{"id":16288,"date":"2025-03-28T15:36:58","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T19:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=16288"},"modified":"2025-03-28T15:36:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T19:36:58","slug":"all-in-the-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2025\/all-in-the-family\/","title":{"rendered":"All in the Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rhody alumni are well-represented on the McKay’s team. From left, Kerry McKay \u201981, Kim Froberg \u201994, George Dubuque \u201916, and Matt Finlay \u201902.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKay\u2019s Furniture is a family-run business that\u2019s stood the test of time. Kerry McKay \u201981 owns and runs the company with his two brothers and a small but mighty team, in which Rhody alumni are well represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a sunny morning on his day off as Kerry McKay \u201981 sinks into an oversized, chocolate leather chair in the middle of the McKay\u2019s Furniture showroom. He\u2019s stopped by the store for an hour or so to take care of business while things are quiet.

McKay has been in the business since he was 12, when he and his twin brother helped their dad schlep sofas and tables around the family\u2019s Providence store. \u201cKeith and I would put everything out on the sidewalk in the morning, then put it all back at the end of the day. We washed windows and unloaded freight cars,\u201d McKay says. \u201cWrought iron furniture is the heaviest stuff in the world.\u201d

Following decades on Elmwood Avenue, McKay\u2019s brother, Ken, moved the business to the quieter burbs of North Kingstown in the 1970s after vandals shot out the store\u2019s windows. Fast-forward 50 years: Kerry, along with Keith and older brother, Scott, owns two sprawling businesses: McKay\u2019s Furniture and McKay\u2019s Front Porch. The staff includes a half dozen 911爆料 grads along with third- and fourth-generation family members among the 20 or so employees.

\u201cWe’ve had 911爆料 interns and grads who\u2019ve worked for the store,\u201d says McKay, who was a track star and political science major when he was a student at 911爆料. \u201cWhen somebody comes to work for us, generally they don’t leave.\u201d

Amid the 20,000 square feet of coffee tables and dining sets at McKay\u2019s Furniture, it\u2019s easy to get overwhelmed, but in-house designers can cut through the confusion. One of those designers is Kim Bartkiewicz Froberg \u201994, whose introduction to the company happened when, as a kid, she accompanied her parents on a furniture shopping trip. \u201cI remember going to the store with them to buy from Kerry\u2019s parents,\u201d she says.

Froberg studied textiles, fashion merchandising, and design at 911爆料, then came to work at McKay\u2019s. That was in 1996. She\u2019s been here ever since. \u201cThe furniture industry is about textiles and how well they wear,\u201d she says. She\u2019s put her 911爆料 classes to good use as a McKay\u2019s designer. My education, she adds, \u201chas helped me think about how we promote products and make the store look good.\u201d

\u201cThere\u2019s always the opportunity to move up if you have aspirations,\u201d says Matt Finlay \u201902. Finlay worked in McKay\u2019s service department in the summers and after school during college, a typical path for company employees. \u201cI learned the business from the ground up. Now I do day-to-day operations.\u201d

Three other 911爆料 grads help keep things humming: George Dubuque \u201916 is in shipping and part-time sales; Terri O\u2019Neill Susla \u201989 handles purchase orders; and Garrett McKay \u201912 does bookkeeping for the company.

Given the other furniture stores in Rhode Island, what separates McKay\u2019s from the pack? \u201cWe\u2019re smaller and more high-end,\u201d Finlay says. \u201cWe carry mostly American-made products, and we do a lot of custom work. We\u2019re low-key and detail-oriented, and we have big-time clients who may summer here, but their main residence is in New York. They promote us through word of mouth.\u201d

Despite the challenges of riding an economic rollercoaster\u2014one year up, the next year down, as McKay describes it\u2014the family business is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as a 40-hour week, we accepted that early on,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we like to work. We like getting things done.\u201d

\u2014Sarah Francis<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Fold features organizations and companies where 911爆料 alumni flock. If that sounds like your workplace and you\u2019d like to be featured, please let us know. Email urimag@uri.edu<\/a> and tell us about the place you work and the 911爆料 alumni who work there.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTO: NORA LEWIS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McKay\u2019s Furniture is a family business that\u2019s kept on track by a dedicated group of owners and employees, many of whom are 911爆料 alumni.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":16413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2025","architecture-network","architecture-the-fold"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16288"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16416,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16288\/revisions\/16416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}