Phyl’s Furniture to Go Out of Business in Chehalis

Phyl’s Furniture is closing its doors in Chehalis after 26 years in the community this September. The owners, Milo and Eileen Bloss, also signed a lease Thursday with another furniture store which will take over their Aberdeen location July 31.

The seven employees in Chehalis will be reevaluated and some might be offered jobs in the west Olympia or Lacey stores, which will remain open and absorb the unsold merchandise from the two closing locations.

“It’s a heartbreaking thing when you’re affecting people’s lives, but the consumer, the economy is affecting our lives,” said Eileen, a 68-year-old retired teacher. “Mostly we want to maximize what we have and make the best of it.”

Closing the two locations will also give Eileen and her 76-year-old husband of eight years more time to relax and travel.

“We will continue to operate our other stores forever,” said Milo, a retired newspaper circulation manager for The Olympian.

“I tell people if you have to come get him off a gurney it’s going to be here,” Eileen said jokingly, while shuffling through old Chronicle articles and photos of the business in their Olympia office.

In addition to his 30-year newspaper career, Milo started the furniture company in the early 1970s by selling antiques out of his house with his first wife, Phyllis, before opening their first store in Olympia in 1974.

“Phyl was out here doing the furniture and I was the brains,” Milo said.

The pair grew their business by opening stores in Salem, Ore., as well as Kelso, Lacey, Chehalis and Aberdeen. They sold the Salem store in 1979 and the Kelso location burned down when an arsonist set it on fire in 1991.

Phyllis died of ovarian cancer in 2002, but the business which bears her name lives on with 45 employees.

“We are revamping and going back to the basics,” said Tomacy Stevens, an employee of more than 10 years in both the Chehalis and the Olympia stores.

The foundation of the business, Milo said, is finding the right product to provide the most value to the customer.

The Blosses will continue to go to markets in Las Vegas and North Carolina to buy furniture and build relationships with manufacturers.

“Each store has its own personality and we buy for that,” Eileen explained.

They first choose basics and then add stylized items to each showroom.

“The only store we buy gun cabinets for is Chehalis,” Eileen said with a laugh.

The Blosses are looking to lease out the three-story Chehalis building, which previously housed a stationary store and Sears, before Phyl’s moved in and remodeled in 2002.

The business used to reside in the building behind its current location that today is Reclinerland.

Phyl’s Furniture was also once in the Washington Hotel building until a fire in 1997 caused more than $1 million in damage. An employee at the time actually stopped to call Milo from inside the burning building.

“I just told him ‘get your tail out of there,’” he said.

The employee took the cash and paperwork before exiting but nearly everything else was lost.

After the fire, Milo said he had to sell the building for just $10 because he couldn’t afford to fill in the basement as the city required.

Despite the challenges, he said, he has enjoyed doing business in Chehalis and has seen different generations of the same families come in to buy furniture over the years.

“You meet a lot of good, hard-working people,” he said.

“It’s been a wonderful life,” Eileen added.

The couple is hoping to find another furniture store to rent the building to that would hire Phyl’s seven Chehalis employees.

“I love Chehalis,” said Lori Ann Thompson, the manager of the west Olympia store who recently transferred from Chehalis. “It’s a wonderful community.”

•••

Amy Nile: (360) 807-8235