Libby furniture store expands, consolidates downtown

Next time you go shopping at Managhan’s Furniture, make sure to compliment Mark and Amber on their new hole in the wall. Ripping through a couple of feet of concrete was, after all, the most difficult part of expanding their business. 

Last week, the Managhans celebrated the grand opening of their new mattress store on Mineral Avenue. The building was home to Libby Video and then a second-hand store before the Managhans purchased the 3,500-square-foot building last year. 

The new building was a strategic purchase because it is located right next door to the existing Managhan’s Furniture store. A wall separated the two buildings until the Managhans hired a crew to knock a hole in the wall as a convenience to customers who want to browse both showrooms without going back outside. 

“The hole was definitely the biggest challenge – figuring out how to put the hole in the wall to finding out that we needed to remove asbestos from one of the walls,” said Mark Managhan, 35, the owner of Managhan’s Furniture. “But in the end, it all worked out fine. It just took longer than expected.”

Now that the expansion is complete, Managhan’s Furniture has more than 12,500 square feet of space to display the largest selection of furniture in south Lincoln County. 

Mark Managhan, who has owned Managhan’s Furniture for the past three years, represents the third generation of his family to own and operate a furniture store in Libby. The family’s furniture legacy began in 1991 when Senia and Leonard Halttunen opened Libby Furniture and Appliance on Mineral Avenue. 

Senia had worked at Larry’s Furniture for years, and she opened her own store shortly after Larry’s went out of business. A year after opening her store, she hired her grandson, Mark Managhan, who was a freshman in high school at the time, to work as a delivery person.

“It was grunt labor. Bottom of the food chain,” Mark Managhan said. “I did a lot of cleaning and mopping floors.”

In 1999, Senia sold the store to her daughter, Janet Fontaine, who operated it for about 10 years before going out of business in December of 2009. Under her ownership, the business was moved a block away to its present location at 403 Mineral Avenue. 

Mark Managhan wanted to purchase the family business from Fontaine, but he couldn’t afford to buy the existing inventory at the time. Instead, he started a new company in February of 2010 and renamed the family’s furniture business to Managhan’s Furniture. 

Since the Managhans took over, they have increased the size of their staff from four employees to seven, while working hard to provide their customers with growing selection of recliners, bedroom sets, dining sets, sofas, loveseats, framed art and just about anything else needed to decorate a home.

“The biggest complaint about furniture stores all across the country is that they don’t carry a large enough selection,” Amber Managhan said. “So, we wanted to have a large selection, and we felt there was a need.”

The couple rented space in the big yellow building outside of town on Highway 2 and, in 2011, turned it into a furniture clearance center for lower-priced new items and consignment furniture. After operating a second location for about a year, the Managhans began looking for a different building closer to their main store.

When the Libby Video building became available, the Managhans jumped at the opportunity. They closed the clearance center late last year after working out a deal to buy the building next door. 

So far, the customer response to the dual showroom downtown has been positive, Mark Managhan said. 

“I like being downtown because of the feel of downtown – the events and everything about being downtown,” he said. “Now that we’ve moved everything down here, I have no plans to ever move again.

“Everybody likes being able to shop in one place, and they like the flow of it. And, yeah, everybody likes the hole in the wall that was so hard to put in – so that makes me feel better.”