David Hilst recently sold his La-Z-Boy Home Furnishings & Décor stores to the corporate parent company, but he has hired eight of the former employees to launch a new business, Vyper Transportation.
Hilst and his mother, Sandy Hilst, owned and operated multiple La-Z-Boy stores for nearly four decades.
“We had some of the top-performing stores in the country,” Hilst said. “La-Z-Boy corporate decided to acquire our stores; they bought them in December.”
The sale included the Springfield store at 3440 Wabash Ave., plus locations in Bloomington, Peoria, Champaign and two in Indiana.
Sandy Hilst died in January, but David Hilst decided to move forward with plans to launch Vyper Transportation. The moving and delivery company is based out of 3460 Wabash Ave., a building next to La-Z-Boy that was not included in the sale to the corporate office.
“One of our main goals was to employ some of the people who didn’t get jobs (with La-Z-Boy),” Hilst said. “There are a lot of young men who work for us who have come from hard lives. Our goal is to not only employ them, but make them better people. We spend a lot of time on emotional health, physical health, and try to build them up.”
Vyper Transportation is currently offering parcel delivery and “last-mile” delivery, partnering with FedEx. Hilst also plans to offer additional services such as full-service moving, hourly moving and packing services, junk and trash removal and donation pick up.
“In Illinois, it takes forever to get licensed, so we’re waiting on a few authorizations and some of the other services will come later,” Hilst said. “We want to be flexible, because we’re a little team, and we’re trying to do everything we can to get customers.”
