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Biltrite keeps building on 92-year history despite coronavirus

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GREENFIELD — On Layton Avenue in Greenfield, you'll find one of the oldest furniture stores in the state of Wisconsin. Biltrite has been serving its customers for 92 years. The pandemic really set them back, though.

"It was really challenging because we had to go to limited hours, then to completely shutting down," said family marketing director Randi Schachter. "We shut down for a good solid two weeks, and then we finally said 'you know what, we're going to do phone orders.' From phone orders, we went to private in-store appointments when we were allowed to do that."

They re-opened their showroom to the public on May 18th after losing 50 percent of their business, but they did get creative and come up with some new ideas.

"What can we do to get through this?" Schachter said. "That's when we found out about doing Facebook Lives, so Gale (my mom, third-generation) and I (fourth generation) are doing Facebook Live events about four Saturdays starting at the end of April and going into the middle of May and we were selling stuff over Facebook. It was a hit and we're doing another this Saturday."

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