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For Nancy Le’Cher and her two adult children, visiting with customers has been at the heart of the job. The second-hand shop has been like a second home, she says.
The Le’Chers have always made a living off the things other people lack space for.
Maybe it’s the soccer cleats a kid has grown out of, or the sofa a grandparent left behind. In more unusual cases, it might be the taxidermied family pet or the spare laser hair-removal device.
For 28 years, if your junk passed their eye test, there’s been a place for it at River Road 2nd Hand in Eugene.
That will change on Feb. 25, when the Le’Chers close their store for good.
As their customer base, which once craved craftsmanship and shopped mainly by word of mouth, has given way to a new generation of Ikea and Amazon shoppers, the economics of a secondhand business have turned upside-down. Furniture, long River Road 2nd Hand’s top seller, no longer has the same profit margins that it did even a decade ago.
“People don’t appreciate quality furniture as much,” Josh Le’Cher, 44, said on a recent morning at the store, where he’s worked since high school. “They get stuff that’s cheap but breaks within a few years, instead of lasting forever.”
From obsession to business owner
It began with Josh Le’Cher’s father: Dave Le’Cher had always been a garage sale addict.
Carpentry work paid the bills while he and Nancy Le’Cher raised their children in Hawaii through the 1980s and early ’90s. But his real passion was digging into people’s throwaway items and finding hidden gems that he could resell for a profit.
“He would always go to garage sales and buy things,” said his daughter Brook, 42. “It was like a disease. He had to buy more.” He bought so much stuff that he and Nancy decided to turn that passion into a business by opening a second-hand store in Hawaii.
In 1997, the family moved to Eugene to be closer to Dave’s elderly father. It didn’t take long afterward for them to discover the 3,000-square-foot retail space at 939 River Road. The Le’Chers signed a lease and opened River Road 2nd Hand in October of that year.
“It took us a while to get noticed,” said Nancy Le’Cher, now 70. “Because of the way River Road runs through here, we had to put big helium balloons out front.” The couple invested in print and television ads, but it was largely word of mouth that started bringing people through the door.
Dave was still going to garage sales, but Eugene residents started calling. Maybe someone’s parent passed away and left a few too many things for an estate sale. Or a couple was downsizing after their children went off to college. They would call or email pictures to the store, and anything that looked promising would bring Josh and Brook out in their truck for a closer look.
“We got so many phone calls. We’d go to a house, and it would be like our own private estate sale,” Brook said.
A second family
The secondhand business is practically all Josh and Brook know. In its early years, Josh would head to the store after school in the afternoons to help out. He started working there full-time after graduating high school. Brook followed a few years later.
Nancy Le’Cher watched them grow up in the store, and her five grandchildren, too. Seeing repeat customers stop in to browse and bonding over their children has always been one of the best parts of working at the store.
“People would come in and just tell us their life story,” she said. “I watched everyone’s kids grow up, watched people have grandkids. People thought of us as a second family.”
As the store found its footing, sales climbed to roughly $20,000 a month, Brook said. They brought on two nonfamily members as employees for the first time. The biggest challenge then was managing inventory so a roughly equal amount of stuff was being bought and sold at the same time.
But 10 years ago, their landlord sold the building. The new owner began hiking their rent by $100 a month each year. Craigslist was already eating into their business, meanwhile, and Facebook Marketplace launched in 2016.
The pandemic only accelerated the trend away from brick and mortar retail toward online alternatives. The Le’Chers were already facing these economic headwinds when they faced another far more personal event: Dave died in 2021.
Figuring out what comes next
Nancy, Josh and Brook have kept the store afloat over the past four years. They’ve taken out a bank loan, and Nancy has sold off some of her silver to make rent payments. But with revenue down by half from its peak, and rent rising from $2,000 to $3,000 a month over the past decade, their options started dwindling.
So late on the morning of Dec. 30, Nancy, Josh and Brook published a 173-word Facebook post. The financial hardships were too great, they wrote. It wasn’t a decision they came to lightly. They’re in the process of liquidating, and they will close River Road 2nd Hand on Feb. 25.
Responses flooded in through the comments:
“I will certainly miss you and very sorry to hear this.”
“You’re my favorite place to find quality secondhand furniture.”
“Even though we moved away 10 years ago, we will miss your wonderful store and your welcome faces.”
“I bought many treasures in your store. The River Road neighborhood won’t be the same without you.”
A closing sale sign hung on the front door on a recent morning. Inside, among the items still lining the shelves were tools, DVDs, random electronics, utensils. A kayak was laid out on the floor — asking price $750 — near a mobility scooter and some chairs.
But the store was already starting to look a bit lighter than usual. As they work to sell off their remaining inventory, Nancy, Brook and Josh are pondering what comes next.
Nancy is waiting to see if she can afford to retire or will need to pick up some kind of work to pay her mortgage and electric bill.
Brook has done some house cleaning and is looking into health care jobs.
Josh is trying to figure out if it’s worth getting a job and paying for child care or staying at home to take care of his son.
“This is all I’ve ever known,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I know there are jobs out there, I just need to figure it out.”
For Nancy, not coming to work every day to talk with customers will be the hardest part of this next chapter.
“We love doing what we’ve been doing all these years,” she said. “This place has been like our second home. We’re going to miss visiting with our customers.”