By Kyle Coppola
Badcock Home Furniture & More In Leesburg Is Going Out of Business
Babcock Home Furniture & More in Leesburg is officially going out of business. Employees were made aware of the situation this week as the parent company, Conns Furniture, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This means that 160 Conns Furniture stores and over 500 Badcock Home Furniture & More locations will be shutting down in the coming weeks. Locations in Eustis, Bushnell, Wildwood, Belleview, Ocala are just some of the locations affected.
We talked with Dolph Burgrabe, one of the managers at the Eustis location, who says, “We are already in the liquidation process. We have a 30-50% sale on items currently in the store and new items as well. All of it has to go. We estimate 12 weeks until the closure of this location.”
We did receive some good news: the owner of the Eustis location, Jason Pate, wants to keep the location as a furniture store. “Mr. Pate indicated that he intends to keep the business open in the future as either another chain or a private furniture company,” says Burgrabe. We are unsure at this time if these plans will affect the employees, but this is a big development that we will continue to monitor.
It is devastating news to hear that Badcock Home Furniture & More will be closing most, if not all, locations in the coming weeks. They have been a staple in Central Florida for many years. In fact, it’s where I got most of my furniture, so to hear this news was sad and a bit shocking. Unfortunately, these are challenging times for retail stores. “Badcock got sold to Conns Furniture a year ago. Unfortunately, the debts continued to pile up, and it didn’t work out as they had hoped. That has led to this situation of a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. I do expect the sales to increase in percentage in the coming weeks as the end of Badcock Home Furniture & More draws closer,” says Burgrabe.
Our thoughts are with all the employees affected. We hope those employees can find jobs in the coming weeks and months ahead. This is a developing situation, and we will update with more info as we know more.
Photo Credit – Google Images
Kyle Coppola was born in Newton, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from Curry College in 2016. After traveling to Florida on a family vacation, he decided he could not get enough of the warm weather and made the move from snowy Massachusetts to central Florida 8 years ago.
For the last decade Kyle has gained valuable experience in social media content creation, marketing and sales, writing, video production, sports announcing and even broadcasting for local radio stations, such as FM 102.9 in The Villages and FM 91.5 in Massachusetts. Every year he volunteers at The Villages Charter High School as a play-by-play sports announcer for the football games as well as a public address announcer for the basketball games, including the annual Battle at The Villages Tournament.
Outside the office Kyle is a husband and father to two beautiful girls along with their cat. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, travel, play golf and swim. He is also a huge sports junkie and even bigger motorsports fan and loves to attend racing events when he can.
