Oct. 10, 2024

More than 20 years after Dan Steinberg started a furniture store almost on a whim, he has decided to retire.

Steinberg’s Furniture has a retirement sale going on now, and plans are to close by May 1, 2025.

But not only did selling furniture made of logs and leather and more rugs than a person can count give him a good living, but it also changed his life. Three months after Steinberg opened his store at 12th Street and Hawthorne Avenue, a customer walked in looking to furnish her home.

Dan and Diane Steinberg now have been married for 18  years.

“She came in to buy furniture, and we found we kind of knew each other,” Dan Steinberg said. He had graduated from Washington High School in 1980; Diane graduated one year later. “We started talking, and next thing you know, she’s going on a delivery with me, and we never looked back.”

The Steinbergs have worked side by side at the family-owned furniture store for five years since Diane retired after working for more than 30 years for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier.

That means long hours at the store and a lot of lifting heavy furniture. That’s why the Steinbergs have decided to retire. They also want to spend more time with her parents, their three married sons and six grandchildren, who range in age from 1 to 15.

When Dan Steinberg moved back to Sioux Falls in the early 2000s, he helped a buddy with his business. Then he received a call from someone who had a load of furniture ready to sell but no place to sell it. Steinberg, who had always been involved in sales, agreed to take it on.

“It was the first time opening a business on my own,” he said.

The Steinbergs’ retirement coincides with the decision of their log builder who created the furniture for which the store is known to also hang it up. Rather than start with a new log builder, it was time to travel, hunt and fish, and tackle the projects they’ve been putting off with only one free day a week.

Steinberg’s Furniture has no other employees; the couple relied on friends to fill in when they went on vacation.

Selling log furniture “just happened,” Dan Steinberg said. A log builder was in town seeking a new furniture store to display his items. When he traveled down 12th Street, he pulled up in front of the store and went in. The maker left a bedroom set behind; it sold in two days, and Steinberg began regularly placing orders.

Steinberg’s has focused on niche home furnishings, Diane Steinberg said.

“That’s kind of how Steinberg’s has lasted as long as it has,” she said. “We have not tried to do everything. We offer top-grain leather furniture and a few pictures and clocks. What we did do, we tried to do well.”

A distributor has told the Steinbergs that their store offers more area rugs than any other store in the Midwest. The display area featured 1,150 rugs. The store also typically offered at least 22 collections of genuine leather furniture on its showroom floor.

“Those three niches, it just happened to work,” Dan Steinberg said. “Truthfully, it’s still working. It’s just time for us to say goodbye.”

The Steinbergs accepted several orders of furniture before the retirement decision was made, so new items are still arriving. They also have 4,000 rugs to sell. Although May 1 is the target date, the store could close earlier or later than that.

Hours now are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

Recently, Dan Steinberg was in a customer’s home delivering the furniture she had ordered. That, he realized, is what he has enjoyed the most about his 20 years of selling furniture.

“I got to see where my products went, and most times they were pretty darn happy and got friends to look at it,” he said. “Customers are happy with the quality, and sometimes they give it to their kids. It’s still great fun looking at people pick out rugs.”