Grand Piano & Furniture Company

We have been serving to furnish the Bristol, VA community since 1984. The Sixties had been marked by additional growth, a change in structure, and tragedy. The latter occurred in May 1963 when a company airplane crashed within the mountains of North Carolina, killing the pilot and one government and injuring three others, together with Karl Cartledge. George Cartledge, Jr. was simply graduating from Hampden-Sydney College and because of the accident took on far larger obligations with the furniture chain sooner than anticipated. Two years later, the family enterprise experienced further modifications.

Elias expanded his enterprise by permitting his customers to pay back over time, and by serving all members of the neighborhood no matter their race or religion. By this time, George Cartledge, Sr. had begun creating a succession plan, part of which included naming George Cartledge, Jr. firm president in 1972. The elder Cartledge was known for his willingness to delegate responsibility and chorus from criticism. As a outcome, the family-dominated staff of executives grew in capability and learned to work collectively a long time before Cartledge handed from the scene. During the Nineteen Seventies, the chain added simply three shops as the corporate focused on the 15 models already in operation.

As recorded music and radio gained in popularity, cutting into sales of instruments to the general public, Grand Piano adapted by including phonographs, particularly Victrolas, and radios to the sale mix. In the late Nineteen Twenties, it went even additional afield and began selling furnishings, soon adding home equipment as well. I acquired nice customer support and the standard of my chair is way above common. Grand Home Furnishings is situated throughout western Virginia, japanese Tennessee and in south eastern West Virginia. We aren’t affiliated with the Grand Furniture positioned in the Tidewater Area of Virginia. Refresh your look with rugs, lighting, and accent furnishings from Grand Home.

With piano gross sales experiencing a gentle decline over time, the corporate lastly exited the music business in 1998. The Nineteen Nineties were also marked by the dying of its chairman, George Cartledge, Sr., in March 1997 on the age of 87. Because he had long since carried out a succession plan, Grand carried on without issue after his death. Early in 1999, his son, George Cartledge, Jr., assumed the chairmanship, while on the identical time George Cartledge III became president and cousin Robert Bennett was named government vice-president. Both shared the duties of the chief working officer.

A second Kinkade gallery opened within the Winchester store in 2001. The mixture of Grand Piano stores underwent larger change in the Nineteen Nineties, because the buying district in many communities moved from downtown areas to the suburbs. The Harrisonburg clearance middle was closed in 1990, while the Roanoke clearance heart shut its doors in 1991 and the Lynchburg clearance middle in 1992. The Charlottesville clearance heart was shuttered the next 12 months and the Winchester clearance center followed in 1995. The downtown Winchester store was lost to fireside in May 1996 and subsequently rebuilt outdoors the city. The Cartledge family connection to the enterprise came in 1945 when George B. Cartledge, Sr. and partners L.G.

Grand also entered markets outdoors of Virginia, in September 1995 opening a store in Greenville, South Carolina, a unit in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in August 1998, and a suburban Kingsport location in June 1999. The firm consciously avoided giant metropolitan areas, preferring markets within do blank checks expire 300 miles of Roanoke that it may dominate. To assist its assortment of shops, Grand constructed regional warehouses which had been meant to serve clusters of shops.