It’s a Family Affair

August 31, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on September 2006 Joe and Marcia Bograd, owners of one of the Northeast’s most famous and enduring furniture stores, Bograd’s Fine Furniture, did not imagine any of their three grown children carrying on the family business. Ten years ago, as the Bograds began to contemplate retirement, son Louis was an attorney, daughter Stephanie a banker and son Mark a museum curator.

“We had no feelings that any of our kids would take over,” said Joe Bograd, 71.

Today, Louis is still a lawyer and Stephanie still works on Wall Street. But Mark, 45, who studied government in college and holds an advanced degree in anthropology, has left the museum world and is now president of Bograd’s. The Northern New Jersey store, which offers one of the most expansive selections of high-end furniture in the nation, and rarely has sales, this summer advertised a “Pass the Torch Sale.”

Bograd’s, for a third generation, will remain under the ownership and management of a Bograd.

“We really think we have a reputation. We have a name in the business, and we can pass it on. We really enjoy that,” said Joe Bograd, who takes even greater pleasure in the fact Mark will own and run Bograd’s because he wants the job, and not because it was expected of him.

But handing the business over to Mark would not be as simple as handing him the keys to the front door and signing a few papers.

To put Mark in charge, there would have to be a legally sound plan—one that would be fair to all the Bograd children and assure that the store would continue as a venerated New Jersey institution. It took about three years, the family reports, for lawyers and accountants and family members to iron out a strategy.

Fortunately, Bograd’s has a history of smooth successions to draw upon. As leadership of the company changed hands, its goals remained the same: keep the family happy and the business healthy. The means to achieve these goals, however, became somewhat more complicated over time.



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Bograd’s was founded in the midst of the Depression in downtown Paterson, N.J., on Aug. 1, 1930, by Samuel and David Bograd, Joe’s father and uncle respectively. The two immigrant brothers from Russia started out peddling door to door, selling sheets, towels, clothing, and, eventually, furniture. They made a success of themselves in great part because they were willing to sell on credit in a time when credit was hard to come by.

The business started by the two brothers thrived, and moved and expanded in 1935 and 1948, selling both moderately-priced and more expensive brands in downtown Paterson. Over the years, even as the city of Paterson declined, the merchandise became almost exclusively high-end, and customers continued to travel from nearby New York City, 14 miles away, and its affluent suburbs.

Like his son Mark, Joe Bograd as a young man did not picture his future in furniture, though he always liked the business. In his senior year at Cornell University, Bograd was about to fly off to an interview for an actuarial job when a snow storm closed the airport.

“I took that as a sign. I didn’t go to the interview, and I went to work at Bograd’s. I’ve been here for 50 years,” Joe Bograd said.

David Bograd, his uncle, died in 1973, and it was then that the family got its first experience transferring portions of the business among themselves. The Bograd brothers had been clear with each other on their thriving company’s future. “My father and my uncle had a buy-sell agreement,” said Joe Bograd. “If one died or wanted out, the other one would buy him out.”

Now the company belonged only to Samuel Bograd and his descendents, who saw the store through a major expansion in 1980. Samuel Bograd retired in 1986 and died in 1991, and the business fell to Joe. His younger sisters—a statistician and a mathematician—would profit over time from the earnings of the family’s land holdings in Paterson.

In 1996, Joe and Marcia Bograd decided on the store’s next major change—a move out of Paterson. Its departure from the city was considered so monumental that it was chronicled by the New York Times under the headline: “Bograd’s, Paterson’s Stylish Survivor, Moves On.”

The new site for the store, in suburban Riverdale, nine miles northwest of Paterson, boasted exceptional highway access. The existing structure on the land was a former bus garage that offered more than 30,000 square feet. In addition to the furniture showroom, the building is now also home to a kitchen and bath showroom, a carpet store and customer-designed, contemporary steel furniture shop. Bograd’s also offers an expansive accessories department, headed by Marcia Bograd, whose own family goes back four generations in a furniture business founded in Upstate New York.

Another reason for the move to Riverdale: Joe and Marcia Bograd believed that because none of their children had shown any interest in running Bograd’s, they would have to move the business so they could eventually sell it. “We felt we had established a pretty substantial franchise for our name, but we would never be able to sell the business in Paterson.”

But just a few years after the move to Riverdale, Mark began accompanying his parents to High Point and it soon became clear that Bograd’s had an heir.



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Mark Bograd graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in government in 1983 and earned a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in anthropology in 1989. He worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and became Curator of Collections and Exhibits at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, which chronicles the nation’s Industrial Revolution.

But the museum world was strapped for cash, and Mark knew that in a leadership position his duties would increasingly focus on fundraising, a job he didn’t want.

He was enjoying his trips to High Point, though, and impressed by his parent’s standing in the business. Bograd’s increasingly seemed like a good place to build a new career. But if he was to join the company, it would have to be soon. “I thought if I’m going to do this, I want to benefit from my parents’ knowledge. I want to benefit from their tutelage,” he said.

In 1999, Mark Bograd joined the company as vice president. Joe Bograd was chairman of the board. Marcia Bograd was secretary. It was then that the family began to think about succession seriously.



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With relative ease Bograd’s had passed from David Bograd’s to Samuel’s family. And leadership of the business had transferred easily from Samuel to Joe. The same was expected for the transition from Joe to Mark.

But pitfalls are plentiful when it comes to handing down what is known as a “closely held” business, and the Bograds were eager to avoid them all. Their accountants and attorneys knew of many families mired in battles over assets and management. Too often, they told the Bograds, passing on a business can result in horrendous fighting that breaks families apart.

The smartest thing to do, the accountants and attorneys advised, was to split Bograd’s interests among the siblings. Mark would receive Bograd’s operating company and the company that holds the land on which the Riverdale store sits. His siblings would retain interests in the company that holds the income-producing land that was Bograd’s former home in Paterson. Now that parcel is rented to a 99-cent store and a children’s clothing retailer.

As for marketing, the family did not see any need for an extensive campaign to introduce Mark to their clients. The “Pass the Torch Sale,” Joe said, “was really just an excuse for a sale.”

An upcoming advertising campaign will stress the importance of family at Bograd’s, but it won’t feature any actual member of the family. Instead, ads will show a little girl and a piece of furniture that was presumably handed down through the generations of her family. Bograd’s should thrive on its reputation for customer service, not the appeal of the family’s personalities, said Marcia Bograd.

A partial exception to that rule is Joe Magazine, an occasional glossy published twice since its inaugural issue in the spring of 2004, and distributed free to 16,000 Bograd customers. Its focus is design—furniture, fabrics and profiles of designers. And it is named, of course, for Joe Bograd, who writes its back page column and recommends restaurants in the vicinity of the store.

The theme of the magazine, and the store, is that quality and service are best delivered through smaller retailers who care deeply about their merchandise and customers. As Joe Bograd wrote in the latest issue:

“We live in a world that has been de-personalized. The human element has been removed. Our phones are answered by computers. ... We have voice mail and e-mail. We shop on the Internet. ... But not at Bograd’s.”

Mark is unsure whether Bograd’s customers will ever see such a thing as “Mark” magazine. But how about a fourth generation owning and operating Bograd’s? Mark and his wife have two boys, 9 and 6.

“I take the same attitude as my parents,” Mark Bograd said. “It’s their choice.” HFB