Home Center changes ownership, but not quality

MOSES LAKE — After 31 years, The Home Center in Moses Lake is changing hands.

“(Owner) Roger (McSteen) was ready to retire,” said Wendy Cox, who has taken over the store with her husband Ron Cox. “Instead of selling or trying to find new jobs for everybody, we decided that we would take on the monster.”

Wendy is well equipped for it, she said. She’s been with the company for 28 years, and the general manager for about 15 years. McSteen started out with the original Home Center store in Stanwood, north of Seattle, and owned it for 53 years, she said. Another location, in Ephrata, opened in 2004, according to Columbia Basin Herald archives. Both the Ephrata store and the store in Stanwood closed a few years ago, Wendy said, leaving only the Moses Lake location.

Wendy would like to see that change, she said, although she’s not being ambitious about it.

“It would be (fun) to expand, but I don’t know,” she said. 

“We’re going to explore that,” Ron said. “We’ve still got to get through this transition first, and then we can start expanding out further.”

Wendy has been in Moses Lake since junior high school, she said. Her family moved around a lot when she was growing up, she said, as her father worked in retail, and he established stores all over.

“I went to three different schools every year until we moved here,” she said. “And then we didn’t move again. We picked this place, and it’s awesome.”

Ron is a transplant from Southern California, he said. He recently retired after 23 years at Moses Lake Industries, but before that he had worked for Les Schwab for 17 years, first in the Tri-Cities and finally in Moses Lake. 

“That’s where I got my retail experience working with the public,” Ron said. “And then my technical and analytical skills I learned at Moses Lake Industries.”

He’s still new to the furniture business, Ron added, but he’s ready to learn.

“We’re a team, so here we are,” he said. “(Wendy) is going to show me the ropes. There are things I could bring to the table, but she’s the head of this outfit and she knows it.”

The store employs nine people, Wendy said, and they’re staying on as well.

“Our team also knows the ropes, inside and out,” she said. “They’ve been here long enough that we’ve got a really good establishment of people.”

Between them the Coxes have eight children, 20 grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Wendy’s oldest daughter is the sales floor manager, and the warehouse manager is her oldest son.

It’s not easy for a small store, however well established, to compete against the chains, but with the growth coming to Moses Lake, Wendy is confident of her market.

“There’s lots of new construction, lots of people looking for new living room groups,” she said. “And we carry really premium bedding for an exceptional value. It’s helpful that there are so many people moving into the community, whether it be new construction or not. There’s a lot of people who are selling their homes elsewhere and coming here to live and retire. We get a lot of that too.”

McSteen may be retired, but he’ll stop by every so often for the next month or so during the transition, Wendy said, to meet and greet his customers.

“Nothing’s really changing,” Wendy said. “We want to honor Roger’s legacy and continue to carry it on … giving the same values and service that everybody has come to know and expect out of The Home Center.”