Morton Seaman

Morton Seaman died on Thursday 15 October 2026 at the age of 94, according to the home furnishings trade publication Home News Now, which reported his death from Dix Hills, New York. His family's notice said he died peacefully at home; one family listing gave the date as 16 October, but trade reports and the day of the week point to 15 October. No cause of death was made public.

Tributes came first from the furniture industry, which remembered him as a pioneer of room package selling and as a teacher and mentor to many retailers. No details of a public funeral or memorial had been announced at the time of writing.

Morton Seaman, known as Morty, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 July 1932 to Julius and Ada Seaman. His father, known as Julie, founded a furniture store in Brooklyn in 1933, and Morty grew up around the business. According to his family's obituary he studied at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, training he later applied to buying and retailing.

Seaman started his career in his father's Brooklyn store. When Julius Seaman died in 1954, Morty took the business on and, with his brother Carl, built Seaman's into one of the largest furniture retailers in the Northeast, eventually with 30 stores and annual sales of about 290 million dollars.

The American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame credited him with outside the box thinking that created new business models. He practised vertical integration, acquiring real estate and manufacturing and running merchandising, advertising and sales programmes in house, and he was known for advertising that made Seaman's a household name in the region. His most influential idea was the expanded room package: rooms of furniture displayed complete with accessories, which customers could buy together at one price. Furniture Today later wrote that this approach foreshadowed the concept that would drive Rooms To Go.

Seaman sold Seaman's in 1988.

After selling Seaman's, Morty Seaman became mentor and partner to his son Jeffrey in founding Rooms To Go. The Hall of Fame dates its founding to September 1990, and Furniture Today describes its launch in Orlando, Florida, in 1991. The company rested its business on whole room merchandising, promoted with the slogan "Buy the piece, save a little. Buy the room, save a lot!"

Rooms To Go grew into one of the largest home furnishings retailers in the United States. Furniture Today put it at number five on its 2024 Top 100, with an estimated 3.54 billion dollars in sales and 152 stores across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama and Virginia, plus franchise units in Puerto Rico. Morty served as vice chairman, and he and Jeffrey are among the few father and son pairs in the American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame. Morty was inducted in 2004.

Seaman married Lois Shultz in 1958, and they had two children, Jeff and Jill. The Hall of Fame noted that the family was deeply involved in philanthropy.

He was an avid and highly competitive fisherman, and the Hall of Fame recorded that he held the world record for Atlantic salmon. His family's obituary recalled that he ran three marathons, including the New York City Marathon, learned to ski at the age of 60, and was a long time fan of the Giants, the Knicks and the Mets.

Seaman's ideas about selling furniture by the room, backed by heavy advertising and control of the supply chain, shaped two major retailers across two generations. Seaman's was for decades one of the best known furniture names in the New York area, and Rooms To Go, which he co-founded with his son, became one of the largest furniture retailers in the United States. His place in the American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame recognises his influence on how furniture is marketed and sold.