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Frames

Randy Burkett moved to Roanoke in 2002, after retiring from the United States Navy. With plans to go into electrical engineering, he never imagine he'd be a part of a family framing business.

His father bought the frame shop called, Frames 'N Things located at 3215 Brambleton Avenue in the early to mid 1980s. His father was in the Air Force in Vietnam and worked in the health care business prior to owning the frame shop.

"He ended up moving between Atlanta and West Virginia working at his health care business and wanted. His partner wanted  to move to California because business was growing and expanding. But at the time he lived up on Bent Mountain and wasn't willing to move. He was looking for something to do so he bought this framing business," Burkett said.

"My father went to school to learn to frame and did a lot of on the job training," Burkett said. "My father is one of those people that when he takes on a task, he never fails."

Burkett's father ran the business for about 12 years before he sold Burkett the framing business.

"When my son graduated high school, we lived in Sicily," Burkett said. "I was about 2 yeras from retirement from the Navy but my father offered me the business. I thought about it. This is nicely located, we love the area, love the mountains. People in Roanoke are wonderful and we just fell in love with it. So when the opportunity came, we jumped on it."

And the business has been considered a local success every since, and now Burkett gets to continue his father's shop. Burkett took a few business administration and worked with his father for two years, learning the trade.

Frames 'N Things hass been voted #1 Framer for 9 consecutive years by The Roanoker.

"I attribute it to our customer service," Burkett said. "We have a relationship with our customers. We know their families and we treat everybody as our friend with respect. We bend over backwards for our customers. We do all we can to make sure their money spent isn't painful."

Burkett says that his store does the little things that many of the larger stores that do framing don't do. Burkett allows customers to try pieces in their homes and bring them back if they aren't satisfied and make small payments towards their purchases.

"That is one thing I can say without the fear of lying, is our customer service. Not to say we have better service but it's the way we do customer service."

But Burkett says that his frame shop's biggest challenges have been faced most recently with the slowing economy.

"People have "x" amount of dollars and we are a luxury item. When gas started getting high we felt it. Competing with the box stores, losing customers to people going to those store mom and pop stores. Getting the message out there has been hard. Word of mouth has been our best advertiser."

"It's like the old saying, 'don't judge a book by its cover'. When I first started working here, I preconceived what people could afford. The idea of judging a book by its cover has really soaked in for me. Treating every customer the way I want to be treated as a customer."

Burkett is also proud of his employees who have been framing for most of their lives and also have art degrees.

"I like it when people like the way things are framed, but I like it even more when they say they heard about us from someone else," Burkett said.