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RICHMOND, IN — The Richmond Bargain Center is closing.
On Dec. 31, the store will shut down and transition into a new furniture store, said Roger Richert, owner of the store and the Richmond Furniture Gallery.
“I’ve been holding off putting it as a furniture store for all these years, and I was trying to semi-retire,” he said. “I got bored. I said, ‘Hey, I’m going open a furniture store.’ I decided two weeks ago.”
The transition has reinvigorated Richert’s love for the furniture business. He’s been buying new merchandise and contacted contractors.
“After COVID, it beat the s— out of everybody,” he said. “It just hadn’t been the same. I needed something to do, and it got my passions going. I just thought this is going to be great. I love new furniture and I always have. It’s fun.”
Richert, who also owns the Richmond Furniture Outlet at 700 Sim Hodgin Parkway and is a minority owner of Interstate Furniture in Daleville (his daughter is majority owner), said the Bargain Center was previously the Liberty Bell Flea Market before becoming WT Grants and Mr. Wiggs Department Store. He remembers the latter.
“That was built in ’69,” he said. “I was still in high school, and where the Red Front is now out front there, that was part of the parking lot and they would let you set up for flea markets on the weekends. I would set up and sell in that parking lot as a kid. I never dreamed I’d own that building.”
When Richert did buy the building after it went up for auction eight to 10 years ago, Rick Everman, the bargain center’s manager at the time, told him he owned the business, too.
“I was going to put a furniture store in,” Richert said. “And he said, ‘You get all these showcases and all these shelves, and you get all this stuff.’ He showed me through and he said, ‘I’d like to keep my job if you want to keep it as a flea market and run it for you.’ That’s how I got in the flea market business.”
The store will be called Richmond Furniture East and serve as the gallery’s east-side location, but it will act as a different store, with different manufacturers at a variety of prices.
“It’ll be all different merchandise than what we have here at the gallery,” he said. “You’ll still have the opportunity if you still want different fabrics, you can get it here at the gallery. Out there, it’s going to be, you see it, you can take it home with you. We’re just going to stock it and take it right off the floor. It’s going to be a good deal.”
It’s also not the first time the building has specialized in furniture; it was also a Roberds Furniture Store in the late 1980s.
“The county is going to grow, and we want to be there as this county grows,” he said. “It’s lost population every year and in my entire life, but it’s going to go on an upswing and that’s why we want to be there and be part of the opportunity of the upswing.”
Richert said the current vendors have until Jan. 1 to move out, or their merchandise can be auctioned by Coffey’s Auctions on Jan. 2 at 10 a.m.
Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at eweaver@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Richmond Bargain Center to close Dec. 31 to become Richmond Furniture East
Reporting by Evan Weaver, Richmond Palladium-Item / Richmond Palladium-Item
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