Nebraska Furniture Mart
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Nebraska Furniture Mart is the largest home furnishing store in North America selling Furniture, Flooring, Appliances and Electronics. NFM was founded in 1937 by Mrs. B (Rose Blumkin) in Omaha, Nebraska. She worked in the business until age 104. In 1983, Mrs. B sold a majority interest to Berkshire Hathaway with the famous handshake deal with Warren Buffett. NFM now has three stores. The Omaha store is over 420,000 square feet (39,000 m²) of retail space and is on 77 acres of land. The Kansas City store is also 420,000 square feet (39,000 m²) of retail space and is on 88 acres of land and sits across from the Kansas Speedway. The third store is in Des Moines, IA and is 24,000 square feet (2,200 m²) and sells appliances, flooring and televisions.
In the early 1990s, NFM opened a state of the art electronics and appliance store NFM Mega Mart which sells computers, software, music, videos and personal electronics items as well as TVs and appliances. In the early 2000s, the Mega Mart was branded like the other NFM buildings on campus as the Nebraska Furniture Mart Appliance and Electronics Store. In the Fall of 2008, The state-of-the art store was completely revamped from the inside out and includes a 200-foot (61 m) overhead warehouse connector and over 600 active video displays. Over 30 new jobs were added plus more cashiering stations and 12 new fully operational dream kitchens. The overhead connector connects the Appliance, Electronics and Computer Store to the 651,000-square-foot (60,500 m²) Distribution Center. Four exclusive shops were added including Sony, Bose, Apple and Harman@Home. Cox and Qwest have their own full service customer service areas.
Nebraska Furniture Mart also owns Homemakers Furniture in Urbandale, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines. Homemakers itself has a branch store in Altoona, Iowa, which is advertised as a factory outlet store.
[edit] "Mrs. B"
Rose Blumkin (b. 1893, d. 1998) was born Rose Gorelick in Russia. She moved to the United States in 1917. She started Nebraska Furniture Mart in the basement of her husband's pawn shop in 1937. She continued to be involved in day-to-day operations until shortly before her death at the age of 104.
