Clive Daniel story can't be swept under the rug

This story has been updated to correct an error that said Clive Lubner received a buyout from Robb & Stucky

Daniel Lubner sits on a pile of Oriental rugs at his 70,000-square-foot Clive Daniel showroom, running his hands along the woolen silk from Nepal.

Never mind that some of those rugs might cost more than your family car.

He falls back, spreads his arms wide and does a little snow angel.

Then he laughs, a hearty, laugh. It's a kind of "If you only knew," kind of laugh.

He gets up and hurriedly speedwalks to all points of the showroom, lacking any "you break it, you bought it" caution.

Of course, he doesn't need to, since he owns the joint.

He stops next to a $1,000 candle, then checks out the time, on wall art that doubles as a clock. He plops down on a couch, runs his fingers across it and offers, "Baseball stitching."

Photo by Jay Heater

"We have an upholstery factory," he said. "We have artisans making furniture for us. We have 50 wood suppliers, the majority exclusive to us."

Everywhere you look in the store is something extraordinary, at a price that Clive Daniel has found to be appropriate in its markets of Boca Raton, Naples and Sarasota.

The Sarasota store, opened six months ago, sits on the southern border of expanding Lakewood Ranch, in the Fruitville Commons.

His store is less of a store than it is a showroom for interior decorating ideas, both residential and commercial. Sure, many of us would love to buy an item or two for a special occasion, or as that gift that we give to someone because we know they won't spend the money on such an item themselves.

The offices and conference rooms at Clive Daniel are where the real action happens, where interior designers and crafters and contractors meet to turn a very nice home into a palatial estate.

It's a Disneyland of interior design, and everyone is smiling.

Lubner is good with that, especially since he has been at the other end of the spectrum. His mom and dad, Clive and Sunny Lubner, left Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1978 with 3-year-old Daniel and his 5-year-old sister Claudia. They moved to Fort Myers.

Financially, times were good in South Africa in the 1970s as Clive's family was doing well in the furniture and woodworking business. But apartheid was tearing the country apart.

"My father didn't want my sister and I growing up in that," Daniel Lubner said. "So we left the mansion behind."

Photo by Jay Heater

In Fort Myers, Lubner remembered living in a rental, but they did have "four forks and four knives."

Clive Lubner also had the knowledge of how to run a furniture business. He eventually landed a job at Robb & Stucky, and became a partner in 1981. Even so, the family had everything invested in the business and little else.

"When I was 11, I saw orange juice once in our fridge," Daniel Lubner said. "I thought, 'Wow, we are doing OK."

They were doing OK because the family embraced hard work. They also embraced compassion for others.

Lubner never will sweep that compassion under the Oriental rugs, because he believes it runs through his veins. His grandmother on his mom's side, Esther Barsel, was a political activist in South Africa whose anti-apartheid ways landed her in prison in the cell next to Nelson Mandela.

At times, she hid Mandela in her home, and when he turned 90 and had a private party for his closest friends, Barsel was invited, just a few months before her death.

Barsel told Daniel Lubner that one of the guests at Mandela's birthday party was a nice Irish man who was a singer-songwriter.

"You mean Bono?" Daniel Lubner asked.

Yes. That was the name.

"She was a badass," he said of his grandmother.

Lubner wanted to be badass as a stand-up comic, a dream that died during his college days because "I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live and I was not very funny."

At 25, he met his wife Catherine, and she urged him to quit his job as an ad man and ask his dad about the furniture industry.

He did so, moving from Tampa to Sarasota in 2000, joining his father's Robb & Stucky business and renting an apartment over a jewelry store on Morrill Street that he said was in a "dangerous" neighborhood.

"Across the street was a halfway house," he said.

At Robb & Stucky, he met Rick Clary, who was asked by Clive Lubner to teach his son, who had no furniture knowledge, about the business.

"Every day, he would ask me, 'What words of wisdom do you have?'" said Clary, who came out of retirement to work at Clive Daniel in Sarasota. "He is a good listener, and a hard worker."

Lubner said his main lesson was that "retail is hard."

"Now I am eating lunch at my desk every day," he said.

Photo by Jay Heater

While success took time, Daniel Lubner was in position to help those hit by Hurricane Ian last year.

"My warehouses were as dry as a bone," he said. "We turned them into a shelter."

A dozen teachers in the area lost their homes. Daniel Lubner brought $150,000 worth of furniture to a Fort Myers gymnasium and told them to pick whatever they wanted.

"We saw the enormous toll a hurricane takes," he said. 

So if Daniel Lubner, still part comic, is smiling all the time at work, it's only partially due to business. He and Catherine are loving life with their three children, 21-year-old Jake, 18-year-old Sam and 11-year-old Mason (Daniel calls them Jake, Snake and Mistake), in a crazy furniture world.

"They call me the Sofa King," Daniel Lubner said as he waved at a customer. "The analogy would be car sales, selling everything from a Lexus to Lamborghinis. We do custom cars."

He was on a roll.

"I also been to Applebee's a bunch of times. But if I am in the mood for streak, I would rather go to Capital Grille."

His wife tells him all the success is great, but no more new stores, soon, please.

For now, that's OK.

"I can buy orange juice now," he said.