A big thank you to this week’s guest blogger  Bill Koelzer. Enjoy his  informative post about  an unique furniture store in Orange County.

Richard Ross founded “South Coast Furniture & Mattress and Secondhand Store” in San Clemente back in 1957 and it’s been going strong ever since. Although Richard passed away at age 93 in 2010, his family carries on the tradition under the watchful eye of son Dale—who took over the business 9 years ago.

• South Coast Furniture carries a wide variety of brand new home & office furniture, mattress sets, custom upholstery, lamps, and other accessories…all at discounted prices.
• They also buy, trade, salvage, recycle and sell an eclectic mix of gently used home, office  patio furniture, antiques, appliances, collectibles, curiosities.

Featuring 12,000 square feet of retail display backed by a 4,000 square foot warehouse makes South Coast Furniture one of the largest retail firms in San Clemente.  Wander at leisure through the place– it’s an eye-candy adventure with literally thousands of items to choose from.  And you can even get same-day delivery!

They often get called upon to go out and actually furnish a home.  Professional real estate ‘stagers’ and decorators come here for the many one-of-a-kind pieces.  Designers find South Coast Furniture a fabulous source to furnish an unoccupied home to make it look more desirable to home buyers.  South Coast also assists landlords with short term and summer rentals + furnished apartment–who buy the furnishings outright–then sell it back to South Coast at salvage value.

Charity is an active part of the business, too. South Coast will often donate items to Camp Pendleton—or sell them appliances at a very low price. They donate furniture to rehabilitation facilities—and even the local playhouse and high school drama departments to use as props.
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An environmentally-sensitive business by its very nature, they recycle a lot of goods, especially furniture and art objects—which might have ended up in land fills. That was the original philosophy of the founder: It was his dream to have a secondhand store as a way to help people find a “second life” for their furnishings. That’s why he opened the store…to not only turn used inventory around for sale, but also repair it and make it better. And they’ve been following that philosophy ever since.

Dale recounts that customers often say, “I wish I had known about you sooner!” stating they had bought from a bigger and more distant location when they could have purchased almost the same thing for less at South Coast Furniture.

South Coast Furniture & Mattress buys and sells most anything.  Check them out!

Advertising, pricing items & having strangers in your home is not the way you want to spend your
valuable time. So what do you do with the beautiful sofa that just doesn’t fit your décor anymore?

Consider Furnishing Hope.
Furnishing Hope was founded to provide a home-like environment for kids and families in stressful situations. Recipients include: graduates of the foster care system,qualifying new homeowners,homeless veterans, the developmentally disabled and families who have lost their home to fire.

Recent media flurries have detailed the dangers of buying products from China where the safety standards do not match those of the USA.    Sara Bongiorni, a business writer, turned her family’s experiences into a book, A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy. In it, she details her problems buying things like tennis shoes or a new coffee pot. One point she made was that it was often difficult discerning where a product was made.  We find this to be especially true at the grocery store.

A helpful way to discover the truth about a product’s origin is to read the UPC.  Not sure how?  Take a look at this handy guide:

If the first digits start with:

00 – 09: Made in the USA or Canada
30 – 37: Made in France
47:  Made in Taiwan
40 – 44: Made in Germany
49:      Made in Japan
50:  Made in UK

So if you are committed to only buying American made or grown products in Orange County shopping centers, take a look at the UPC/bar code and make sure it starts with 00 – 09.  An educated consumer is a smart consumer.