Augusta, GA

Few stores, but mighty: Georgia retailer boasts 6 million-dollar salespeople in 2023 – Furniture Today

Published

2 years ago

April 25, 2024

Few stores, but mighty: Georgia retailer boasts 6 million-dollar salespeople in 2023 – Furniture Today

AUGUSTA, Ga. — In most years, Weinberger’s Furniture & Mattress Showcase here tops $10 million between its three showrooms. Sounds like your typical community furniture store success story, right?

It is, but that’s not all. Look again, and you’ll find that the family-owned, 92-year-old retailer had six of its retail sales associates eclipse $1 million in sales in 2023. In all, those half dozen salespeople accounted for $7.5 million of Weinberger’s total sales volume.

Vice President Karly Weinberger, a fourth-generation member of the ownership family, told Furniture Today that six members of its Presidents Club (Weinberger’s name for its $1 million salespeople) is a record, although many of this year’s members have hit those numbers in the past. One of the salespeople, Susan Crow, set a new Weinberger’s record when she topped $1.5 million from the Augusta store.

Yolande Grogan, left, and Kim Mattingly were the two Presidents Club members from Weinberger’s Lake Oconee store. Photo courtesy of Weinberger’s Furniture

In addition to Crow, Cambria Davis, Matthew Bruecks and Lisa Peeler topped $1 million from Augusta, while Kim Mattingly and Yolande Grogan were the two Presidents Club members from Weinberger’s Lake Oconee store.

In a year when many retailers reported sales slumps, what kept Weinberger’s going strong? Weinberger said a lot of it had to do with the store’s strong custom business.

“Our traffic is down, but the traffic that is coming in is spending and spending more. They’ve made up their mind and have done their research,” she said. “We’ve also got a good niche; if you want something truly custom, you can get it from us.”

And once in the store, she said the team of salespeople work diligently to earn the customer’s trust. She said that’s what separates a great salesperson from good ones, and she was fortunate to have six great ones in 2023.

“I think it’s the way they connect with the customers. A customer comes in, and they find out what their needs are,” Weinberger said. “Obviously, they satisfy those needs, and then they search for what else they can do. They keep in touch with those clients throughout the year, telling them about sales and getting them to pull the trigger in those periods.

“Those specific people who had $1 million are those who connect with the customer and get in their homes,” Weinberger continued. “When somebody trusts you enough to bring you into their home, it creates that connection that keeps them coming back.”

Several of the salespeople have been with the company for a while, which helps. “That is huge. You can’t put in words how valuable that is,” Weinberger said. “To know you’re going to open your doors and be able to advertise to customers that they will be able to take care of them.”

Weinberger noted that two have youth and enthusiasm on their side, which shouldn’t be overlooked.

“Two of our writers are in their early 20s, so we’ve tried to invest in young people. They haven’t even hit their potential yet,” she said. “To keep somebody like those two is really valuable.”

To celebrate, Weinberger said leadership took the six Presidents Club members to a nice dinner, plus they get to include the honor on their business cards and a cash bonus. She said those perks create plenty of incentive among the sales team.

“It’s a number all of our sales associates strive toward and ask how to get to that number,” she said.

So what’s next? “Now that Susan’s gotten $1.5 million, she’s got to keep going and break that ceiling, and we’ll create a whole new club for her,” Weinberger quipped.

Augusta, GA

Augusta biotech firm to unveil its sweet new production facilities

Published

5 hours ago

March 11, 2026

Press Room

Augusta biotech firm to unveil its sweet new production facilities

A federal commission studying national security will tour an Augusta factory poised to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign biotechnology.

The Manus factory on Lovers Lane uses and improves eco-friendly manufacturing methods to produce Reb M, a sweetener derived from the stevia plant but missing the bitter aftertaste in other stevia extracts.

On March 11, Manus will unveil and explain the major expansion of its domestic biomanufacturing capacity to members of the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, created in 2022 under the National Defense Authorization Act.

Manus touts itself as a biotech success story. Four years after the 2014 closure of Augusta’s NutraSweet artificial sweetener factory, Manus reintroduced an upskilled workforce to make the factory one of the world’s largest fermentation facilities. There, microbes are engineered to allow reliable mass production of Reb M.

Biomanufacturing often struggles with scalability. Extracting a particular molecule from a plant might succeed in a lab, but teasing out those molecules on an industrial level traditionally has been unsustainable.Reb M, which is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, exists in such small quantities in stevia plants that extracting it using more mainstream methods often was financially impractical, until Manus developed its proprietary production method.

Manus’ Augusta plant produces Reb M for the brand-name sweetener Yume, from the Japanese word for “dream.”

“Biomanufacturing is not a future promise – it’s here now, in rural Georgia,” says Ajikumar Parayil, Manus’ founder and CEO. “The Augusta BioFacility stands as proof that we can reshore production, create high-quality American jobs, and deliver resilient innovation at scale. We are honored to showcase this capability to the NSCEB and contribute to shaping a strong, coordinated national strategy.”

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Augusta, GA

EARLY RESULTS: Special election underway for Ga. House District 130 seat

Published

17 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

EARLY RESULTS: Special election underway for Ga. House District 130 seat

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Voters in Georgia House District 130 headed to the polls Tuesday to fill the seat held by Rep. Lynn Heffner, who resigned.

The Augusta Democrat resigned because she was unable to meet the residency requirement for House District 130 due to damage to her home by Hurricane Helene.

Six candidates are on the ballot — four Democrats and two Republicans.

Early results

Results are coming in. Here is where the race stands:

Shelia Nelson, Democrat: 45.22%
Karen Gordon, Democrat: 20.65%
Sha’Quanta Calles, Democrat: 15.65%
LaFawn Pinkney-Mealing, Democrat: 7.61%
Thomas McAdams, Republican: 5.43%
David Carson, Republican: 5.43%

This story will be updated as votes continue to come in.

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Augusta, GA

Nine on the line: Augusta committee considers future of city parks

Published

1 day ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Nine on the line: Augusta committee considers future of city parks

An Augusta city committee on Tuesday is scheduled to hear an update from the Recreation and Parks Department about nine municipal parks that are so seldom used that they might not be worth keeping open.

A civil engineering firm partnering with Recreation and Parks spent months gathering information on Augusta-Richmond County’s 51 public parks.

The audit by Infrastructure System Management scored the locations using a rubric that measured the sizes of the parks and how close they are to other parks. The audit also counted the number of park visitors to calculate how often the parks were used.

In a previous presentation to the committee last fall, commissioners learned that it would cost about $22 million to bring all city parks up to proper maintenance standards for just the first year.

By comparison, the Recreation and Parks budget is closer to $1.2 million, according to Abie Ladson Jr., a former city engineering director who now directs the ISM consultancy.

The smallest of the nine parks, Alexander Barrett Park, is barely a 10th of an acre, about the size of an NBA basketball court. The wedge-shaped lot where Wheeler Road meets Royal Street is composed of open grass and two playground swings built only for infants and toddlers.

The largest of the nine is the 3.49-acre W.T. Johnson Center on Hunter Street, behind Beulah Grove Baptist Church. Its facilities include a gymnasium and athletic fields.

The parks whose futures will be considered: