Florence furniture store a downtown fixture

FLORENCE — Petula Clark said in her 1964 hit “Downtown” that when you’re downtown, “You may find somebody kind to help and understand you.”

And nobody knows this better than Dixon Furniture Co., which has been in downtown Florence for 40 years. It specializes in customer service and offers its own credit.

“We can give that personalized service that the big box stores can’t give,” said Ed Dixon IV, son of founder Ed Dixon III. “We don’t have to call the corporate office for this or that.”

And the downtown location has never been a problem.

“We like being downtown,” Dixon said. “People don’t buy furniture every day, so you need a good stable place to be. We have a lot of repeat customers going as far back as grandchildren of people we started with. We’ve been able to hang on and are doing just fine.”

Walk-in traffic accounts for most of Dixon’s business. But the company also draws customers from Darlington, Florence, Pamplico and Timmonsville.

Living room suites and appliances are selling well.

They also sell dining room and bedroom furniture, electronics, computers, appliances, televisions and lawn mowers.

And they have a mattress sale under way.

Dixon took over the business when his father retired. But just before his retirement, he bought a warehouse that was larger than the 5,000-square-foot store.

“We’ve been able to get some new vendors in and broaden the lines we carry now since we bought the warehouse,” Dixon said. “We can buy in bigger volumes, so we can offer lower prices. We can buy things on sale from the wholesalers so that we can pass those prices on. In short, we’ve been able to expand.”

Dixon graduated from Francis Marion University with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a minor in math.

He was working in a lab and teaching math and science in Horry County when his father decided to retire six years ago. He came on board because he didn’t want to see the family business sold.

And there has been no need to make any major changes because Dixon says, “if it’s not broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.”

Among the three full time and one part-time employees is Roy Elmore. He joined the business in 1971 after four years in the Army.

Elmore’s oldest son, Harry, and Dixon’s father got creative in the late 1970s. Through their combined talents, Charlie was born.

Charlie was made of bunk-bed rails, refrigerator motors, chicken wire, copper tubing and gears. He was dressed to the hilt despite his ghoulish face — a Halloween mask.

Charlie stood in front of the store, where he turned and waved to everybody. It wasn’t unusual for people coming out of the Florence City-County Complex on the North Irby Street side to see Charlie waving and wave back.

“Charlie was a good worker, but it got to the point where we couldn’t find motors to work him,” Elmore said. “Unfortunately, he had a heart attack and had to retire. There are bits and pieces of him in a back room here to remind us of him.”

Meanwhile, Ed Dixon III is far from being inactive. He is the Mid-Atlantic director for the U.S. Parachute Association. He spends his time jumping out of planes and is “having a ball.”

Ed Dixon IV doesn’t sit idly by either during his free time. He has a private pilot’s license, cycles and runs in marathons.