The day after Judy Kinneer and her husband Bill opened their furniture store in Wellman, she was surpr

By: Ray Weikal

This is the first of a two-part series on the 30th anniversary of Kinneer Home Furnishings. See next week's issue for the rest of the story.

The day after Judy Kinneer and her husband Bill opened their furniture store in Wellman, she was surprised to find herself thrust into the job of sales.

Thirty years later, Judy Kinneer is still doing that job. The couple has overcome numerous obstacles, become furniture experts and turned their business-Kinneer Home Furnishings-into a community leader.

The Kinneers now own and operate a company with two locations and nine employees and serve more than 7,000 regular customers in a 50-mile radius area. Kinneers Home Furnishings has a very tangible economic impact. For just one example, the business sells about 1,300 mattresses every summer to college students.

"That's a lot of mattresses, and we've done that several years in a row," Judy Kinneer said.

The key to success? A strong desire to work hard for long-term gain, according to Judy.

"Part of it has to do with, I think, being nuts," she joked during an interview with The Kalona News at the store's site at Highway 1 and B Ave in Kalona. "No, you have to be, very definitely, people who are self-motivated and want to work for yourself and want to work long hours."

The Kinneers have certainly proven that they know how to work hard. In the late 1970s, the couple decided to explore opening a furniture business.

"My husband had a desire to own his own business," Judy said. "We went looking for something that might be available and that we could afford."

Bill and Judy were living in Burlington. Contacts in Wellman suggested to the Kinneers that the owners of Powell Furniture might be willing to sell.

"We'd previously heard that the people who ran that store weren't in that store all the time, so maybe they'd be interested in selling," Judy said. "So he called Doug Powell, who was managing that store. After a period of time, we ended up buying it Feb. 1 of 1977 from Lewis Powell and Jerry Powell"

By that time, Judy and Bill had been married for 15 years. They were seemingly fated to spend their lives together.

"We're both born on the same day, same year, same hospital," Judy said. "I knew who he was in junior high, but didn't start dating until I was a junior in high school. I didn't see him for a while, and dated again in junior college."

This year, in addition to celebrating the birthday of their business, the Kinneers mark 45 years of marriage.

In 1977, Bill and Judy evaluated themselves and thought they had what it took to run a furniture store, bringing a combination of sales and financial experience to the endeavor.

"My husband had sold furniture at both the retail and wholesale level for several years previous to that, and I had a lot of bookkeeping experience," Judy said. "With my bookkeeping experience and his knowledge of furniture, we decided we'd make a good match to try to run a store of our own."

They moved to Wellman with their three young sons and began running a business with 88-feet of downtown storefront. Judy expected that she would play a behind-the-scenes roll while her husband handled the display floor. That prediction was discarded almost from the beginning.

"My expectations were that I would be more of a bookkeeper and a person in the back and he was going to be the one out there selling," Judy recalled. "The second day of business, he was gone and so was everybody else and I was by myself and I needed to gather information for a lady that needed a table and chairs. I went from there."

Next week: the Kinneer's face bankruptcy and the boys intervene.