When Mark and Krista Peirce opened The Royal Standard on Perkins Road in 1995, they were newly married and new to retail. But the young couple had an eye for antiques at a time when antiques were hot, Baton Rouge was growing and everybody wanted a new house full of old furniture—preferably French Provincial or English country pieces.
The Peirces had gotten into the business somewhat by accident and as something of a side venture. But their first store did so well, they moved within a year to a bigger location near the Perkins Road overpass, and over the next decade opened four more stores.
Two decades later, the landscape is drastically different, but The Royal Standard has adapted, as Business Report details in its new cover package.
Antique furniture is fetching as little as 50% of what it did 15 years ago, and The Royal Standard sells more white chalk paint—the trendy way to update old furniture—than it does 19th-century armoires. Antiques are out; crisp, white neo-modern stuff is in.
And it’s not just styles that have changed. Retail, in general, has been disrupted, thanks to e-commerce and the Amazon effect. Brick-and-mortar stores everywhere are struggling to keep their doors open. What’s a retailer to do when not only the product it sells has fallen out of fashion but its entire business model is teetering on the brink of obsolescence?
At The Royal Standard, the answer is to embrace the change, which the Peirces have done in several ways.
Read the full story to see how they’ve transformed their business over the decades, and check out a related story on how lighting, furniture and home decor manufacturer and distributor Lucas + McKearn is adapting to the changing retail landscape.
