Our History

Schwartz & Company opened its doors in New Waterford, Nova Scotia in 1922, started by a young couple, Rose and Abraham Schwartz, who set out to build an honest local furniture business on Cape Breton Island.

A decade later, tragedy tested that foundation. In 1932, Abraham passed away, leaving Rose a widow and, at the time, pregnant. Rather than step away from the business, she stepped into it fully, steering the store through the hardest years of the Great Depression on grit alone. The patience, work ethic, and warmth she brought to the counter became the values the Schwartz name would carry for the next century, and she later handed them directly to her son.

Brian Purchase joined the company in 1993 as CFO, taking on the job of helping Irving manage an increasingly varied portfolio of businesses. The working relationship deepened over the following years, and in 2001 the two men formalized it, becoming full partners in the company.

When Irving passed away in 2010, Brian took over as sole owner, carrying forward a business built first by Rose and then shaped for decades by her son. Schwartz has stayed a family-run company in spirit ever since, guided by the same small-town values it started with in 1922.

When Schwartz Furniture reached its 100th anniversary in 2022, the company marked the milestone by looking back rather than just forward. Staff sat down with Brian Purchase to talk through decades of memories of Rose and Irving Schwartz, and the Sydney showroom added a small in-store nook named Rose's Cafe, decorated with vintage touches as a quiet nod to the founder.

For the occasion, Schwartz also partnered with local candlemaker Lillian Company to create an exclusive, non-retail candle called Scents of Home, inspired by Rose and blended to evoke the comforting scent of leather and rose. Mattress suppliers Sealy and Kingsdown joined the celebration too, releasing special 100th-anniversary mattress editions carried exclusively at Schwartz locations that year.