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Ocean Boulevard Furniture moves to West Rehoboth

New location, new pricing for store looking to take advantage of community’s revitalization
September 13, 2019

Story Location:
Ocean Boulevard Furniture
19803 Hebron Road
Rehoboth, DE 19971
United States

One full summer season into a new location, Ocean Boulevard Furniture owner Jay Bond said the move to West Rehoboth has been great for business.

Located on the corner of Canal Crossing and Hebron roads, Bond said the area has become a busy cut through for people coming into Rehoboth, and, he said, there’s a lot of bicycle and pedestrian traffic because of the Junction & Breakwater Trail.

“It’s great exposure to have all the bikers and runners,” said Bond. “Slow is good for a furniture store.” 

For the first 14 years of business, Ocean Boulevard Furniture was located on the northbound side of Route 1 in Lewes, right before Boulevard Ford.

Bond said at first being on the highway was good because it provided year-round exposure. However, as summer traffic on the highway increased over the years, he said, the highway location became less and less desirable, because people were either driving too fast to notice or stuck in traffic and wanting to keep moving. Last year, he said, on Sundays in the month of August, there were a total of five customers.

“We got good at bocce,” said Bond.

In addition to the new location, Bond said a new pricing structure has also been successful. Like a lot of businesses, he said, customers were coming in, seeing a piece they liked and then going home to get it slightly cheaper online. Or, he said, they would wait until they were having a sale.

Now, rather than have a bunch of 20-percent-off sales throughout the year, Bond said, the furniture is always marked at sale prices. There’s no more games, and sales have doubled, he said.

“The way we were doing it before wasn’t working, so I wasn’t worried too much about the risk,” said Bond.

One of the unique things about the new location is the sliding garage doors on the first floor of the two street-facing sides of the building. This means when the weather is nice, people are going by see right into the showroom. Bond said this winter, glass sliders are being installed for when the weather isn’t nice.

The new location has two floors of furniture settings. Bond described the offerings as beach modern. He said it’s furniture that fits well in a beach house, but doesn’t necessarily look like traditional beach furniture.

Bond said Ocean Boulevard is primarily a special-order store. He said they used to have a warehouse with furniture in stock, but customers always wanted a piece with a different finish than what was being offered. It just started to make sense to have a floor model, and then let customers choose what they wanted, said Bond.

Ocean Boulevard Furniture, 19803 Hebron Road, is open seven days a week at 10 a.m. The store will be open year-round. For more information call 302-645-2626 or email Bond at jay@oceanboulevardfurniture.com.

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