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Wanda and Todd Markin are building an
empire of comfort and style.
The business partners got into the
industry by chance: After moving to Calgary in 1994,
Todd responded to an ad looking for a bed and mattress
salesman.
At the time, he says, The Bedroom Shoppe only had
two locations and he thought of it as a short-term job.
But as the months passed, the Bedroom Shoppe’s
owner trusted Todd with more and more of the business’s
inner workings, until he was running the whole
show himself — and doing extremely well at it.
Wanda Markin began working at the store in 1998
and, not content with simply selling beds, immediately
saw an opportunity for expansion.
She came up with the concept of The Living Room
and has seen it take off, filling a Calgary niche by pro-
viding medium- to high-end living room furniture, from
sofas and chairs to entertainment units, coffee tables
and specialty decorative pieces.
“It was a hit and it’s just kept growing and growing,”
she says.
Todd and Wanda purchased the businesses in 2003
and have since expanded into several new locations.
In fact, they’ve opened five new stores just in the past
six months: A Furniture Outlet Centre on Edmonton
Trail last November, a new The Bedroom Shoppe and
The Living Room in Red Deer Dec. 26 and another The
Bedroom Shoppe and The Living Room at the Creekside
Shopping Centre on Jan. 28.
They have two more stores opening in Okotoks in
July.
“I don’t think we’ll ever attempt to open that many
stores in one year again,” Todd says with a laugh.
The business partners have worked to build a reputation
for modern, well-made products and attention to
detail.
This is evident, standing in their new Creekside location:
The large, spacious showroom has a bright, modern
look, with walls in fresh shades of green, rust and
gold, and sleek, trendy furniture spread across the floor
in a flowing pattern that spurs you to imagine just how
good particular sets and accessories would look in your
own home.
Those with a taste for quality have been coming to
Todd and Wanda’s stores for years to fill their furnishing
needs — and they’ve been telling their friends.
“Most of our business is built on referrals,” Todd
says. “Word of mouth goes a long way.”
Both The Bedroom Shoppe and The Living Room
carry only Canadian-made furniture from the best manufacturers.
The Bedroom Shoppe specializes in solid wood, kilndried
bedroom suites and premium sleep sets, while
The Living Room supplies solid wood frames and highquality
leathers and fabrics.
“Number one, I think we’re supporting where we
live. We’re supporting Canadian manufacturers,” Wanda
says.
Wanda & Todd
Markin
THE BEDROOM SHOPPE
29
A World of Furniture Fashion with a Canadian Touch
“The industry is saturated with products from overseas,
‘disposable furniture’ from China and Vietnam.”
Todd notes that, unlike cheap imports, The Living
Room furniture can be customized to a customer’s
taste.
“When you see a sofa here, it probably comes in 100
different fabrics and 40 different leathers,” he says.
“It’s produced for you and delivered to your home at
no cost in as little as four weeks.”
Wanda and Todd agree that a big part of their success
has been building close relationships and trust with
their employees and suppliers.
They will not work with a supplier, they say, unless
they have good products and concepts of craftsmanship,
style and business sense that are similar to their own.
Perhaps the biggest reward over the years, Wanda
says, has been customers’ reactions.
“It’s fulfilling to see how happy and impressed customers
get when we simply provide our level of service,”
she says.
“I’ve had customers send thank-you cards or invite
us out to dinners or lunches, just to show us how happy
they are with the product they bought and the service
they received.
“To us, it’s a given that we want to make our customers
happy.”