Glick Furniture
Heilig-Meyers Co.
Founded : 1907
Activities : Retail furniture collection, home furnishings, interior design services
Parent Company : Heilig-Meyers Furniture Co.
Stockists : 2,000 locations
Origin : Goldsboro, North Carolina
www.Heilig-Meyers.com
www.GlickFurniture.com

Heilig-Meyers and Rhodes Furniture combined to eventually earn almost $5 billion a year in revenue from over 2,000 locations in the United States through their 1996 merger creating the largest furniture company in North America. Earlier in 1995, Rhodes had opened two stores in Kansas City and one in Cincinnati and it purchased Glick Furniture Co., a seven-store chain based in Columbus, Ohio.

Adolph Glick, had a wagon with dry goods back in 1860 and he used to travel Ohio and stop in the small towns to sell his wares and he got married and he brought his bride with him – she traveled with him in the wagon. She was pregnant with William, who was the oldest of four children. When she was ready to deliver the baby, they were in Fort Recovery, Ohio, and that’s where William L. Glick was born in 1876.

Decided that since they had a baby they couldn’t travel any more, Adolph opened up a dry goods store in LaRue, Ohio. Soon he added one in Ridgewood, Ohio, and three more children – they had a daughter named Anna, and then a second son Isadore Glick. The fourth child was Frances.

In 1898, when Anna became of marriageable age, 18, Adolph took the risk of coming to Columbus, Ohio, which was the closest community that had a Jewish family or a Jewish group of people. He sold the other locations and opened a dry goods store called The Climax, on Mt. Vernon Avenue. And at that time, the turn of the century, the railroaders all lived there. It was a neighborhood of middle class Americans that catered to the railroad workers, and they were his customers. Anna, married a fellow named Edgar Gold, who was from Milwaukee, but he was working in Columbus at a furniture store called May & Company, that was owned by Leo Marks.

Since Edgar knew about the furniture business, Adolph decided to open up a furniture store employing many of his family. The furniture store was established in 1907 and only 20 foot wide but 150 foot deep . It was called Arch City Furniture, because Columbus was known as the Arch City. There were arches fixtured as street lights. They changed the name to Glick Furniture Company shortly after in 1914 when the arches came down in the downtown.

The company opened up the Northern Lights Shopping Center store in 1955. It was the first suburban furniture store anywhere in Ohio that was a branch store, because most all other stores in those days were just one store – there was no suburban – type store.

One of the things that made Glick Furniture Company so successful, and grow quickly and move ahead and become the leading furniture company, was in 1913 there was a flood in Columbus, in the bottoms on the west side. Thousands of people were left homeless. Their houses were flooded, the furniture was ruined. Many of those people were customers of our company who had purchased on credit. We ran an ad in the newspaper to make an announcement to all the good customers, to consider their bill paid in full. As soon as they got back on their feet, come in and pick out some more furniture, and we’d refinance the new purchase.

That gesture was so notarized, and it spread throughout the city, what the Glick Furniture Company did for its customers, that it just zoomed business tremendously the next few years.

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