Wingback Chairs and Armoires on Aisle 4

In a Onetime Kmart, Floor Samples, Damaged Goods and Closeouts Are Bargains Now

JOPPATOWNE, Md.

Along a gritty industrial corridor about 20 miles northeast of Baltimore, a cavernous, dimly lit space once home to a rundown Kmart is crowded with down-filled sofas, mahogany dining tables, tole lamps, silver-leaf mirrors and glass-fronted bookcases.

Where blue-light specials once flashed bargains on shampoo and cat litter, shoppers now pause to examine an elegant Thomas O'Brien trestle bench by Hickory Chair (marked down from $1,668 to $584) one week or a glam Holly Hunt sectional reduced from $22,000 to $4,498 the next.

Is that a Robert Allen chintz club chair ($494) next to the rusted candy display racks? Yup. A sleek John Charles olive green sofa ($2,830 marked down to $728) rests near a lineup of dented Kenmore washers and dryers (some priced as low as $50) salvaged from a jack-knifed tractor-trailer.

C-Mart Home Store, a family-owned and-operated venture, is a spin-off of C-Mart, a discount fashion outlet about 12 miles up the road in Forest Hill that has been attracting a cult-like following of shoppers since 1971. Like its predecessor, C-Mart Home has all the appeal and unpredictability of a vast warehouse sale: You might drive an hour from Washington and find nothing you'd bother to take home; or you might stumble upon the round English pine dining table of your dreams.

"Oh, no. Please don't do a story about it. I was hoping I could keep it a secret," said Bethesda interior designer Shari Daniels, who shopped at C-Mart Home last month for the first time with a client. "It's a bit of a gamble to drive out there. But I was blown away by how many pieces they had and what good fabrics are on the upholstery."

The inventory for the store, which opened last October, comes from sources high and low: insurance claims, store liquidations and closeouts, sample sales and salvage recovery. One recent week, seven trailers arrived carrying 700 pieces from the Hickory Chair spring market showroom in High Point, N.C. C-Mart's folksy newspaper ads trumpet prices 60 percent to 80 percent off manufacturers' suggested retail price.

"We buy cheap to sell cheap," says Keith Silberg, C-Mart's vice president and general manager. "We have to create excitement. If there isn't an element of fun and adventure in shopping, then we would be dead in the water."

Excitement, yes. Ambiance, no. If you want to buy furniture in a store with cushy carpeting, stylish vignettes and highly trained design help, C-Mart Home is not for you. There are no carefully arranged furniture groupings, just rows and rows of lamps, couches, mirrors and rugs stretching across 40,000 square feet of discolored linoleum floor. It's strictly self-serve and as-is. A chalkboard up front lists daily specials.

There is no shame here in imperfection: The castors on a mohair hassock might be oxidized from a showroom flood, a lone mahogany dining chair from a famous maker might have been chipped in an earthquake. But most of the merchandise has no damage at all. And if you see a young guy moving furniture and yakking into his cell phone, it might well be Silberg, who is buying new stuff as fast as he can find it.

"Basically we're a family department store," says Silberg, 31, the fourth generation of his family in the discounting world. His grandparents were in the clothing business as jobbers and middlemen. "My grandparents began it all by doing deals and then selling it cheap."

But it was Silberg's uncle, Douglas Carton, who started the original retail phenomenon C-Mart in Harford County 33 years ago. Carton got into the retail biz as a student at the University of Maryland selling sweaters from the trunk of his car. Eventually he opened a small storefront in Bel Air he named C-Mart. (The "C" is for Carton.)

Carton built a reputation for value and outlandish deals, and his quirky taste attracted devoted shoppers. In 1978, he moved to the current location in nearby Forest Hill and the store's reputation kept growing: Kate Spade bags half price, crew socks for $5 a bag, Martex bath towels for $6 and the contents of an insurance loss deal involving a Long Island vitamin store: zinc picolinate and aloe vera at 50 percent off.

Over the years the store has sold ultra-luxe sheets from Frette and Pratesi, designer dresses from Henri Bendel and truckloads of silk and cashmere blazers from Bijan. "Jackie O" Gucci handbags spotted earlier this week ($599 marked down to $190) were the byproduct of a "government seizure," says Silberg.

Carton, now 55, was planning to go into semi-retirement a couple of years ago when Silberg started urging that they expand into home furnishings in a big way. Carton's son, Evan, just out of college, was ready to join the business. So the spin-off operation of C-Mart Home was in the works with a new generation of deal makers.

"The lure of discount clothing is not what it was 30 years ago," says Silberg. "It's hard to get someone from Philly to drive 100 miles to save $300 on a suit. But they might drive down here to save $5,000 on a bedroom set."

Customers started arriving from nearby towns, as well as from Philadelphia and Washington. (Delivery to Washington is about $80 for the first two pieces of furniture; the firm is looking for a better location for the home store, possibly closer to Baltimore or Washington.)

On Monday, Brenda Brooks of Baltimore, who has shopped at the original C-Mart for years, arrived to pick up a chest and a white lamp table she'd bought. Brooks says she stops by about once a month, often with a digital camera in tow so she can e-mail photos to a friend in Frederick looking for a small black sofa.

"The quality is fabulous, " she said, mentioning a cabinet she had bought a few trips ago from Thomasville's Humphrey Bogart collection. "You never know what you are going to find." And with that, she fell upon a cushy Louis XV-style leather wing chair by Hickory Chair marked down from $3,477 to $1,391 and added it to her bill. "I should not have come," she said in one breath but then mentioned that she had spotted two Bernhardt trucks in the parking lot so she may return next week.

These days C-Mart employs 100 workers at the two stores and e-mails a weekly list of specials to 11,000 customers who have signed up for them. The stores' handwritten ad, penned by Silberg, runs every Thursday in the Baltimore Sun. (A recent example: "5 trailers of mattress, sofas, recliners from a place where stuff is 'unclaimed' -- until now.")

"We don't check spelling or grammar and my spelling is bad," says Silberg. One local school even had a standard homework assignment on Thursday nights to correct misspellings in the C-Mart ad. (Note to Keith: It's bombe chests, not bombee.)

Have local established furniture stores felt undercut by C-Mart's approach? "We are often introducing high-end brands to our customers," says Silberg. "They end up appreciating the quality and then looking for more." Because C-Mart's stock is limited and unpredictable, salespeople often tell customers where to go to see more pieces from a particular manufacturer.

Silberg, who has two young sons, is psyched about the home venture. "Everyone who enters a family business fears they might mess it up. However, it might give my sons a reason to come into it. Without the furniture end, it might have been tough."

On a recent visit to C-Mart Home, we spotted an elegant oval-shaped chartreuse ottoman by well-known Manhattan designer Mariette Himes Gomez for Hickory Chair, marked down from $1,995 to $599. Nearby, stacks of 12-packs of 32-ounce bottles of Gatorade were marked $10.30. And just what are those doing in a home store that sells high-end designer furniture?

Says Silberg: "Just another deal."

C-Mart Home Store, 1000 Joppa Farm Rd., Joppatowne, Md.; Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Wednesday for restocking; 410-538-6100, www.cmartdiscount.com.