On the same morning that Ikea welcomed thousands of customers to its big box on Beard Street, Michael Sokol sold a couch.
It was nothing new, just what he’s done with little respite for more than three decades.
“The easiest thing is to sell, the hardest is to deliver,” said 61-year-old Sokol, who has owned Sokol Furniture on Columbia Street for over 30 years, and has about 10 to 12 customers in his store each day.
Sokol grew up around — and on — European upholstery in his father’s store. With its 1970s-style parquet-panel walls and neon-signage, his store remains virtually the same since it opened between President and Carroll streets in 1974 — before the artists, before the brownstoners, before Ikea.
Indeed, everything around Michael Sokol has changed. Fancy restaurants came. So did a supermarket, converted condos and plenty of new housing. And business picked up for a time.
But now, there’s that big blue-and-yellow furniture and housewares emporium opening just a mile away.
Sokol says he isn’t worried.
“We have a good reputation in this neighborhood,” he said, crediting his father, who started selling housewares as a peddler in the 1950s.
“We serve a different kind of customer,” added Sokol. “Ikea is a big-box store. They come [but] they never last. But we’re always here, there are not many stores around for 50 years.”
Sokol thinks that even if Ikea does succeed, there’s room for the big Swede and the little guy from Sheepshead Bay.
There are things Ikea can’t offer that Sokol always has: free delivery on some purchases, furniture that shows up at your house already built, and an encyclopedic knowledge of every building in the neighborhood. (He’s the kind of guy who can tell a customer if a coveted couch will fit up his building’s stairwell.)
As he sat in his quiet showroom on Wednesday — Ikea’s opening day — Sokol said that in addition to lots of customers, Ikea has something else he doesn’t.
“I like their meatballs,” he said.
