Square Nail Rustics to open big showroom at Union Square

By Gordon Woodworth, Chronicle News Editor

Square Nail Rustics, Eric Mattison’s rustic farmhouse furniture and flooring business, will open a 2,000-square-foot showroom in Tom O’Neill’s Union Square building at the corner of Broad and Pine Streets in downtown Glens Falls.

“We’re shipping all over the country now and we needed a showroom where people can come in and ‘kick the tires…’” Mr. Mattison, 45, told The Chronicle.

“Half of our business is now flooring, traditional wide-plant farmhouse flooring, and we will be putting down 1,000 square feet of our flooring so people can see what it looks like and feels like underfoot.”

Mr. Mattison said, “We were looking for a place with a lot of character and natural light, and Union Square is perfect…

“I like the fact that the property is a straight run from Exit 18. What’s been happening is we get the local people in the morning, folks from Albany around mid-day and then people driving from Boston or Rochester or Buffalo in the afternoon.

“Now we can send them to other shops or a restaurant downtown.”

Mr. Mattison signed a two-year lease with a two-year option. He plans a Jan. 20 soft opening and a Feb. 1 grand opening.

The landlord Mr. O’Neill said, “It’s a great addition to the building.” He noted that “the main entrance for their space is off Pine Street.”

Mr. Mattison said Square Nail Rustics employs 26 people and works with ARC, CWI and AIM and “people with special needs come in to work with job coordinators. We just hired one of them full-time. We also work with the Warren County Youth Program in the summer.”

He said he and his management team are busy “streamlining processes, so now we’re more like a Henry Ford assembly line and less like Lucy in the chocolate factory!”

Mr. Mattison said Square Nail Rustics will do between “a million and a million and a half dollars in business” this year.

The Ticonderoga native said he started the business in 2014 in his garage “on Traver Street. I would find things on the side of the road and fix them up. And this was right when Facebook Garage Sale groups started, and I’d put things on those pages and sell them.

“Pretty soon people were asking me if I could make them a coffee table or an end table or a dining room table, and now we’re closing in on 75,000 fans on Facebook.”

Square Nail Rustics moved into 2,000 square feet in the EPIC (Chase Bag) Complex in South Glens Falls in 2015, and the next year moved into 5,000 square feet of space at 15 Boulevard in Queensbury. It added a production facility on Dix Avenue.

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