LEWISTON — Family-owned businesses are an integral part of the U.S. economy, but unfortunately the statistics show that only about one in 10 survive the transition from second to third generation. The numbers get worse with time as families struggle to put together a succession plan, especially for families with no children interested in the family business.

Cathy Raynor is a third-generation owner of Morin’s Fine Furniture and Refinishing, and she found an answer that she’s banking on to keep her family name and reputation intact for perhaps another generation. She has sold her company and assets to a next generation tradesman who is 20 years younger.

“I hadn’t actively started looking for someone when David came to me and I kind of knew him from the paint store as one of the better painters,” Raynor said. David, is David Muise, an Auburn native who, like her, didn’t start out as a tradesman.

“This is my second career,” Muise explained. “I was never in the trades previous to starting the painting company.” He was in advertising and marketing in New York and Miami. Eight years ago, he started Four Pines Painting and ran into Raynor repeatedly at Lewiston Paint and Wallpaper.

“I was at the paint store trying to get a custom stained mix for a painting client that we had,” Muise recounted. “Cathy’s like, ‘oh, we do that right in my shop. You should come over sometime and I’ll show you.’ And I never did.”

About two years later, Muise was driving past the Pepperell Mill on Lisbon Street where he found Raynor sanding away on a piece of furniture. He stayed for three hours — observing and listening. He says that started his mind turning.

Shutters are stacked Aug. 27 at Morin’s Furniture Refinishing and Restoration at the Pepperell Mill at 25 Adams Ave. in Lewiston. A customer brought in a sample in back of a stack of others that were custom made and will be painted and distressed to match the original sample. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

“That very day she said, ‘you ought to start coming back,'” which he did.

Cathy Raynor has a big personality, which becomes very obvious from the first conversation with her. She challenged Muise to learn what she does and to see if he liked the work. Raynor asked him if he had a piece of furniture at home that he wanted to refinish, which he did.

They both agree the piece for his stepmother came out well and Muise began an informal apprenticeship, learning by doing — essential in almost any trade, but especially working with furniture.

WHERE IT STARTED, WHERE IT’S GOING

Raynor’s grandfather, R.J. Morin, started the business in 1925 as a painting company. “If your house was built in 1920, you had hardwood floors in every room,” Raynor declared, emphasizing there was no wall-to-wall carpet back then. “So, when I painted your room, I refinished your floors. That was a painter’s job.”

A photo from the late 1930s shows staff of R.J. Morin & Sons Painters, which was located in the area of Great Falls Plaza in Auburn at that time.

The furniture refinishing was almost born out of necessity, Raynor explained. “And so, I’m doing your dining room, and you say, while you’re at it can you just refinish my table?”

Raynor said her grandfather took more of an informal approach to the business. The death of her uncle sent R.J. Morin to Boston and left nobody to run the business. Raynor’s father, James Betsch, stepped in and took a much more commercialized approach — hiring better finish strippers and expanding into antiques.

“There’s a system for everything,” Raynor said, “my father developed a lot of those,” including a lettered system for dismantling pieces for refinishing so that anyone in the shop could put it back together.

“Everyone labels the parts the same — back then and (they) still do it the same way now.”

Over the years the company grew to 88 employees and changed locations five times, from Drummond Street, Great Falls, Turner Street, Pamco Mill and finally moving to Pepperell Mill 10 years ago.

Morin’s Fine Furniture has also accumulated a large following of loyal customers who number in the thousands, Raynor said. They are not limited to the immediate Lewiston and Auburn area but extend beyond the region into New York and New Hampshire.

“You know you can’t just go into any town and find your refinisher,” Raynor pointed out. “But you can find a mechanic, you know, the dry cleaners. You know, those people are in every town, but this is not. So, when people find me… they share.”

One group of residents in New Hampshire would fill up a U-Haul and drive it up to Raynor every spring with notes attached to each piece of furniture explaining what they wanted done.

Danny St. Laurent spray paints cabinet doors Aug. 27, at Morin’s Furniture Refinishing and Restoration at the Pepperell Mill in Lewiston. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

If you ask Cathy Raynor what makes them unique compared with other furniture refinishers in the region, she quickly becomes very engaged.

“They don’t do it the way we do it,” she insisted, “90% of people use a water-based system,” she said. Raynor uses chemicals to strip the wood, and for good reason, she said.

“Everything you do to wood is to protect it from moisture. So, if we are trying to fix it why would you douse it with water?”

Raynor said water swells the wood and breaks all the glue joints, adding that if it’s an open grain wood, like oak, it blasts all the grains open. “And so it’s not as structurally strong as it was before you stripped it with the water.”

There are arguments as to which method is most effective and environmentally friendly, but Raynor said she recycles her chemicals for years at a time and says her methods are tried and true.

She married and spent many years raising a very ill child at home. Her father decided to retire in the early 2000s, and Morin’s Furniture became her new full-time job.

Her father was a hands-on person and taught Raynor how to do everything, despite her Master of Business Administration degree and early focus on accounting and similar tasks for the business.

“When I finally took off my dress clothes and had to put on my work clothes, the employees that were working for me at the time said, you know how to do this stuff? I said, have you not met my dad?”

AN OLD TRADE, A NEW INTEREST FROM THE NEXT GENERATION

With more and more people concerned about sustainability, there is an increasing demand for antique and vintage furniture. An analysis of auction house data shows that more millennials are choosing to buy preowned furniture for their homes, while home remodeling is expected to trend higher into 2025. From that perspective, the future in this sector looks bright.

Josh Houghton sands a chair Aug. 27 at Morin’s Furniture Refinishing and Restoration at the Pepperell Mill in Lewiston. The company was started in 1925 by R.J. Morin. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Cathy Raynor will work with Muise for the first year and said she will be available to him as a consultant after that.

Muise wants to expand the services offered by the company as well as its visibility, starting with rebranding the business as Morin’s Furniture Refinishing and Restoration. He will maintain his company, Four Pines Painting, as a separate, but companion business.

In the short-term, Muise wants to bring the company out of hibernation with a new logo and website.

Raynor has consciously not pursued more business as she sought to step back and help care for her aging father, who passed away this summer at age 90. Business just seems to find her, she said, and her customers seek her out.

“You’re not just a businessperson,” Raynor said. “You’re developing relationships. People get very emotional about their furniture.”

Muise wants to reintroduce the company to the community and offer what he calls an integration of shared services — painting, precoating and finishing packages.

That means building a second spray booth and drying room to have a separate acrylic and latex room in addition to hiring and training two more employees. Longer term, Muise has ambitious plans for the companies, including introducing a line of unfinished furniture that can be customized however the customer wants, making it completely unique to each customer to match their personal style and aesthetic.

In time, Muise would also like to purchase a building with a showroom for the new line of furniture and house both businesses. He envisions do-it-yourself refinishing classes at the new building and finally expanding his reach farther into New England where there is already a high concentration of antique furniture.