Derby's Furniture

Derby's Furniture began business in the fall of 1958 at 118 Broadway in West Burlington, Iowa. It took many long hours and hard work to get the long-empty building ready, which we rented for $35 per month. Eventually, Keith and Juanity Derby bought the building on contract.

In the beginning, we bought and sold used furniture and antiques, as well as holding consignment auctions. In the early sixties we began adding new furniture to the mix. After some time we had evolved into all new furniture.

In 1973, we opened a store on Mt. Pleasant and the following year we added a store in Eldon. A new block building was built in 1977, adjoining the old building, and almost doubling the space. Our buildings sat between City Hall and Hagerla's market. This new building was heated--a welcome improvement from the old building, which only had heat in its small office room.

We sold the Mt. Pleasant store in 1979 and the Eldon location was liquidated after Keith passed away in 1984, leaving our efforts concentrated in West Burlington. Juanita, John and Jess continued at the Broadway location till 1986, when we purchased a building from Reynold's Office Supply. It was just around the corner from the old store, on Wheeler Street. This building was quite a change--it had heat throughout, carpet, two bathrooms and painted walls!

In 2001, the city of West Burlington purchased our buildings in downtown and tore the old buildings on Broadway down to make room for the new city hall. We purchased lots at 709 East Mount Pleasant Street and constructed a 20,000 square foot building with an adjoining warehouse. This new building sits where LaVeine's trailor court was for many years. The building was completed in October 2001 and we planned the big move. We closed as usual Saturday October 6th at the Wheeler location and early Sunday morning we and all the help we could muster began the task of moving the contents of all three buildings downtown to the new location. We set up everything as we went. Finally, at about 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning, we were all moved in--furniture, offices and all. Everyone went home for some well needed rest. We opened up Monday morning, October 8th, at 9:00 a.m. in our new digs without closing one day!

Our goals haven't changed: to give our customers a full line of top quality furniture and bedding, personalized service and fair prices. We have served several generations of customers since 1958 and would like to thank them all for their trust through the years, and hope to continue for many more. We'd just like to let all of our loyal customers know--it's much appreciated.