Quality Leather Furniture has opened its second location, at 12875 W. Bell Road, Surprise. It is a factory outlet store for the


Hacienda Furniture Co. brand based in Riverside, Calif. Store owner Don Olson talks about his expansion plans for the family-owned business.

Question: Tell me about Quality Leather Furniture’s products.

Answer: We do leather furniture. We’re really big into sectionals. At most stores you can’t pick your size and color and leather. That’s our niche. We basically sell Mercedes for the price of Nissans. We have 2,500 different leathers to choose from, a couple hundred styles to choose from. We stock 1,500 pieces at any given time. Most of our business is special order because they are particular in what they want.
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Q: If retail isn’t your main business, what is?

A: Manufacturing is our main business, and that’s what we started out doing. That’s what we still do. We opened a couple outlet stores four years ago to get rid of a lot of stuff that’s accumulated at the factory. Because retail isn’t our bread and butter, we don’t mark our goods up as much.

Q: Where are the other stores?

A: We have another one out in Gilbert.

Q: Why did you open one in Surprise?

A: We went to follow all the new housing. The Surprise store we moved from Phoenix. We did very, very well there. A lot of their traffic was coming from the Northwest Valley. When some space opened up, we took advantage of it.

Q: What is the business’ long-term goal?

A: My goal is, within four or five years, to . . . use whatever profit we get, to buy some land further out to get out of paying rent and buy our own buildings. We would like to have four or five stores. By Thanksgiving, we’ll have about three stores.

Q: Where will the third store be?

A: Avondale should be opening in October.

– Sherry Anne Rubiano

Contact Quality Leather Furniture at (623) 974-8400.