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Local outdoor furniture company O’Malia’s Living has purchased its showroom in Carmel after 21 years, with hopes the acquisition will spur further growth.
O’Malia’s spent $2.3 million to buy its existing facility at 115 Medical Drive, near the northeast corner of 116th Street and South Rangeline Road. The purchase came after the company secured a $1.8 million loan through the U.S. Small Business Administration 504 program.
The company has leased the 18,000-square-foot building since 2002—it was previously in two other spots in Carmel—and is exploring ways to further market its offerings, and expand them, in the coming years.
“This is all meant to help us continue to grow the business,” said owner Scott Horvath. “We started off as a fireplace shop and we know and do everything fire. But we’ve since expanded into patio furniture and barbecue grills. We eventually see ourselves as diving more into outdoor living spaces, and that could include stonework and design-build opportunities like outdoor kitchens.”
O’Malia’s Living has a payroll of 15 people. Improvements to its showroom are expected to come in the next three years, Horvath said. The company quietly closed on the purchase of its building late last year.
O’Malia’s Fireplace Shop opened in 1966 as a sister company to the now-defunct local grocery store chain with whom it shared a family name, which began in the 1940s.
The company’s SBA loan was arranged through People’s State Bank and the Indiana Statewide Certified Development Corp., which handles small business loans across the state by working with local lenders.
SBA loans allow for long-term, fixed-rate financing much like what’s found with deals made for larger companies. But the loans also allow for lower down payments and are only available to companies that meet federally outlined small business parameters.
“We realized this is a one-time opportunity to own our building,” Horvath said. “We sought to preserve cash flow, and the SBA 504 allowed us to invest only 10 percent for the down payment. This was a key piece of the 504 that we liked. The purchase of the building has been a stretch for us, but we are confident that we made the right decision and chose the right loan program.”
Originally, Horvath hoped to buy the building in early 2020, but the deal was derailed by the pandemic. When previous owner Riley Real Estate Holdings LLC—a holding company owned by Recreation Unlimited operators Brad and Carey Riley—approached the firm once more in 2022 about buying the property, it was the optimal time for the purchase to move forward, Horvath said.
“We’ve been here for more than 20 years, and we didn’t want someone else coming in buying the property and saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to move,’” he said. “We wanted to make sure we could stay in the spot we consider to be our home, and do so for the long term.”
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