Furniture company gives out thousands of dollars in free furniture after Super Bowl

Gardiners Furniture company, which is based in Baltimore and has five locations throughout Maryland, is planning to make good on its promise to give free furniture to customers after Baltimore Ravens’ wide receiver Jacoby Jones opened the Super Bowl’s second half with a 108-yard kick return, which helped the Ravens win Super Bowl XLVII, 34-31.

For the third year in a row, the company promised that any customer who bought furniture between Jan. 31 and 3 p.m. Super Bowl Sunday would get their goods for free if a player from either team returned a kick for a touchdown at the start of the game or after half-time, as first reported by the Baltimore Sun.

In the company’s last two years of the publicity campaign, no one on any of the four teams — the New York Giants and New England Patriots last year, or the Pittsburgh Steelers and Greenbay Packers in 2011 — accomplished the uncommon feat. The team that accomplishes it doesn’t have to win for the company to activate the promotion, but in this case, they did.

Now the 70-year-old company said it will return a total of approximately $600,000 to more than 400 people who made purchases in the allotted time frame.

Gardiners Furniture doesn’t have any hard feelings, though, because the promotion was insured.

“We had an insurance policy,” said Linda Mullaney, a buyer with the company. ”That’s why we were happy.”

She said after Jones’ touchdown, she and her husband, a part-owner, were cheering, while employees called each other to celebrate their hometown team’s success.

“Baltimore is a big football town,” she said.

Many companies host promotions around sporting events, taking part in widely-publicized events.

“We would have done it if the Ravens hadn’t been in the Super Bowl,” Mullaney said of the promotion. “It was just a plus that it happened to be the Ravens.”

Gardiners is still planning the logistics of how it will give money back to eligible customers, but Mullaney said the family-owned and operated company will live up to its promise.

“Our customer got a double whammy: free furniture and the home team won,” she said.

If the Ravens had not won, Mullaney said, the free furniture might have overshadowed the loss, at least for those lucky customers.

“Free stuff is always good,” she said.