By Diane Saunders, Staff Writer
\nSteve Junion remembers his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153humble beginnings,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when he and his wife, Diane (Curtis) Junion, opened Valley Furniture
\n
\n\t\t
\nin a 3,800-square-foot building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Highway 70 in Safford in the fall of 1994.<\/p>\n
Today, Valley Furniture is housed in a building nearly eight times bigger \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a 24,000-square-foot showroom on Armory Road on Safford\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s south side.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the largest furniture store in the Gila Valley,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Junion said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Junion has a simple recipe for success. He believes Valley Furniture\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reputation for good service and the lowest furniture prices around helped the business build a strong base of loyal customers.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to have good service to the people. We put a high priority on service,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n
Good customer service, however, did not protect the store from Mother Nature.<\/p>\n
Junion said between the humble beginnings and the recently built showroom, Valley Furniture hit a low point when a tornado all but destroyed its 8,000-square-foot building on Armory Road on Aug. 21, 2012. The Junions had moved their furniture business into the building in 1999.<\/p>\n
When Junion saw the damage, he thought all was lost. He even called his wife, who was in Phoenix, and told her they were out of business. The next day, however, Junion had a new outlook.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The next day, it was like, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcQuit crying and get on with it,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n
The store remained open \u00e2\u20ac\u201d selling furniture from the remainder of the damaged building and a large tent erected on the grounds. The Junions held a water damage sale and sold furniture at discounted prices.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were like Barnum and Bailey for about two months,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Junion said.<\/p>\n
Although they had started planning the new 24,000-square-foot building, the Junions first rebuilt the damaged building. Valley Furniture finally got to move into its new building in November 2013 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a little more than a year after the tornado.<\/p>\n
Junion is a Wisconsin native who moved to Phoenix when he was 12. He met his wife, who was born and raised in Safford, while he was managing a furniture store in Phoenix. Soon after they married, they moved to Safford and opened Valley Furniture.<\/p>\n
Valley Furniture is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.<\/p>\n
The store offers furniture, appliances and accessories for all rooms in the house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Diane Saunders, Staff Writer Steve Junion remembers his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153humble beginnings,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when he and his wife, Diane (Curtis) Junion, opened Valley Furniture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}