From Mary’s “Can you see me? Can You Hear Me,” to the grandson’s “The Biggest Store With the Most Stuff,” Good’s Furniture rewrote the way furniture is sold and grew a hometown family business into a regional enterprise, now in its fifth generation. The driving force, and resident “dreamer” of the operation, Phil Good, died on Tuesday, Feb. 20, but his legacy will continue and grow.
Kewanee Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Mark Mikenas called Good an innovator in retail marketing and advertising.
“Good’s is a big part of Kewanee downtown. Phil was a business leader and a big part of many organizations within the community,” Mikenas said, adding that he’ll be missed.
Elmer S. Good, Phil’s grandfather, opened the family’s first furniture store on Feb. 14, 1895, in downtown Kewanee. Now flying under the flag of Good’s Furniture & Mattress, and in the capable hands of son Phil, Jr. and wife Kaleigh, the business is currently celebrating its 129th anniversary.
Phil joined the business in 1957, taking over from his father, Everett O. Good. Back then furniture stores displayed their chairs, sofas and dining room sets in long rows across the floor. Phil decided to mix things up…arranging items in room settings and random arrangements. In 1971 he saw the potential of TV advertising, something no other business owner in Kewanee had certainly ever thought of.
A few years later, he “recruited” a young Kewanee High School senior named Mary Heberer, who was working part-time as a sales clerk at the store, to be his spokesmodel. If you could see and hear her on their TV ads, delivery was free. It was a personal approach to the customer that few had tried before with such success.
The ads took off like gangbusters and suddenly Mary was more famous in some cities than Vanna White and she and Good’s Furniture were on the regional map. People knew Kewanee for three things; Kewanee Boilers, Hog Capital of the World, and Mary from Good’s.
Phil and Mary became Mr. and Mrs. Good and, together, made a formidable team. He had the ideas and she knew how to get them done. They were the first to come up with the concept of a furniture store as a destination. The glassed-in elevator, the “Proud Mary” airplane hanging from the ceiling, the frog pond, a restaurant, market square shop and a bed and breakfast all came along the way, as well as top furniture lines like Drexel Heritage and Timberlake.
The idea was that every time you visited the store you saw something that wasn’t there before, in addition to the old favorite that brought you back from Des Moines, Chicago, or Bloomington, all markets where their ads connected with shoppers.
From there, the business just grew, until eventually 12 downtown stores were involved, connected by a 110-foot skywalk, the “Ribbon of Glass,” which was maneuvered into place over Main Street in 1990 connecting the east and west sides of the business and creating an instant local landmark.
It is rare that a business stays in one family for five generations, now, nearing 130 years. And who knows what would have happened if Phil had not joined his father when he did and decided there was a different way to sell furniture to the customer? That family approach has always been extended to the public and the community with Kaleigh and the boys relieving Mary in the TV ads, which now include a Good’s Outlet store, a sleep store, and expansion into the popular mattress business in a big way.
The “showplace” concept and sheer size and selection have continued to keep Good’s in the game in a business which is much more competitive than it was in the 70s, as witnessed by the volume of regional TV ads featuring stores selling furniture and related items.
It all came from the mind of one man and a family that put Kewanee on America’s furniture store map. Phil would be wondering what’s next, but confident that the “destination” he and Mary created in downtown Kewanee will be around and doing well for years to come.
