A 95-year-old Tigard furniture retailer is opening a branch in downtown Eugene, its only store outside Tigard.

Paul Schatz Furniture was approached about opening a branch here by Stickley furniture, its key manufacturer, after Edman Fine Furniture closed in late 2012, said Steve Harmon, head of advertising and marketing for Paul Schatz. Edman, located in the Oakway area, had been the local authorized dealer for Stickley, an American manufacturer of high-end wood furniture.

“Paul Schatz is one of the top 10 Stickley dealers in the world,” Harmon said. “We’re the No. 1 single store dealer in the United States for the past four years, (and) we’ve only been doing Stickley since August 2006.”

The Tigard company hadn’t really been thinking about expanding, he said, but Stickley’s proposal was intriguing. Helping to clinch the deal was Denver Harris, who has more than 35 years of experience in the furniture industry — the last 10 spent selling Stickley furniture at Edman — and who was more than willing to head up the Paul Schatz branch in Eugene.

“We knew the sales volume (in Eugene) was plenty to make a little profit,” Harmon said, “and with Denver we wouldn’t miss a beat in training.”

Harris said that, based on experience, the new store won’t be drawing just from Lane County. Selling Stickley furniture makes the store a destination, he said. “Stickley is a recognizable name, like the Grateful Dead and Levi’s jeans.

When he was at Edman, Harris said, “I sold stuff all the way down to Redding (Calif.) I sold in Southern California. I sold to Bend, to the whole coast down to Brookings. I shipped to Hawaii.”

Once Paul Schatz decided to expand to Eugene, the next task was to find a location — which turned out to be far from easy.

“We actually had a hard time finding retail space,” Harris said. While the company found plenty of warehouse space available, securing 5,400 square feet of high-end retail space was a lot tougher.

In the end, the retailer ended up in what he and Harmon consider a prime location for the business, the Heron building in downtown Eugene.

“We’re in the heart of the city, the nucleus of what’s happening in the city,” Harris said, “It’s where we wanted to be.”

Harris said he doesn’t know exactly how much the company spent renovating the space, other than it “it was a lot.”

“We totally remodeled, we’re brand new, we’re fresh,” he said. “And everything is higher end.”

The store is easily accessible from the Coburg Road area and other parts of the city, he said. Plus, there are other popular retailers and retail areas nearby, such as Down to Earth and Fifth Street Public Market.

There’s also a collection of other furniture retailers that he respects in the area, such as Scan Design, Brenner’s and the M. Jacobs family of stores, Harris said, which is actually a plus. “It gives people an option,” he said.

The arrival of the new retailer in downtown Eugene got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Dave Hauser, head of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Eugene Inc., an association of downtown property and business owners whose goal is ensuring the economic health of the downtown core.

“We’re really excited to continue to add to the momentum in downtown, to add another fine retailer and build on what is already a nice cluster of furniture stores in our downtown,” Hauser said. “It gives more people reasons to rediscover downtown Eugene.”