Leon’s Furniture Ltd. marks its 100th anniversary in 2009. Founder Ablan Leon was a recent immigrant from Lebanon when he opened the A. Leon Co., a general merchandise store, in Welland, Ont., in 1909. Since then, Leon’s has become one of the largest retailers in Canada, and its success propelled the Leon family onto the Canadian Business Rich 100 in 2002. A public company since 1969, Leon’s is a brand that has long been associated with value. Upfront editor Alex Mlynek recently spoke with Ablan’s grandson — and current Leon’s president and CEO — Terrence Leon (above) about how his forebear’s principles have shaped the company, why motivating and taking care of your staff is so important, and why saying no can be the right call to make.

Why has Leon’s been so successful for a hundred years?

The No. 1 reason is we stayed true to the values of our founder. We’re a merchandise-driven company. We’ve always believed you search to buy the best merchandise that you can anywhere in the world, create the best value, and offer that to your customers. We’ve always stayed true to that. In addition, we try to do that with the other values that were created by our founder, which are fairness, integrity and trust. And the third factor is we’re a very conservative company in terms of the way we manage our finances. We don’t have any debt, we finance our expansion through our own cash flow, and we have enough income and capital to be able to handle buying merchandise at good times and difficult times so that we, again, get the best value. So those are really the main reasons. I think there’s probably one further one, and that is that our associates across the country have adopted those values, and because of that they offer the best customer service, we believe, in the industry. And that makes a big difference to those who shop at our stores.

Can you highlight contributions Leon’s has made to Canada?

Well, I guess I would say that the No. 1 is probably a pretty Canadian response, in that through members of our family, and through our associates, there’s a lot of hardworking Canadians who support their families and contribute to their country in terms of successful lives every day. As far as the company is concerned, obviously we’re most proud that we’ve been around for so long, and we’ve created thousands of jobs. We’ve done that without any tax assistance. And we’re proud to have been a profitable company for all of those years, again contributing to the wealth of the country.

Also, we were the first ones to do franchising in our industry. And franchises keep our feet to the ground. We came from a small town, and most of the franchises are in small towns. And we try to establish a franchise with people who are themselves dedicated to their businesses, are customer-oriented and follow the same philosophies we do. When you work in a small town, small-town values, which really were the same values that came from Ablan, are very important.

And you’ve been consistently family controlled since the get-go?

From the get-go.

How long have you worked at the company?

My first job was when I was seven years old. And that I still remember like it was yesterday. In Welland, we used to have a store near the downtown area. We used to have a big warehouse sale every year during the same period that the CNE was on, and that would have been the last week of August and the first week of September. And everybody in the Niagara Peninsula used to come to that sale. So we would redo our warehouse, and set it all up as a retail store. And we used to send out flyers for that, and my first job was to fold those flyers when I was seven years old. And my first pay was a bottle of Coke. I got to keep the bottle and the deposit.

Do you still have the bottle?

No. I wish. If I would have known, I would have kept the bottle. But I wanted the nickel. It was very important to me.

And then we used to work with our cousins when we were a little older. We used to have a counter where we used to sell small appliances and hassocks — hassocks were little stools — and little area rugs. We used to all sell those together during the sale. So, in any event, I always worked during the summer for the business. And then I ended up going to law school, and after I graduated I ended up coming to the business permanently, which was about 1978.