1989, at age 95, Mrs. B's family forced her into retirement. Unhappy with this and realizing that Buffett had not made her sign a non-compete agreement, Mrs. B started "Mrs. B’s Clearance and Factory Outlet" across the street from Nebraska Furniture Mart three months later. > Two years later, "Mrs. B’s Clearance and Factory Outlet" was profitable and the third largest carpet outlet in Omaha.
- hogFeast 7y agoAnd when she decided to rejoin, Buffett made her sign a non-compete agreement...at the age of 97 (I think)...which is surely a first. Iirc, it was a five year non-compete.
- c0achmcguirk 7y agoI have no idea why this is on the front page of Hacker News but I'm not hating it. I moved from Omaha to the Denver/Boulder area two years ago and besides the Henry Doorly Zoo, I miss Nebraska Furniture Mart the most. NFM is a great place to buy pretty much anything you want to put in your house. Mrs. B really knew how to make a business work. The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business.
- jfk13 7y agoPerhaps that illustrates just how little value we've really added during the last few decades of "improving" business systems...
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI derive great value from ordering online and picking up in store, as well as stores that show me inventory and item location.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- whenchamenia 7y agoAnd yet, theirs can, and does!
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI doubt they are doing it with 70s technology. The point of my comment was to demonstrate the improvements since the 70s have added a lot of value to customers, especially the fact that I can compare prices around the nation and even world within minutes.
- throwaway2048 7y agoCatalogues weren't much different many years ago. The fact that sears totally missed the boat on e-commerce is nothing short of astounding.
- WalterBright 7y agoAn awesome American business story! I also love how she never retired.
- sabujp 7y agoJust to clarify "largest home furnishing store" the article literally means by sq ft within a single structure. Obviously the Ikeas of the world have much more total sq ft.
- kodablah 7y agoInterestingly, built in the same lot where the world's largest sporting goods store is currently being built (opening early next year).
- GWSchulz 7y agoIf you've never hiked through one, they are quintessential American excess. I know for many of you, their locations are Flyover Country. But actually embark from your stopover next time and spend a full weekend experiencing it. I've lived all over Middle America and the SF Bay Area for several years, and I live in Tulsa now. Nebraska Furniture Mart makes IKEA look like a Mission bodega that ran out of American Spirits and artisan beer.
- sswaner 7y agoI will have to give NFM another chance. The Clive IA store was a sleepy, underwhelming selection, and staff either missing or unable to help. We kept trying to buy blinds. After the 3rd try stopping by to talk to an expert we just ended up ordering online from justblinds. They have moved to a new location in Clive or Urbandale. I haven't stopped in, but it feels like the parking lot is never too full.
- solotronics 7y agoThe one North of Dallas is bustling with activity whenever I go (evening/weekend). They have had sales on stuff like dyson vacs and we got a custom made couch and the fiance got to see all the fabrics and touch them so there are some definite benefits vs something online. You can't sit on a couch on Amazon! Also, it's readily displayed what is made in the US which I always choose when possible. The salespeople are very friendly and they get a commission so it's good to support the community.
- sajeeve 7y agoand why is this on hacker news
- dawsmik 7y agoIt is entrepreneurship in it's purest form. This is an entrepreneurship forum with a focus on technology.
- CharlesW 7y agoMind sharing what you learned, technology-wise, from reading this Wikipedia entry?
- bzbz 7y ago10 page report, double spaced, size 12 font, Times New Roman? Hacker News is specifically _not_ a pure tech forum. Graciously, please don't force people to conform to what you wish it to be.
- kick 7y agoWhat to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dymk 7y ago> Most stories about politics ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. clearly HN does not follow nor enforce these rules, so why pretend when pick-and-choose anyways? And why lecture people on what is "on topic" when objectively "off topic" stuff makes it to the front page all the time?
- nhebb 7y agoAnother interesting one is Hickory (NC) Furniture Mart. It started as a drive-in restaurant and pivoted over time into a mall with over 100 furniture stores.
- IntricateJake 7y agoOmaha represent!
- victor106 7y agoDoes anyone here know what exactly is NFM’s moat? Price, Selection, Customer Service? All the above?
- kodablah 7y agoPersonally, all of the above. Most of my furnishings and appliances have been purchased there, the sheer volume of choice coupled with reasonable pricing and ease of purchase/delivery sets them apart from niche stores and/or difficult purchasing processes. It's much easier spending an afternoon walking around dozens of couches than traveling store to store (knowing evaluation must be in person for such an item).
- koyote 7y agoCan they compete against Ikea?
- madengr 7y agoYes, if you are looking for something that is not particle board.
- icebraining 7y agoAre you sure? IKEA has quite cheap solid wood furniture.
- whenchamenia 7y agoAnd it still seems to last a single move. I hate this disposable culture.
- tomrod 7y agoSelection, IME. We purchased couches and a desk chair from them. There tends to be three grades: entry, mid, affluent. Their entry are 2X Ikea and maybe 3X the quality of most of what I've seen from Ikea. Mid prices tend to be better than smaller furniture stores, and I can't really comment on affluent.
- auto 7y agoFun fact, Nebraska Furniture Mart holds 0x0004 on the list of Linux Manufacturer USB Ids [1]. At my last job we built a product with a custom OpenWRT fork, and I needed to identify an Atmel D21 behind a usb hub on a custom board we built, and I figured I'd never have a collision with any NFM hardware, so I just used that since no one outside our company would never see the device either. [1] http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids
- braindeath 7y agoThose aren't Linux IDs, those are USB-IF issued vendor IDs. That list is merely maintained by a Linux dev. That number is so low I wonder why NFM registered it. They have retailed electronics and accessories. Possibly some USB peripheral in the 90s?
- CamperBob2 7y agoWell, sort of. They're Linux's interpretation of a superset of VID/PID combinations recognized by the USB-IF. The USB-IF doesn't allow product IDs to be resold, as was (and still is) done by MCS in the $16D0 VID range, or to party on abandoned/unused IDs like C&T's at $420, as something called the "Celly SIM Card Reader" seems to be doing. Linux is under no obligation to follow the (absurd) policies of USB-IF, so they basically have to maintain their own parallel list.
- puranjay 7y agoI want to read more about Mrs. B. She sounds like an absolutely remarkable woman!
- mike00632 7y agoIt's why there is no IKEA in Nebraska!
- MarkMc 7y agoRose Blumkin is the classic American-immigrant-rags-to-riches-by-hard-work story. I love this story from Warren Buffett in his 1983 letter to shareholders: "Omaha retailers began to recognize that Mrs. B would offer customers far better deals than they had been giving, and they pressured furniture and carpet manufacturers not to sell to her. But by various strategies she obtained merchandise and cut prices sharply. Mrs. B was then hauled into court for violation of Fair Trade laws. She not only won all the cases, but received invaluable publicity. At the end of one case, after demonstrating to the court that she could profitably sell carpet at a huge discount from the prevailing price, she sold the judge $1400 worth of carpet."
- exabrial 7y agoThe traffic at the Kansas City location ironically lead to the opening of the Ikea here. Ikea used NFM's gaffs as a playbook to ensure their opening went smooth; everything from choosing location to paying for traffic signal upgrades (and hiring local law enforcement to trigger them manually) was thought out.