Published May 2004

CARPETSMUSICTRAFFIC
For singer and business owner Becky Foster, it’s all in a day’s work

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

If life were a song whose verses matched the cadence of years, Becky Foster knows which tune hers would be: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” a 1968 Beatles ditty detailing the life of a market-stall owner and his singing wife.

In 1978, Foster was singing at local yacht clubs as part of Becky Foster and the Herb Hamilton Trio. Her husband, Bruce, was a regional sales rep for Mantek, an industrial chemical company. Deciding to augment their income, the couple bought a truckload of sleeper sofas from a friend in the furniture business and put an ad in the classified section of The Herald.

“We sold these things from our home for six years, but by having a business in our home, there were certain lines (of opportunity) not offered to me because I didn’t have a retail location,” Becky Foster said.

The Fosters remedied that situation in 1984, moving to a former dairy farm in the Smokey Point area which, at the time, was operating as a secondhand/collectibles shop.

The property boasted a big, old barn; a metal building with more than 2,000 square feet of space; and a Sears Craftsman home “sold in the catalog in 1920, sent as 30,000 pieces on a railcar from Portland and brought on a horse and wagon to this site,” Foster said.

Since then, the Fosters’ sofa business has grown to become Bruce & Becky’s Interiors, a home furnishing, floor covering and interior design firm. The big, old barn now houses displays of laminate, carpet and tile, and stylish vignettes of everyday living spaces inhabit the retail building that fronts on Smokey Point Boulevard.

Today, the business employs three others full time and derives 80 percent of its sales from flooring. Bruce takes care of the measuring and details of delivery and installation. Becky is in charge of selling and public relations.

“‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ — that’s our life,” she said. “I still sing with the band.”

Cultivating long-term relationships
The 26-year evolution of Bruce & Becky’s has been one built on relationships — with staff, suppliers and customers, Becky Foster said.

When the Fosters decided to add interior design to the firm’s services eight years ago, Foster knew who to call: Lynn Fitzpatrick, a longtime friend and designer.

“We had a symbiotic relationship,” Foster said of her showroom manager, whose work has been showcased in local lifestyle publications and has contributed to Bruce & Becky’s earning the title of “Best in Interior Design in Snohomish County” in The Herald readers’ poll.

Snohomish County Business Journal/KIMBERLY HILDEN At Bruce & Becky’s Interiors, a renovated barn is home to the company’s flooring showroom, where samples of Royalty carpet vie for space with Pergo laminate. Today, flooring makes up 80 percent of sales for the business, says co-owner Becky Foster.

As for suppliers, Foster said she cultivates meaningful relationships by focusing on a smaller group of manufacturers, such as Pergo for laminate and Shaw and Royalty for carpeting. She has been to carpet mills to learn the manufacturing process. And she has learned from sales representatives what to do — and what not to do — on granite countertops as well as what care is required of hardwood floors.

That level of expertise and service — “clients are literally dealing with Bruce and me or our people, who have been with us for years” — has developed into a competitive advantage, Foster said. “Being in an area that doesn’t have foot traffic, we’ve survived by word of mouth — our reputation and the good people who come back to us time and time again.”

Such as repeat customer Sue Blewett, who dropped by the store one recent morning with a couch cushion and a desire to order some carpet.

Conferring with Blewett, who was deciding between two shades of blue, Foster eyed the choices before offering her advice and setting up a measurement date. From start to finish, the transaction was more tea-time conversation than Wall Street brokering, and Blewett left feeling confident about the future installation.

“They’re great people to have come out to your house,” Blewett said.

About a year ago, the Fosters and their two sons, Casey and Kelly, started a complementary business to Bruce & Becky’s: Foster Drywall. The new company, which operates out of Bruce & Becky’s, enables clients to work with the Fosters from start to finish on a home project, whether it’s building a custom home, renovating a room or simply redecorating.

“If we’re going to coordinate a wall cover, (for example), we can do flat drywall and then wallpaper,” Becky Foster said, adding that she and Bruce have built up good working relationships with area contractors and are able to refer clients to electricians, plumbers and contractors they know and trust.

“Both Bruce and I are long-term-relationship people,” she said.

Part of a developing community
That dedication to long-term bonds extends to the community in which Becky Foster has lived and worked for 20 years: the Smokey Point area of south Arlington and north Marysville.

When she and Bruce first moved into their store at 15526 Smokey Point Blvd., the now bustling intersection of 172nd Street NE and Smokey Point Boulevard to the north was home to “a fruit stand and a tavern.”

Today, Smokey Point is a retail center of grocery stores, banks, restaurants and lodging. It is an employment hub, with Crown Distributing headquartered a few miles east, along with a variety of light-industrial firms attracted by nearby Arlington Airport.

“Smokey Point has grown up around us,” said Foster, an active participant in that growth as a past vice president and current board member of the Smokey Point Area Chamber of Commerce.

Growth hasn’t been without pain, though. When, for instance, Smokey Point Boulevard was widened in the mid-1990s, Foster knew it was necessary, but it proved costly for her own business, which saw a drop in drive-by customers.

“We literally had a flagger up the street detouring drivers around us even when there wasn’t construction going on,” she said of the experience. “We’ve survived because of people like Sue (Blewett), but at times, it wasn’t easy.”

In recent years, the area’s economic growth led to traffic congestion on the I-5 overpass at 172nd Street NE — congestion that was putting further economic development — and people — in danger, said Foster.

“You couldn’t get a fire truck through a traffic jam at night,” she said. ”I had a staff person wait through eight lights to get across the bridge.”

When, in mid-2003, Foster and other Smokey Point stakeholders learned that the state Legislature had not approved anticipated funding for an overpass expansion, they immediately took action, forming the Marysville-Arlington Transportation Relief Action Plan (TRAP) at Smokey Point Coalition.

Foster was part of a six-person steering committee co-chaired by Gigi Burke of Crown Distributing and community leader Harvey Eichenfield.

“Our first plan of attack was to gather officials of the three (north county) chambers of commerce, and the mayors of Arlington and Marysville,” said Foster, who is also a member of the Marysville Planning Commission. “We attended the state Transportation Commission’s quarterly meeting in Everett. ... Two of the engineers on our steering committee came up with a Band-Aid approach, and the group went (to that meeting) and made our own case.”

The state Department of Transportation was instructed to look into phasing of the $26 million overpass expansion project, Foster said. The coalition was instructed to find the $6.5 million needed for phase one of the project, which would build a six-lane overpass bridge, first by building three lanes north of the existing bridge, then knocking down the existing bridge and building three more lanes.

“My job was to contact all of our legislators and let them know of our need for money,” Foster said.

In a matter of seven months, the TRAP Coalition raised $8.5 million, Foster said, with $3 million coming from a state Transportation Improvement Board grant, $3 million from the federal government and the rest coming from contributions from the cities of Arlington and Marysville, Snohomish County and the Tulalip Tribes.

In May, the DOT will put the project out for bid, Foster said, with construction possibly starting by early July.

“We had a goal; we had a mission; and we achieved it; and we’re really proud of that,” Foster said, crediting the nonpartisan group of elected officials, government staff and business people who worked to get the job done.

Burke, the coalition co-chair, is quick to credit Foster for her role in the group’s success.

“Becky’s outgoing personality and willingness to go to any measure to get the job done was extremely helpful,” Burke said. “ ... I think she was personally responsible for a lot of our momentum.”

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