Sisters Colleen, Meghan, Maureen and Caitie Smithe, from left, say three key words have helped them carry their family-run furniture company into a fourth generation: fresh, young and relevant. They were each only a year apart, at one point covering all four grade levels at Barrington High School. They got on each other’s nerves and learned to talk quickly at the dinner table if they wanted to get a word in.
Chicagoans came to know and appreciate the three Smithe brothers who starred for years in quirky TV commercials touting their family-run furniture company.
Their interactions were zany, their dialogue lighthearted, their catchy jingle — “you dream it, we build it” — recognizable throughout the region. And they represented Walter E. Smithe with a sense of drive and zeal that can only exude from the third-generation stakeholders of what has become a household name.
“They were loved,” said Colleen Smithe, the youngest daughter of Walter Smithe III. “People really did love seeing them on their TVs.”
That’s why when she and her three sisters — Maureen, Meghan and Caitie — were asked a few years ago to transition into the role their father and uncles held for so long, they weren’t immediately receptive.
How, they wondered, would longtime customers respond to four new female faces on their television screens? How could the Itasca-based company break the mold and reach a new audience while still carrying its message into a fourth generation?
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