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.
![Former La-Z-Boy owner launches Vyper Transportation](https://media1.springfieldbusinessjournal.com/springfieldbusinessjournal/imager/u/blog/15198722/vyper.jpg?cb=1710423697)
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.”