Island Home Center offers home furnishings and interior design services in Port Aransas, Texas.
Island Home Center, with its unmatched selection of Coastal furniture and accessories, offers an extensive variety of coastal, cottage, contemporary, country, rattan, wicker, and traditional bedroom, living room, and dining room furniture, accent furnishings, and accessories from major furniture manufacturers of high quality home furnishing sources.
Vashon Island is a short 15-minute ferry ride from Seattle, a city that was hit hard early by the coronavirus. When stay-at-home orders were issued, Vashon Island residents focused even more on shopping local instead of venturing to the mainland. We're the second largest store on the island and people here were very eager to support local, states Earl Van Buskirk, who was born and raised on the island. He has owned Island Home Center and L When the pandemic hit, Earl had to quickly make adjustments. He decided to take care of his 50 employees as the first priority in order to provide better service for the residents who needed them. They implemented new cleaning routines to keep staff and customers safe, doubling the outside cleaning service that came in. They put up plexiglass shields and encouraged employees to wear masks and gloves to set an example as leaders in their community. They gave out thousands of masks to customers. Keeping his team informed has been a top priority and Earl tried to communicate stability. He emailed them twice a week to make sure they were updated on policies, procedures, and the latest CDC guidelines. When local first responders were in need of masks, they donated a large quantity of their own stock. When their island needed a location to administer drive-thru testing, Island Home Center donated tents so people could get tested without having to leave their cars, along with propane tank heaters and propane for the medical team. The store has hosted several blood drives in the parking lot. To prioritize safety, the store figured out how to conduct a touchless sale. Transitioning to Epicorps' Inet platform was done to make the e-commerce and inventory control process go even smoother. When COVID hit, Island Home Center began to see contractor sales decline dramatically. However, as those sales declined, retail sales began to soar. Retail customer counts were up 10-12% last March and April, and average ticket went up 40% as people were buying a lot more stuff. Since Earl received a Paycheck Protection Program loan, he was able to continue paying all his employees, even during the lull and contractor business. He paid out three bonuses for employees who worked through the pandemic last year. With 30,000 square feet of retail space and a 30,000 square foot warehouse for LBM, Island Home Center'sales approached $13 million last year. The business was doing $350,000 in sales with three employees when Earl bought it back in 1988. Earl has been a Do-it-Best member for 28 years and says the co-op has done a good job sourcing products for them during the pandemic. Do-it-Best is our first and best choice for most products and has been very good for my business over the years, he says. Earl was surprised and honored to hear Island Home Center was named a Beacon Award winner for 2020. Any time you'recognized, it means your team members are the reason, he says. We had our challenges last year, but they're the ones who make my business successful, and that's why my company has won an award.
