Rose’s Furniture and Auction bids final goodbye after 85 years of business

The Roses have been overwhelmed with kindness and well wishes since announcing the closure of their family store in mid-October.

The shop is to close its doors on Tuesday.

“I’ve never had so many flowers,” said Gail Rose, one of the shop’s owners.

Her daughter, Lyza Rose-Kruppi, grew up working in the shop and says they’ve received phone calls and visits from former employees, current and past customers, as well as gifts.

“You see a lot of faces you haven’t seen in a long time,” Rose-Kruppi said.

People are also coming in with stories about Rose-Kruppi’s grandfather, Barrie Rose, and her great-grandfather, Virgil Rose.

“Back in the day, believe it or not, (Barrie) used to wear a suit to work here,” Rose said, with Rose-Kruppi adding he also wore a top hat to complete the neat ensemble.

“Every day. Now, I can’t see us doing that because we’d get too dirty,” Rose added with a chuckle. “He was always very neatly dressed.”

Only a few days before the store was to close, the floor had been reduced to a handful of tables with odds and ends, a shadow of the shop’s former glory. Rose and her daughter spoke of shelves that lined the walls and covered the floors, chock full of inventory.

The nearly empty store echoed as Rose and her daughter spoke, something Rose said she’d never experienced in all her time at the store.

Rose said she was practically raised in the family shop, as were her daughters.

“I grew up here … all the memories … you look certain places and you go, ‘That happened there,’ ” Rose-Kruppi remembered.

Rose and Rose-Kruppi recalled stories and details about their family’s store, finishing each other’s thoughts and adding to each other’s comments.

“It’s the people I’m going to miss,” Rose stated, with Rose-Kruppi adding the people they see each day are kind.

And from all walks of life that we’ve gotten to know,” Rose finished.

Customers from all income levels and backgrounds have come to shop at Rose’s over the years. One thing the Roses are proud of is how the store has been able to help those in difficult situations.

They also have an excellent relationship with nearby Hutterite communities.

“They’re very good to us and we hope to reciprocate that to them,” Rose-Kruppi reflected.

85 years of history

Rose’s first started as a travelling auction service in the late 1800s. Rose said her great-grandfather, Henry Thomas Rose, would visit different farms to run auctions there.
“We were mobile until well into the ’30s and then started having the storefront after that,” Rose-Kruppi said.

Their first storefront — started by Rose’s grandfather, Virgil — was located on Third Avenue in 1936. By 1947, the family had broken ground on the current address. At 15, Barrie Rose helped dig the basement for the shop with his brother and dad.

“These walls are 110 per cent all us,” Rose-Kruppi reflected.

Their final auctions took place in 2013, Rose said, though the store still took items on consignment to sell on the shop floor. It gave people more flexibility that an auction didn’t provide.

Rose-Kruppi remembered her uncle and grandfather running the auctions together, splitting the afternoons. While Barrie might not be able to run an auction quite the same way today, she said he had the experience and the voice until he turned 80 and decided to put those days behind him. He’d learned it all, of course, from his father, who’d learned it from his own dad.

Even after her grandfather had passed the store along to her dad, Rose remembered her grandfather frequenting the shop to talk to customers and lend a hand with day-to-day tasks.
It’s her grandfather’s age that has led to the family’s decision to close up shop for good.

“It’s time for Dad to retire,” Rose said.

Rose-Kruppi added: “He comes to work six days a week and he’s 88 years old. It’s time.”

Good, old-fashioned business

A visitor walking into Rose’s knows they can expect face-to-face customer service.

“You don’t wander around and (not) get asked, ‘Hey, do you need help with anything?’ because we go ask people,” Rose-Kruppi said.

It’s the way her grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather all did business. They’ve also avoided any online selling presence, opting instead to remain fully in person for their customers. It made the lockdown portions of the COVID-19 pandemic especially difficult.

That kind of business model is one that has fostered relationships between Rose’s and its customers. Whether the family members know someone by name, by the type of item they buy or by a nickname, every visitor to the shop comes to expect a warm hello and genuine offers of assistance with whatever mission brought them through the front doors of 319 Ave. B South.

That care for customers on a human level has also lent itself to a different sort of old-fashioned business the Roses have frequently offered.

“A lot of times people can’t afford what they need, so we say, ‘Take it. When you get the money, bring it back.’And they can’t get over that,” Rose said.

“And we’ve never had a person stiff us on anything,” Rose-Kruppi added.

In those types of situations, the Roses don’t take down a phone number or even a name.

“Some people you just get to know by face and yeah, you just have trust in them,” Rose said. “When you look at a person and say basically, ‘I trust you,’ they are floored by that.”
Treating customers how they’d like to be treated has always been the basis of Rose’s.

Those practices have earned Rose’s the trust of its community, and Rose-Kruppi said that chance to help someone out really makes them feel like they’ve been able to support their community. “People have been good to us,” Rose-Kruppi reflected.

Rose added: “Some people aren’t just a customer, they become a friend.”

Raised by Rose’s

Rose grew up in her family’s store and made sure her daughters did, too.

It’s a different experience than most kids and how they understand their parents’ jobs.

“I go to work with my mom,” Rose-Kruppi remembered thinking.

Rose brought her daughters to work within days of both being born. In their family office area, she made space for beds and a play area, adding features like a chalkboard and a computer as they got older. Customers often saw Rose’s daughters at the store and would bring their own children to play with them while the parents chatted and shopped.

“I didn’t even know what preschool was,” Rose-Kruppi said. “I learned more here … I got the real cash register, I got the real credit card machine, I didn’t get the Fisher-Price one.”

As soon as they were able to help out, they were taught the inner workings of the store. Rose-Kruppi used to get offended when she’d answer the phones and the person on the other end would ask for an adult.

“I know what I’m talking about here; I know what I’m selling,” Rose-Kruppi recalled thinking. “I thought nobody would know it was a kid on the phone.”

For her own special role as a child, Rose remembered auctions being a men-only gig. So her grandpa and dad suggested she open a candy counter for their customers to pick up a pop or a bag of Cheezies while they shopped. Rose said a large cup of coffee sold for a whopping five cents, while chocolate bars would run a customer 10 cents.

“Everybody was kind of different,” Rose reflected. “There was one guy, he liked Big Turk chocolate bars so we always made sure we had those because just like clockwork, every Saturday, he wanted his chocolate bar.”

Rose-Kruppi also ran the counter for a time. By the time it closed in 2013, chocolate bars had risen to $1.25 each and customers had got “fancy,” asking for a mix of hot chocolate and coffee to make a mocha drink (recalled by Rose-Kruppi with mocking disgust).

Of course, the best part of spending every waking hour at her family’s business was seeing her family every day, Rose-Kruppi said.

“Growing up, every day coming here you got to see your grandparents (and) got to hang out with your mom,” she said.

“It has been a good run. It’ll be weird not having here to come to.”

The end of an era

Lots of customers and former employees have been stopping by since the Roses announced they’d be closing in mid-October.

“Lots have given me their phone numbers and said, ‘Give me a call, let’s go for coffee and keep up.’ But then others, you’ll just never see them again,” Rose said.

In a store where the Rose family would greet their known customers with zingers and joy, they say it has been “kind of weird” to say goodbye.

“It’s awkward,” Rose-Kruppi explained. “They don’t know what to say (and) we don’t know what to say.”

Both Barrie and his daughter have been offering a reassuring piece of information to customers: The store’s phone number will remain operational. Rose had it changed to her own home landline.

For Rose and her dad, the closure means the chance to try retirement and tackle their own projects they’ve been putting off for years. Barrie also looks forward to the opportunity to spend more time with Max, their friendly dog known to wander around the Avenue B South shop.

But Rose isn’t holding her breath about the retirement plan. “I’m just not one to sit around and do nothing,” she said.