Family furniture store has deep roots in Dunn
Brothers Mel and Richard Baer grew up working in their family’s department store in Dunn, doing everything from sweeping floors to delivering furniture.
“We always had a job, and we helped out on weekends, summers and holidays,” Mel Baer said.
“We never had any idea we’d come back into the business,” Richard Baer added.
The brothers now co-own E. Baer & Sons Furniture and Mattress Co., named after their immigrant grandfather Eli Baer who peddled dry goods and kitchenwares 100 years ago in Alabama.
After high school, Mel and Richard Baer earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and headed off to their own careers. Mel’s degree was in radio, television and motion pictures, and he later worked in advertising in Greensboro. Richard earned a degree in personnel management and moved to Ohio to work as a buyer for Federated Department Stores.
Richard Baer returned to Dunn to join his parents’ business in 1973. His brother moved to Fayetteville and joined the business three years later.
“Our father was wanting to slow down and his health was not the greatest in the world,” Mel Baer said.
Their father, Robert “Bob” Baer, and their mother, Edythe, had rebuilt the store after it was damaged by fire in 1965.
The Baer name has been associated with Dunn since 1926, when Eli Baer’s brother, Louis, relocated from Alabama and opened the Louis Baer Department Store. That store stayed opened until about five years ago and was last run by Louis Baer’s grandson.
Eli Baer had immigrated from Lithuania. Like many other Jewish immigrants at the time, he became a peddler, Mel Baer said.
Louis Baer later joined his brother and they opened a store in Brent, Ala. When Louis took the train north to buy supplies, he would pass through Dunn.
“Every time he would come through the town, he would notice how busy it was and thought it would be a good place to come to,” Mel Baer said.
Eleven years after Louis Baer moved to Dunn, Bob Baer followed his uncle and ran a scrap yard. The next year, Bob Baer opened a horse and mule stable and sold farm implements under the name E. Baer and Sons Stable.
In 1939, Eli Baer decided to move the rest of the family to Dunn and opened the E. Baer and Sons department store on East Broad Street. His sons worked with him.
After the 1965 fire, Bob and Edythe Baer bought out their relatives’ interest in the store. They dropped the clothing lines in 1966.
“Basically, it became a total furniture business at that time,” Mel Baer said.
Bob Baer died in 1984, four years before Richard and Mel Baer moved the furniture store from downtown Dunn to East Cumberland Street, a heavily traveled road that links downtown with Interstate 95.
The Baers said their customers travel from as far away as Raleigh and Lumberton. Billboards entice customers to pull off I-95 to buy furniture that can be shipped, Mel Baer said.
The Baers describe their furniture prices as being in the “moderate to medium-high” range.
Mel Baer said business has remained steady, even with the declining economy.
“I guess people are spending more time at home,” he said. Home office furniture and entertainment centers to hold large TVs are popular.
“There always seems to be new trends and designs in furniture,” Richard Baer said. “It’s become a fashion business with fabrics, colors and woods, as well as styles.”
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