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Berman family keeps Benjamin customers happy for 60 years

July 30, 2010 (12:20 pm) | Permanent Link

Teya Vitu

Most large-scale retail stores abandoned Downtown by the early 1980s.

Except Benjamin Plumbing Supply, 440 N. Seventh Ave.

This stalwart Downtown icon has stood firm in the city’s center since the early 1920s, for the last 60 years under the ownership of the Berman family.

There were no guarantees at all that Benjamin Plumbing wouldn’t flee Downtown, too. The company’s moved twice since 1970, and an earlier Downtown Links road alignment threatened the company’s location at Sixth Street at Seventh Avenue inside the historic Tucson Warehouse and Transfer Co.

Each one of those episodes could have sent Benjamin Plumbing packing for the suburbs.

“My father and I looked at property all over town 30 years ago,” company President Mark Berman said. “We looked right at River and Oracle Road. We figured if we’re going to have one location that Downtown is the better location. The growth is toward Vail and the Northwest Side. We’re just as inconvenient to everybody in town.”

In truth, the nearby freeway makes the store pretty convenient for those outlying suburbs, and Berman said “within 5 miles of here there’s so much remodeling” – post World War II homes outfitted with plumbing features that are ending their run, if not just their dated stylishness.

Elizabeth Kras and her husband drove in from Hereford, southeast of Sierra Vista,

“We come here because Benjamin Plumbing has the most variety of merchandise,” Kras said. “Certainly, no other place in Tucson has the variety of merchandise.”

Benjamin Plumbing is by far Downtown’s largest remaining retail as well as Arizona’s largest plumbing supply showroom, Berman said.

When brothers Marty and Sid Berman bought Benjamin Plumbing in 1950, it was located in an old adobe building with wood floors and a basement at 10th Street and Fifth Avenue, where the new Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments are under construction. They leased the building until 1972, when the owner would not sell it to them.

The store moved two blocks to Broadway and Fifth Avenue and stayed there until 1999, when the Berman family couldn’t fend off complaints about delivery trucks.

“We rented nearly everything Downtown for storage,” Berman said. “We rented the Madden Media building, the Rialto, the Julian-Drew for storage.”

The family had already consolidated its storage in the Tucson Warehouse and Transfer facility, which they acquired in 1988. The Berman family owns the entire block with 11 now-joined warehouses built in 1918 (the dominating four-story structure), 1923, 1936 with the latest addition in 1962.

The warehouse exteriors give no hint of the sophisticated showroom interior design that Berman describes as a “warm, yet industrial look.” The 10,000-square-foot showroom displays the extravagances that have taken hold in bathrooms in the past decade or so, where a toilet can range from $60 to $5,000 (the median toilet cost is $200 to $400).

With all the palatial bathrooms out there, what’s the best seller at Benjamin Plumbing?

“Toilets by far are the biggest seller,” Berman said. “Toilets wear out, and there’s a city rebate for low-flow toilets. My father always said ‘what do you do, buy a new TV or fix the toilet?’ ”

Mark Berman joined the family operation in 1976 and threaded pipe in the beginning and then became a delivery boy before he and his mother, Ruth, became co-owners in 1986, as his father struggled with Alzheimer’s disease. She was president until they swapped the president/vice president roles six years ago.

Mark wanted to be an architect and studied at UA’s architecture school for three years until professors encouraged him to stick to plumbing. But Mark’s eye for design came into play in the early 1980s when Marty and Ruth traveled to California and were flabbergasted by an ornate plumbing supply showroom.

Back then, Benjamin Plumbing was a simple shop, where a third of the business was evaporative coolers and a large share was tools sold to mines. Mark headed up the showroom conversion in 1982, and mining tools and evaporative coolers disappeared while faucets, sinks and showers became increasingly artistic.

But the economic mire has brought function back to the forefront over art, Berman said revenue is down 40 percent from two years ago, invoices are down 25 percent and line items are down 45 percent. Customers are buying fewer and less expensive items.

Will bathroom extravagance go the way of the dinosaur even if people dive back into bathroom renovations?

“Whirlpools aren’t going to be a necessity as they were a few years ago,” Berman predicted.

Benjamin Plumbing Supply

440 N. Seventh Ave., 777-7000
benjaminsupply.com

• Years in business: 60, under
the Berman family

• Moved to present location: 1999

• Size of showroom: 10,000 square feet

• Unique feature: Working floor scale just inside the front doors

Even with a wall full of kitchen sinks, the top seller at Benjamin Plumbing is still the simple toilet./Downtown Tucsonan photo