Here’s one way that Seth Berger—a Stamford native, father of two and 34-year volunteer firefighter—describes the mission of his longtime family business: Protecting against the cold, impersonal commoditization of baby and children’s furniture.
Berger represents the third generation in his family to sell high-end cribs, dressers, desks and rocking and upholstery chairs, and the purchase of those items long had been a meaningful family occasion.
Seth Berger, owner of recently opened Kids Home Furnishings at 106 Main St. in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
“Until the Internet, that was the case,” Berger said Monday afternoon at Kids Home Furnishings in downtown New Canaan, sitting by a solid beech baby dresser from Romania. The brightly lit, approximately 2,500-square-foot shop opened this spring at 106 Main St.—next door to Connecticut Muffin and toward the corner, in what many think of as the “Pop-up Store” for its prior occupants.
“You went to the one person that knew this merchandise. They would not steer you wrong. You knew that you were creating a relationship with this person that would last three generations. And it became a family affair to buy the family’s furniture, because the grandmother would be helping her daughter buy for the next generation. So we would see three generations of a family. And we do now, three generations of a customer. Grandparent, parent and child.”
The original Sol’s at Ridgeway Center (Summer and 6th) in Stamford. Contributed photo
Originally opened in the 1940s as Sol’s (his grandfather) at Stamford’s Ridgeway Center and later the Baby & Toy Superstore downtown (near the Avon Theatre), the shop has moved just a few times through the years, but always within Stamford—until now.
Asked how he landed on New Canaan, Berger described the town as a “nice, comfortable place where people smile.”
“It’s a small, community feeling here and the smiles that are crated in New Canaan made it attractive to me,” he said. “It’s a community, and we enjoy being part of a community.”
A blue upholstered swivel glider with a dark wood dresser-and-changing table, and white European beech baby dresser that has an anti-pinch mechanism on the drawers. Credit: Michael Dinan
It’s a value the Stamford lifer understands.
Growing up in the city, Berger attended Westhill High School (class of ’81), then earned an economics degree from Southern Connecticut State University.
“I wanted to go to school where I was close enough to come home, work and earn money and learn from the business, so that I was able to pay for my own tuition,” Berger recalled. “And so that was important for me. Immediately upon graduation, I went to work in the family business and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Girl’s canopy bed with a trundle on the left, and a twin-over-full bunk bed, at Kids Home Furnishings on Main Street. Credit: Michael Dinan
In Stamford, in addition to serving as a volunteer firefighter (which he still does, having attained the rank of assistant chief at one time) Berger sat for 10 years on the board of the Downtown Special Services District—was a commissioner there when events such as the Alive@Five concert series and Parade Spectacular came into being—as well as at the Jewish Community Center on Newfield Avenue, where he lives now with his wife of 24 years and their 16-year-old son, a Stamford High School student. The couple’s older son just completed his freshman year at the University of Hartford.
And when that 19-year-old comes home for the summer, he sleeps in the very same, cottage-style bed that he’s had since age two.
Kids Home Furnishings in New Canaan is located at 106 Main St., directly across form “Kids Row,” which includes Candy Nichols, The Toy Chest and Baskin-Robbins. Credit: Michael Dinan
That he himself, his own family, uses the very products he sells is an important piece of the professional philosophy that Berger says he inherited from his father and uncle, who had taken over the family business from Sol.
“At the risk of sounding corny, my family raised me to ensure two principles,” Berger said. “One is that if it’s not good enough for our own children, we’re not going to sell it. And the other is that the community has been so good to my family since the ‘40s, that being a retailer and selling product that people trust for their children and they buy from you, is an important concept in our family. It’s the most important thing in anyone’s life, is their children. And for them to trust me or my staff or anyone else in my family with those needs, is something we hold in high esteem.”