Minnesota Furniture Warehouse is a two-generation enterprise, founded by father Ken Scheman and carried on by son Chad Scheman in Erhard, Minnesota. (Photo/Nancy Hanson)

Father & Son Feature Heirloom Furniture

Nancy Edmonds Hanson 

“These are true heirlooms,” says Chad Scheman, strolling through the showroom of his furniture emporium. Pointing across a room packed with handcrafted dining tables and chairs, he adds, “We tell customers, ‘Don’t just settle for something you sort of like. Get exactly what you dream of.’

“This will be the last dining room set you’ll ever desire.”

Chad is the man behind the Minnesota Furniture Warehouse in Erhard, Minnesota. About half of the furniture displayed in its 30,000 square feet of inventory is the work of independent Amish furniture makers in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania – personally selected from some 150 builders on farms and in workshops scattered in little communities that he and his father, store founder Ken Scheman, visit each spring and fall.

“After 20 years of working with them, Dad and I have gotten to know many of them well. We know their children. We know their families,” the Pelican Rapids native says. “You can’t work together for that long and not develop personal relationships.”

The Schemans have developed a second key relationship here in Moorhead. Their Minnesota Furniture Warehouse has advertised in every edition of the FM Extra for nearly 20 years. Their ad – always on the back page – has featured memorable handcrafted items beyond measure.

And while Chad notes that he and his father’s two-generation firm has done business with two generations of Amish craftsmen, their relationships with their customers goes even further. “We’re seeing a third generation of our customers these days,” he observes. “A good many of them found out about us in our ads in the Extra … or they’ve been sent our way by their parents or grandparents, who learned about us in those ads we’ve been running for years and years.”

The Schemans may now deal with the children of some of the first craftsmen and customers they’ve known when they added Amish as a main line of merchandise around the year 2000. But their business – now best known for that broad selection of traditional furniture for every room in the house – started out in a far different direction.

Patriarch Ken fell in love with Otter Tail County, his son recounts, when he was moving trailer homes and passed through the area. “Hunting and fishing are his passion,” Chad says. When he got home to southern Minnesota, Ken told his wife – who was six months pregnant with Chad – “this is where we’re going.”

They made the move in 1978, when Chad was 3. Ken opened a store selling work clothes on the main street of Pelican Rapids near the river. His son grew up working in DK’s Clothing as it evolved. “Dad is a forward thinker. When he saw Walmart coming in, he realized small-town stores like his were going to have a hard time,” the younger Scheman recounts. He remembers the day the first truckload of mattresses pulled up – the beginning of their migration into furniture and the birth of Minnesota Furniture Warehouse.

At one time the father and son operated furniture warehouse stores in both Pelican Rapids and Fergus Falls, while Chad’s sister had a third in Detroit Lakes. “After we’d gone all-furniture in 1991, a woman from Callaway, Pat Swiers, came to us and rented 1,000 square feet to sell Amish, which she loved,” the son says. “We loved it, too – so much that we ended up buying her out.”

He admits, “I voted against Amish furniture. I’m the math guy; I thought it was a gamble. Dad and my sister Christine outvoted me. Dad is smarter than me, I guess. He’s got that gift of intuition.”

The Schemans’ clientele comprises two separate groups. “We serve people who live within a 30-mile radius. Our regular furniture is for them,” he explains. Fans of the Amish furniture, on the other hand, come from all over.

“The lakes in Otter Tail County bring them to us,” he points out. Families with summer homes within hundreds of miles of Erhard (south of Pelican Rapids on Highway 59) delight in the pieces generally not available back home. That means the company ships chairs, tables, bedroom sets and the rest all over the tri-state area, from Duluth and the Twin Cities to the Montana border and down to Sioux Falls and even Nebraska.

“The cool thing about Amish furniture is that it is true heirloom quality,” he says. “This is all solid wood. A lot of it is made without nails or screws. Every design is completely customizable, and we encourage our customers to make special requests.” Though their showroom usually sports 20 dining sets, a roomful of living room furniture and another of bedroom sets, details can be combined into one in a special order. “You can buy it off the floor if you find exactly what’s right,” he observes. “But we do all kinds of custom work – this stain, that table base, the tabletop they see over there.”

Those requests include not only the type of wood – virtually anything imaginable – but design details to precisely fit their desires. If you want a dining room set to match your hickory woodwork, that’s doable. If the very tall men in your family want custom-made bar stools to fit their long legs – done. Conversely, if a petite woman of the house is tired of her feet dangling over the floor, the dining room set can be tailored to fit her stature. If the headboard will cover up part of your window, make it shorter.

Back in school, Chad – who loves to read – weighed becoming a history teacher. But his family’s heritage drew him in this direction. His uncles and cousins also have furniture stores in southern Minnesota. He apprenticed with an uncle before returning to join his dad. “Joining the family business,” he says, “was a no-brainer.”

Working with Amish furniture makers has some interesting twists. Since they abjure technology, orders and requests are relayed through an “English” businessman (their name for the non-Amish) who has a fax machine and email. He in turn delivers the messages to workshops out in the country. Each of them has his own specialty, perhaps making chairs or tables in his own distinctive style?

What sets them apart? “Their designs may be somewhat similar, but each has his own specialties,” Chad explains. “Yet the cool thing is that pieces made by different workshops still all go together. The table might come from Ohio, the chairs from Indiana and the hutch from Pennsylvania, but it’s all made with tremendous care by people who take great pride in their work.” He adds, “The guys who build seldom are the ones who finish it. Each may have his own special touches to add, but in the end, it all will come out exactly as you dreamed it would.”