Couple makes LaDiff a furniture shopping destination

Andrew Thornton started three successful ventures by age 28.

Next year will mark nearly three decades since the entrepreneur opened LaDifférence in Charlottesville.

"Until I was 27, I was figuring out all the things I didn't want to be -- a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant -- so I became a furniture maker and a peripatetic traveler."

He and Sarah Paxton -- his wife and business partner -- built LaDiff into one of the pre-eminent furniture stores on the East Coast after they moved it to Richmond in 1992.

Instead of going to New York, Washington or Florida to buy furniture, people from there come here to buy furniture.

"There aren't that many stores like LaDifférence that specialize in youthful, contemporary, multifunctional merchandise," said Wallace "Jerry" W. Epperson Jr., a furniture analyst with Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond.

Epperson said he was skeptical at first about whether contemporary furniture would sell in Richmond, which is known for architectural ties to Colonial Williamsburg and traditional leanings.

"You can go to Houston and talk to people in the furniture business and they will know about LaDifférence," Epperson said.

"Only a handful of stores across the country have larger-than-life reputations. When people who know furniture come to Richmond, they make an effort to see LaDifférence."

The store, at 14th and Dock streets in Shockoe Bottom, sells mid-priced furniture made to last a lifetime, not disposable furniture with a similar look sold at Wal-Mart, Kmart and Ikea, Epperson said.

"We're not frilly, we're anything but," Paxton said. "We're not trendy, we're not flighty. Good design should stand the test of time."

Furniture is creative, said Thornton, the peripatetic or wandering traveler. "The world was not designed by Chippendale and Hepplewhite," great cabinetmakers of 18th-century England.

"It's a much larger place. Let's not get stuck in time, because everything is fluid."

. . .

The furniture industry has been in a recession for three years. And LaDifférence has felt it.

"Our business is off 10 to 15 percent; the industry average is 25 to 30 percent," Thornton said. "We've lost vendors and fellow retailers."

LaDifférence has returned to its core strength, which is creativity, Paxton said. "Certainly sales are down, but the recession has given us an opportunity to reinvent ourselves and to really focus."

They are painting walls with new colors, moving out old merchandise and bringing in new vendors.

Furniture is a deferred purchase, Epperson said. People will fix their cars before they buy furniture.

The peak season for furniture sales is October, November and December, Epperson said. "Unless something happens quickly, I don't think it will materialize this year."

Epperson estimates that 10 percent of the nation's 36,000 furniture stores have gone out of business in this recession. In the past, stores would close and reopen in a new format. They are staying closed this time around.

"This recession has been the longest in memory," said Epperson, who has followed the industry for 38 years. "This fight is getting a little stale."

"There's no cash for clunkers in the furniture business," said Ivor Massey Jr., a Richmond businessman and investor in LaDifférence. "We're hanging in there. We will come out the other end but it is challenging."

. . .

Thornton's journey to LaDiff was circuitous. He attended college for one year after graduating from the American School of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1970. Seeing little use for school, he hitchhiked across the U.S. eight times, once with a dog.

He settled in Charlottesville making free-form furniture out of redwood and captured the attention of major metropolitan newspapers with articles about his inventions.

The travel bug hit again. He sold the business and spent most of his 25th year traveling in Mexico, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Returning to Charlottesville, he decided he didn't want to live in the United States.

"The mid-1970s was not a very enlightened time in America," he said.

Thornton set up shop in Haiti, employing a village of 500 people. He sold their rugs, metal sculptures, artwork and woodwork through an export operation to such companies as Pier 1 Imports, Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue.

He returned to Charlottesville and started LaDifférence in 1980. It became more of a whole house store with a huge kitchen section of cookware, bath towels and closet gadgets.

The opportunity to reinvent the store and focus on furniture came with the move to Richmond in 1992.

It also was a chance for Paxton to take more of a leadership position.

"In Charlottesville, it was still his store. When we moved to Richmond, it became our store."

Paxton went to work for LaDiff in 1991. When the bookkeeper left, she learned the job. "I've been stuck with the financial end of the business ever since."

The couple married on a cold December day in 1995 on the front porch of their Church Hill home. They now live in South Richmond near the James River. She kept her maiden name -- because it's cool to have an "x" in your name, she said.

A 1988 graduate of the University of Virginia, she went to work for a bridal gift shop in Charlottesville after a stint renting apartments to students. She was hired at the shop at $4.50 an hour. "By the end of the first day, I was making $5 an hour."

By the following Christmas, she was 23 and the store manager.

"I've been in retail since I was 18 -- one of thousands who worked for Miller & Rhoads," Paxton said. "I had the retail bug."

The first LaDiff here was in Richmond's West End, then on to bigger space at Tobacco Row and, in 1998, on to its current 90,000-square-foot location -- the largest contemporary furniture store on the East Coast.

The store employs 27 people. "To be an ambassador for our store and the neighborhood is a job requirement," Paxton said. "It part of our psyche."

"Andy and Sarah seem to pop up everywhere, in any discussion about the future of the city," said Alice Lynch with the Virginia Capitol Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises funds and awareness of the historic treasures on Capitol Square.

"They always have a fresh approach that brings life to discussions," Lynch said. "They have a unique way of looking at things, unlimited energy and enthusiasm."

"As a pair, they are the typical backbone of the community -- small business folks who are hardworking, involved in philanthropy and civic minded," said Massey, the investor.

Richmond was a conscious decision, a lifestyle choice, Thornton said.

But a world seems to be calling.

. . .

"For the first time, I'm looking at the possibility of an exit strategy," Thornton said.

He can see taking their daughter, 8-year-old Lucy, in five or so years to India to live for six months, giving her the opportunity to experience other parts of the world much like he did as a child.

Thornton is the son of an engineer who installed telecommunications systems for ITT Corp. and its subsidiaries, including NATO's early warning system from Finland to Turkey. By age 18, Thornton had lived in England, France, New Jersey and Brazil.

"Life should always be about new possibilities, about reinvention," Thornton said. Perhaps he will work on freshwater projects in India.

As her husband explores possibilities, Paxton might take on more responsibility at the store. But she's not ready to go there yet.

"I'm not going to put my life in a timeline," she said. "It's not the destination that's important. It's the journey."

With a 14-year age difference -- she's 43, he's 57 -- she says she and her husband are in different life places. That aside, they have a creative dynamic, the couple say.

"We have good ying and yang," he said. "Neither of us is shy about stating our opinion," she said.

"Andy will say, 'I have this great idea.' And I will say, 'Oh, my gosh.' But he keeps going and I start to come to him with a list of details of how to make it work.

"He is Mr. Why Not in a sea of why should we? He is a pot stirrer in a provocative way."

"I have huge respect for Sarah," he said. "We are very good friends, which is important. She is incredibly smart."

He commends her for being a great mother. She commends him for being a great father.

The center of their lives is Lucy. "She is the empress of LaDifférence," Paxton said.

Paxton spends Saturdays with Lucy. Thornton is with her Sundays. The store is closed on Mondays. "That's a sacred day for us," Paxton said.

Contact Carol Hazard at (804) 775-8023 or .