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The onion is coming to Rantoul.
This Is It Furniture, made famous by owner Mike Namoff’s commercials that promise a free onion to anyone who enters, will open in early November in Rantoul Plaza.
Namoff said he is shooting for a Nov. 1 opening. He said the move-in will start in mid-October.
“They’ve already started working on the building,” Namoff said. “We’ve got the wall painted. The sign is coming. It’s rolling full speed.”
The building, located in the shopping center on the community’s east side, will have been vacant only about two months since Irish’s Gymnastics moved its operations to Gilman in early September. The gym had been located in the plaza since 1997.
The enthusiastic Namoff said the Rantoul store will mark the opening of the seventh This Is It store since opening his first one 23 years ago in Champaign.
According to Namoff, plaza owner David Meyer is a big reason he decided to open in Rantoul.
He said, “I’ve got a deal you can’t refuse — 10,000 square feet,” plaza manager Ron Minch said. “We’re definitely looking forward to having them.”
Added Namoff, “He was really aggressive at getting me in there and was persistent and got a deal done.”
The 10,000 square feet the building offers is plenty “big enough to do what we need to do,” said Namoff.
“We’re going to carry Simmons, Serta and Ashley (furniture). Also, I’m going to carry King Coil bedding, and I’m going to do some consignment as well.”
Namoff said consignment sales have grown in popularity with his company. It allows private citizens to sell their furniture using This Is It as a third party.
Many people don’t like the idea of having strangers traipsing through their house when looking at furniture for sale, Manoff said. They would rather have it at a place like This Is it.
“It’s turning your old furniture into cash,” Namoff said. “Consignment is very popular these days.”
Sellers won’t have to bring the items to the store. This Is It will pick them up for them.
Namoff said many of the used items are in almost-new shape. He cited a 75-year-old woman who said she wanted to buy a new sofa and that she needed to get rid of the old one. Namoff asked her what was wrong with the old sofa, and she said, “I’m tired of the color.”
Namoff said the store will offer free layaway, “on-the-spot no-credit check financing with no-interest options, which is very important to people these days.” The store offers a 90-day same-as-cash program.
He said the new business will create “six to ten jobs,” with “three to five” of them full time.
“We would need a furniture technician, delivery people and sales people,” Namoff said.
Store hours will be 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It will be closed Sunday “so I can go to church with my wife.”
Namoff said his wife convinced him to not be open on Sundays, and he said sales actually increased.
In addition to the “free onion” offering, the store is famous for its “downer, downer, downer” pitch as in prices are dropping.
“The downer started 15 years ago,” Namoff said. “(In a commercial), my dad was supposed to say ‘lower,” and he messed it up and we went with it.”
His “free onion” sales pitch keeps onion growers happy. Namoff said he has 50 pounds of onions delivered a day.
“It’s just a gimmick that really works,” he said, and it gets a lot of attention. He adopted it because “our prices don’t make you cry.”
The pitch has been featured on “David Letterman” and “Talk Soup” on the E! cable show. “I go all over the United States and people recognize me as the onion guy.”
“I’ll have all kinds of people all day long sneak in just to get the onion,” he said with a laugh. “I’m absolutely fine with it.”
dhinton@rantoulpress.com
