BBB complaints claim furniture store closed doors without fulfilling orders

People's Furniture, a home furnishing store located at 1310 Piper Drive near GreatMall, abruptly went out of business in early January. Since its closure, many customers have not received furniture they had purchased, nor gotten refunds, according to the Better Business Bureau.

The People's Furniture stores in Sunnyvale and Dublin also went out of business.

Despite repeated attempts, storeowners could not be reached for comment. Calls to the Milpitas store go to a voice mail service.

Since the closure, many customers sent their complaints to the Better Business Bureau of Silicon Valley.

"We just got a lot of them on Jan. 22; they just started flooding in on that date. That's when the alarms went off and it seemed something was wrong," Zach Vander Meeden, the Better Business Bureau's public relations director, said.

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ASHLEY: Green Park gets center

A Kirkwood-based furniture and furnishings company plans to build an $11.5 million 120,000-square-foot distribution center at the Green Park Commerce Center in Green Park. It is expected to open in November, said Steve Phillips, chief executive of Ashley Home Furnishings.

Ashley Furnishings has three stores on this side of the Missouri River and two in Illinois and plans to add several more soon, Phillips said. The Green Park site provides good access to all the stores, he added.
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Sitting out this downturn

The swirl of negative economic data and red ink gushing from financial-services firms can obscure what's going on in other sectors. Take office furniture, a business that should be on the edge in a shaky economy. What company would buy workstations when it's considering cutting workers? Plenty would, based on the 2007 financial results for Knoll Inc., of East Greenville, Pa. Knoll surpassed $1 billion in sales last year for the first time. In fact, its sales have grown 50 percent since 2004, when it went public. And while Knoll chief executive officer Andrew Cogan acknowledged in an analyst call that 2008 would be challenging, the company is better positioned to weather this downturn. Still, investors aren't convinced. Knoll shares are down 41 percent over the last year. Knoll closed yesterday at $13.49, up 73 cents.

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