Art Van Furniture

Art Van Furniture will soon have a new owner. The huge furniture chain is going to sell all of its shares to a private equity firm in a sale expected to close the next couple of weeks. So what does this all mean for customers, workers, and to Metro Detroit as a whole? For some answers, let's get out to live. Our business editor, Rod Maloney, he joins us now live from Sterling Heights. Hi, Rod. Hi there, Karen. This is one of those great Michigan bootstrap type stories, right? You got Little Caesars, you got Dominoes, you got Kmart, among others that started small, grew big. Well, Art Van Furniture can claim that kind of success story as well. And they've got 100 stores now. They're doing well, but they're talking about doubling the size of the company here in the next couple of years. It's just that Art Van is not going to be there for it. Art Van Furniture started 58 years ago in this East Point building that is now a foreign car store. Art Van Ellslander himself took his single store and grew it into a local and then regional power with more than 100 stores now. Art himself is the sole shareholder and his son, Gary, who is the company president, says it was a cleaner transaction for his dad to cash out and transition into a happy retirement. Art Van employs 3,700 people right now who got the news about the sale first thing this morning. The vast majority of Art Van Furniture is custom design and built exclusively for the company in southern U. S. plants. Much of it shipped from this Sterling Heights Distribution Center. The new owner is going to be Boston Private Equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, which owns Financial Services, Healthcare and Pet Food companies, among other businesses. He'd And Art Van CEO Kim Yoast says there should be no worry about private equity pairing things back. This is not a financial transition which is going to impact our customers negatively. If anything, it's great for our customers because it ensures a brand for its next transition in the decades to come. Alright, I'm going to put my financial planner hat on here for a minute because there is that question. So why didn'they take it over? Well, here's what happens. Normally Okay, but the vast majority of businesses that start You get the impression that perhaps Art Van felt Reporting live in Sterling Heights, Rod Malone, Local 4.