“Congratulations to Green Street Interiors, having been selected as the Chamber’s October Member of the Month,” said Chamber Chairperson Nesi Stewart, owner of PrintMasters of Los Alamitos.
Stewart noted during the Chamber Breakfast, held at Maderas Steakhouse, 3642 Katella Ave., in Los Alamitos, that Green Street Interiors has been in business in Los Alamitos for 47 years.
The CEO/Owner Judy Klabouch is not only busy with her Green Street Interior business, she’s actively serving the community as a Rotary Club member; is on the Chamber Board (Immediate Past Chairperson), a Founding Board member of the Casa Youth Shelter and served on the Hospital Medical Board for eight-years, along with other worthy causes.
Klabouch began her Green Street Interior business in 1977. Though she rented the building on the corner of Green Street and Los Alamitos Boulevard she said, “I didn’t really have a plan but thought about offering inside plants for homes, or possibly having a baby-sitting-type of business; I just wasn’t sure.”
Then, she decided to open a wallpaper store, which was in the original tiny Los Alamitos Post Office, along with a pawn shop that protruded out into the boulevard. However, the City of Los Alamitos was going to widen Los Alamitos Boulevard and so they removed all of the former buildings there, which included the pawn shop, a beauty shop and her Green Street Interiors building.
Where to go while the Boulevard was under construction and the buildings, including hers, had been condemned?
“I had to find another place for my business,” she shared. “That’s when I approached the original owner, Johnny, and asked if I could move my business into the former Sporting Goods Store that had gone out of business.”
Well, not quite as easy as one might think.
The owner said he would have to ask all of the other tenants in the building to see if they liked Klabouch before he could rent to her.
Luckily, they all said yes and so in 1979, she moved her business there. When the Realtor business moved out, that gave Klabouch an opportunity to expand her business into that extra space and when the clothing store went out of business, she once again expanded for additional space to make Green Street Interiors even larger, along with also adding a small space that became vacant behind the bar (the bar is still there).
She was in that location for 30 years until in 2008, with the recession and turn-down in the economy, along with the landlord notifying her that the rent would be increasing.
Klabouch said she felt lucky to even be able to hang-on to her business. She was a single mother raising three young children.
Stepping back a few years, to 2000, an advertising person from the local newspaper called on her to place an ad, which she had been doing on an on-going basis. “I cried because I didn’t know how I was going to make my house payment and didn’t have money for an ad,” explained Klabouch.
Klabouch went on to share that the woman reached into her purse and wrote a $12,000 check and gave it to Klabouch.
Klabouch said she didn’t want to accept the check, which was from the lady’s deceased aunt, because Klabouch didn’t know how she would possibly repay that large sum of money.
“It was a time when hardwood was popular and so I purchased pallets of hardwood, dressed my son’s girlfriend up as a leprechaun and she and my son stood out on the street with signs, ‘Hardwood for sale’ and within a very short time I was able to pay the $12,000 back to the lady.”
Klabouch said she has been blessed. She and her Lead Designer Karen Sullivan (for 30 years now) who just happens to be her daughter, say that they look forward to helping with any interior design and decorating needs individuals and/or companies might have.
“We’re now serving companies in Upstate New York, Texas, Tennessee and Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho and now it’s all by word-of-mouth,” Klabouch said.
She’s been at her current location in the Los Alamitos Plaza at 10660 Los Alamitos Blvd., for the past 17 years.
And while at her current location, she once again expanded her business in 2010 to include Encore, which is right next door to Green Street Interiors.
Klabouch said she’s also blessed to be able to work with the third-generation of family members within her business.
“I love Los Alamitos and am grateful for the Orange County and Los Angeles referrals; I love the people I work with.”