Shadow Furniture lights up
Move over, Fort Lowell furniture district. The Northwest Side has something new.
Nobody has bestowed a catchy name on the area just yet, but one is surely coming. Radiating out from North Thornydale and West Orange Grove roads, an abundance of stores for the casual do-it-yourself interior designer or home-improvement buff are setting a definite scene for homeowners in the area.
Sam Levitz, Tres Amigos, Bedmart, Bassett, Belrosian Tile and Marble, Canyon Cabinetry Design and Westar Kitchen and Bath dominate the intersection, and Home.
Depot is just north on Thornydale.
If Craig and Renee O’Connor have their way, the newest addition to the bunch, Shadow Furniture, will be open for business by the end of the week.
The O’Connors have been busily moving furniture around to ready their new showroom, which is next door to Sam Levitz on the northeast corner of Orange Grove and Thornydale. The space was formerly occupied by town of Marana offices.
At least this week they have electricity. When they began moving into the nearly 12,000-square-foot space two weeks ago, a miscommunication about the electrical box meant they had no electricity.
Right when the monsoon hit.
So they were arranging furniture in the muggy darkness for the first few days.
Still, it was an improvement over having much of the inventory stockpiled in their 2 1/2-car garage, they said.
Originally, the couple planned to open their store on the Southwest Side, in an old Kmart building at Valencia Road and Interstate 19.
The night before they were to move in at the end of October, the lease fell through.
“That’s how we ended up with a garage full of furniture,” said Renee O’Connor.
Now they’re happy it worked out that way: Not only are they moving into an area that is conducive to their kind of business, but it’s much closer to their home in Continental Ranch. It’s also on Craig O’Connor’s way home from Raytheon, where he is keeping his day job as a mechanical engineer.
Renee O’Connor more or less grew up in the furniture business in Phoenix. Her dad, Larry Hudson, was a wholesaler who ran the largest auction in Phoenix for eight years, she said.
Before that, her grandmother ran a sort of informal furniture business.
More recently, however, her parents decided to open a store in Casa Grande. The O’Connors spent nine or 10 months helping the Hudsons set up their business there.
In the process, Craig, who loves to build things, was bitten by the furniture bug along with his wife, and they decided to give their own store a whirl.
“She’s following in her dad’s footsteps, that’s for sure,” said Renee’s mom, Annette Hudson.
Hudson said she is confident her daughter and son-in-law have a good idea what to do and what not to do based on things they’ve learned while helping to set up the Casa Grande store.
The biggest thing, she said, is to build good customer relations while keeping low prices.
If you combine those two elements, she said, “You’ll build up a clientele really quick.”
The O’Connors are also set to distinguish themselves from the much-larger Sam Levitz store that’s one door down.
“Obviously, Sam Levitz has much more buying power,” Renee O’Connor said. “It would be silly to order the same thing and try to price it lower.”
Shadow Furniture will focus on custom orders, allowing clients to choose their fabric, wood finish and pieces in a set, she said.
And they don’t plan to ever have a sale, she said.
If someone buys something they really like and a friend likes it, too, the friend can get the same deal.
Craig O’Connor said he wants the store to be run the way he and his wife like to be treated when they go shopping.
That means no strangers with calculators will follow people as they browse.
“If you can find the same quality cheaper someplace else, buy it,” he said.
