Honquest Furniture Owner Retiring, Closing All Stores

, Honquest Furniture owner Richard Honquest has decided to retire from a 52-year career in the furniture business and close his stores in Whitefish Bay and Chicagoland.

The Whitefish Bay store’s entire $1 million inventory of furniture, rugs and accessories will be discounted at a retirement and store closing sale designed to clear the showroom. The business is temporarily closed until the sale starts Friday. No final closing date has been announced for the business, which signed a one-year lease for the 9,100 square-foot showroom at 133 E. Silver Spring Drive.

Honquest, 77, sent a letter to his customers and colleagues this week announcing his retirement.

"For everything there is a season: a beginning and an end," he said. "This letter goes out to you with many mixed feelings announcing the end of an era. Within these past 52 years, I have seen many changes in consumer buying habits and personal tastes. Evolution is constant. Even though we have been in Whitefish Bay for a short period of time, we have appreciated the class and ethics of the people in the entire area. I am happy to have served all our customers and thank all of you for your business and support.’’

For Honquest, it has been a long, rewarding journey over the past 50 years. After renting a space in Addison, IL for 16 years, he rented an old ice house in Barrington, IL for seven years before building his first store in 1983, and making additions in 1987 and 1993.

Six million dollars in inventory is also being sold at Honquest's iconic 60,000-square-foot Barrington store, which sells furniture accessories, lamps, Oriental rugs, carpet window treatments and mattresses.

The Whitefish Bay sale will offer products from distinguished manufacturers such as American Leather, Bradington Young, Marge Carson, Century, Hancock & Moore, Harden, Henkel Harris, Hickory Chair, Lilian August, Shifman Mattress, Thayer Coggin and others. More than 25 of these brands are made in America.

In December, Honquest closed his Deerfield outlet store in Deerfield after one year in business, although he had originally planned to have the store open for six months, according to the Deerfield Review.