El Dorado Furniture store, which opened the weekend of Sept. 24, has taken the furniture store concept and glamorized it.
At a VIP event on Sept. 22, flutes of champagne and strawberries were handed to guests entering the massive 70,000-sq.-ft. store, which was alive with bright lights, a live band and a number of spreads of food. Even so, it was impossible to miss the sprawling rooms of elegant furniture throughout Wesley Chapel’s newest business, located at 25171 S.R. 54 (technically in Land O’Lakes), across from Miller’s Ale House.
The weekend of its opening, the first 200 families that arrived received $200 gift cards; the first 100 on Sunday received a free comforter set.
Weekend visitors to the two-story showroom were treated to an experience, something that is not offered by other furniture stores. Instead of walking aimlessly between living and dining room set-ups, you are taken down El Dorado Blvd., a strip resembling an old-fashioned city street, right down to the benches and street lamps. Stained glass and Egyptian hieroglyphics dot the facades. The “boulevard” winds around the showroom, opening up to what feels like individually themed furniture shops, more than 20 in all, offering a stunning array of high-end offerings.
El Dorado, which offers same-day delivery service to a fairly wide area, carries its signature Carlo Perazzi collection, its top seller, as well as others. It is truly a showroom that you need to see to believe.
And, every business needs a good story, and here’s El Dorado’s:
In 1966, Manuel Capó, the son of Simon Capó, who started Casa Capó in Cuba in the 1920s, fled Cuba after the Castro regime rose to power. He and two of his sons, Luis and Carlos, escaped on a small sailboat named “El Dorado.”
Just seven months after arriving in the U.S., Manuel and his sons opened their first furniture in the heart of the Little Havana neighborhood in Miami and named it after the boat on which they sailed to freedom — El Dorado.
El Dorado Furniture has grown into the largest Hispanic-owned furniture retail enterprise in the U.S. The Wesley Chapel location is the second in the Tampa Bay area, and El Dorado has 18 showrooms across Florida.
The store’s hours are Mon.-Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. For more information, visit ElDoradoFurniture.com or call (813) 440-6999. — John C. Cotey; photos by Charmaine George
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