The familiar radio and TV jingle with the perky female singer is embedded in the minds of many of us, part of the soundscape of our lives: “We do more than the others do – we do the most for you – K&D Furniture.”
As the iconic Peninsula retailer prepared to close its doors for the last time with the retirement of owners Allyson and Henry Chenier, the notes came back as a bittersweet memory for the couple – a remembrance of a business that was truly part of the fabric of its community and a reminder of a way of life that has changed, inevitably, as the community has grown.
Allyson never cared much for K&D’s musical signature, she admits. Daughter of K&D founders Kirk and Darryl Taylor – and co-owner of the business with husband Henry since 1992 – she remembers it haunting her childhood, although it’s now acquired an aura of nostalgia.
“When I was in elementary school and in high school I hated that jingle,” she said, laughing. “I’d be walking down the hallways and other students would be singing it at me.”
Henry, who managed the company’s Cloverdale store for a while in the late 1970s before joining the main South Surrey store in the early 1980s, also found he couldn’t escape the reach of the long-lived advertising campaign, particularly when travelling throughout B.C. with the company gas card.
“I was in Prince George once, at a gas station, and when I handed over the card the girl started singing the jingle.”
For Henry, retirement comes after 42 years in the furniture business. He originally worked for the same Vancouver retailer that employed the Taylors before they decided to go out on their own with a South Surrey store in 1972.
Allyson – who remembers her parents “pulling furniture out of our house” to stock their first small store on 16 Avenue just east of 152 Street – said she, quite literally, grew up in the business.
“I pretty much never had a babysitter – I came to the store after school. I’d be playing there, hanging out or dusting.”
At that time it was a three-person operation, she said – her mom and dad and the driver of the delivery truck.
In 1975 came the first big expansion, a move to a building that formerly housed a bowling alley (now the site of a Starbuck’s and the Rialto twin theatre, across 152 Street from the property that would later become Semiahmoo Centre).
“I recently came across an old photo of my dad, renovating the bowling alley by pouring cement into the lanes to make the floor,” Allyson said.
She chuckled recalling that, at a time when, much of the surrounding South Surrey neighborhood was still wooded, or single-family homes at most, her parents were getting complaints from some for “moving too far out” of the White Rock area.
But the company’s involvement in the community never flagged, including Daryl’s championing of the annual Mayfair trade show.
K&D’s well-known support for other community events, such as the White Rock Sea Festival; good causes, including fundraising for Peace Arch Hospital – and sponsorship of many local sports teams at all levels – all continued under the Cheniers’ ownership.
There were also many ‘just for fun’ events that K&D staged for the community, particularly in the old days when legal liability issues didn’t tend to be top of mind – including one narrowly averted disaster Henry still recalls with a grimace.
“We always did fireworks at Halloween,” he said. “We’d started out small but each year it had been getting bigger, until one year Kirk and I each had a big box of fireworks we were lighting.
“Somehow one spark from a firework flew into my box and they all started going off at once. They were going everywhere. I was trying to run and cover up the box so that they wouldn’t go anywhere else. We were worried that someone would get hurt, but, thankfully, no one did.
“After that, we started doing our firework displays at the beach!”
After Allyson and Henry married and bought the business in 1992, K&D relocated to the business park on King George Boulevard across from the South Surrey Auto Mall. In 2002, they opened a Langley store and Allyson became the manager there, while Henry ran the South Surrey operation.
“We were competitive, very competitive. In the evenings it was like, ‘Hi, honey – how much did you make today?’” Allyson said.
The choice to retire was on their own terms, they reiterated, noting that none of their children had shown an inclination to take over the family business and lead it through a changing furniture marketplace for the next 20 years. The decision also had the blessing of Allyson’s parents, they said.
“We’ve retained full rights to the name,” said Henry, who joined Allyson in stressing that selling the business to someone else didn’t feel right.
“It would be too hard to drive past the stores and know they were owned by someone else, particularly if they weren’t being run to our standard,” Allyson said.
“There are a lot of places that say they’ve been in business for 40 years, but they’ve had three separate owners,” Henry added.
Cleaning up the South Surrey store (the Langley operation wound up earlier this year) has been an emotional experience, Allyson said, as old records with names of former longtime employees and packages of old photos have surfaced.
Many of the latter-day staff had been with the company a long time, she said.
For example Jack Russell, first hired by Henry in 1981, retired but couldn’t evidently kick the K&D habit – up to the closure, he’d been working part-time at the store a couple of days a week.
Among other long-term employees who – like all the other workers – were adamant they would stay on until the end were Joyce Vanderwalle, shipper Marty Atkinson and office manager Tammy Ryfa, all of whom started around 1991.
What the closing has reconfirmed to Allyson, she said, is that K&D was not just a family business over all those decades, but a family of its own. Looking back, she’s sure that her and Henry’s was not the only romance kindled among co-workers, either.
But they say they’ve also been genuinely surprised and touched by the number of regular customers who’ve taken the time to come in or write notes of congratulation and appreciation.
And they’ll be honouring all orders taken in the last weeks of the business, even if, as Henry said, “we end up having to do the deliveries ourselves.”
“We truly want to thank the community for all the support and patronage that they have shown us over the past 40 years,” Allyson said.
“Without the community and our customers K & D would not have made it as long as it did, and we have been very blessed that my parents chose White Rock to set up shop.”