Built to last

The saddest and happiest day of Jasper Fontenot’s lengthy professional retail career happened outside of the same building on Tate Cove Road, five years apart from one another.
“A real sad day for me is when I watched them take down the Brown’s Furniture sign,” Fontenot said. “The happiest day was naturally when my kids were born and when I got married, but after that is when I saw that Helig-Myers sign come down and the Brown’s Furniture go back up.”
Fontenot has spent 54 years selling families the essential household items they need such as refrigerators, dishwashers, sectional sofas, recliners, and bedroom suites. Fontenot has done that with Brown’s Furniture Showplace not only here in Ville Platte, but all across south and central Louisiana.
Fontenot was born a salesman.
“I have always liked selling and I have always liked people,” Fontenot said. “I remember when I was 14, I used to go buy watermelons and bring them back to Mamou and peddle them from house to house. I couldn’t drive so my daddy would drive me from house to house.”
Fontenot grew up working his father’s farm in Mamou as he started working in cotton and potato fields when he was five years old and didn’t stop until he was 17.
That experience taught him plenty about hard work and determination, but it also taught him what he didn’t want to do when he grew up.
“I knew I didn’t want to be a farmer,” Fontenot said.
After graduating from Mamou High in 1961, Fontenot had aspirations of attending college so he went and studied business administration at a trade school for about a year, before he decided he had enough.
“I decided that school was too slow and plus all of my friends had cars and I was tired of hitchhiking to get anywhere,” Fontenot said.
In 1962, Fontenot got a job working as a delivery boy in the warehouse at Brown’s Furniture, which had relocated from downtown Ville Platte to Tate Cove Road in 1960. The furniture chain was originally founded by Hebert Brown in 1939 in nearby Opelousas.
It didn’t take long for Fontenot to work his way up.
Less than a year later he became a full-time salesman on the floor and then in 1966 he was promoted to store manager.
So how did Fontenot climb the ladder so quickly? Easy. He sold himself.
“In sales, the most important thing is when you greet the public you have to sell yourself,” Fontenot said. “You have to make them believe in you. Also, a lot of the time just by listening you can learn more than talking.”
A prime example of this approach is how not to greet a customer that walks through the door, and that does not include the standard salesman line of ‘how can I help you?’
“The old thing in sales is this,” Fontenot said. “When a customer walks in never walk up to them and say ‘can I help you?’ You walk up there and extend your hand and say ‘hi my name is Jasper thank you for coming to Brown’s Furniture and who are you? Get their name and their wive’s names and ask them where they are from. You are breaking the ice that way.”
During his early years at the Ville Platte store, Fontenot not only became a store manager, he had also gotten married, had two sons, and built his family home two blocks behind the store.
In 1978 though, Fontenot had the itch to leave Brown’s and strike out on his own by opening his own furniture store in Avoyelles Parish.
“Brown’s was very good to me but I wanted to move on,” Fontenot said. “I wanted to own a store on my own but I wouldn’t open a store in Ville Platte to go against Brown’s out of respect. So I found a store in Bunkie that I wanted to buy. I called Mr. Herbert (Brown) to tell him that I was moving on and he came back from Florida.
“He actually came into town and went with me to check out the Bunkie store. He told me ‘you are doing the right thing’ but he then turned to me and said ‘let’s go into partnership together. We will go 50 -50 in Bunkie.’”
That proved to be just the beginning of Fontenot’s expansion into Brown’s Furniture. In the next decade, Fontenot would proceed to take over managing-ownership of stores in Alexandria, Eunice, Franklin, Houma, Breaux Bridge and Lafayette.
By 1995, Fontenot owned anywhere between 50 to 75 percent of those stores. That same year though Fontenot would receive an offer “they couldn’t refuse” from national furniture store chain Helig-Meyers.
Fontenot would remain as owner of the buildings but he could no longer be involved in the business, as part of the buyout stipulation.
That’s when Fontenot suffered his saddest day as a professional when the Brown’s sign was removed and replaced with a Helig-Myers sign. In addition, anytime Fontenot would walk into the Ville Platte location it would make his blood boil.
“It would kill me when I walked in here and I would see guys using my office,” Fontenot said. ‘That was the office that I built.’”
After three years passed, Fontenot quickly got back into the business. In 1998 he would reopen Brown’s in Opelousas and then bought out his partners. In 2000, Fontenot reclaimed the Eunice store and then in 2001 Helig-Myers filed for bankruptcy. That allowed Fontenot to get three more of his former stores back.
“I got my store back in Alexandria, Lafayette and of course here in Ville Platte,” Fontenot said.
The stores have thrived in the years since Fontenot and his family took over. Fontenot himself was recently honored for his life’s passion as he received the National Buyer Appreciation Award from the Tupelo Furniture Market in Mississippi.
“It is a great feeling,” Fontenot said “I just want to thank the people of south and central Louisiana that have supported us over the years. I am very grateful.”
Even though Fontenot is still heavily involved with the furniture empire he started building five decades ago, his children and four grandchildren are in the process of taking it over, including his son Jody who currently operates the Opelousas location.
Yet, don’t expect the 72-year-old to stop coming by his office on Tate Cove Road anytime soon.
“I enjoy what I am doing and I feel that I need to be there,” Fontenot said. “I don’t like to fish and I don’t like to squirrel hunt. And going to sit at the golf course or put a golf club in my hand is not for me either. I just like to be involved in what happens.”