As Reported at Northjersey.com:
A high-end, heirloom-quality furniture manufacturer and seller that has called Paterson home for more than 60 years — whose clients include actors, kings and billionaires — is closing its massive showroom in the city’s downtown to open one closer to customers in Bergen County.
The decision by Greenbaum Interiors to shutter its 100,000-square-foot showroom, while leaving a company-owned, 30,000-square-foot factory in Paterson, is the latest blow to the state’s third-most populous city, dramatically diminishing the presence of a high-profile business that draws customers from North Jersey and New York State.
Greenbaum Interiors notified customers of its plans by mail last week and email this week, touting a sale that will slash prices by up to 65 percent to reduce its inventory enough to fit into a smaller showroom in Bergen County.
“If people won’t come here, there is nothing I can say or do to make them come,” said Susan Greenbaum Gross, president of Greenbaum Interiors. “We have to be close to our customers.”
No Bergen property has yet been identified. But the company, which has 55 employees, is looking for a 10,000-square-foot to 14,000-square-foot space at the northern end of Route 17 to house a showroom expected to open in the fall with 15 employees.
That would leave 35 workers and a 5,000-square-foot showroom in the Paterson factory, which will sell furniture. Greenbaum Interiors also has a 7,500-square-foot showroom with five employees in Morristown.
The company’s wealthy clients have included actor Eddie Murphy, who bought for his homes in Englewood and California; King Hussein of Jordan; and a Russian billionaire, whom the company declined to identify and who bought an entire houseful of furniture that was shipped to Russia.
Mayor Jeffery Jones said the Greenbaum family briefed him two weeks ago on its plan to close the Paterson showroom, but did not mention moving to Bergen County.
“It’s a big loss,” Jones said, though he noted that the company will retain a significant presence in the city.
“The clientele doesn’t come from Paterson, but the workers do,” he said. “The labor, the work, the storage, the repair — all that stays in our city.”
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